“Canadian oil industry’s carbon emissions are among the world’s highest for every barrel of oil it pumps,” Reuters reported this week. A typical barrel of oil derived from the thick crude bitumen that naturally occurs in the Albertan oil sands (an energy-intensive process) emits three to five times more greenhouse gas emissions than the global average.

Crude oil prices clambered upward on Monday afternoon as the market feared that Iran nuclear talks may be stalled after hardliner Ebrahim Raisi won the Iranian presidential election.

Gulf oil producers are finding it difficult to diversify their economies away from their biggest export revenue contributor, and it may take them at least a decade to make any progress on this. This is what Moody’s forecast in a recent report, as quoted by Reuters, noting that this reliance on oil revenues would be the “key credit constraint” for the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

For decades, the true numbers relating to Saudi Arabia’s level of crude oil reserves and production have been a subject of much debate and confusion, not helped by the obfuscation from the Saudis over precisely what these numbers are. The reason for obfuscation is that Saudi Arabia’s only source of real power in the world begins and ends with its oil reserves and production, so the higher these numbers, the more the power, and the lower the number the less the power.

China National Petroleum Corporation has made an oil and gas discovery with reserves estimated at 900 million tons, Chinese media reported.

The discovery was made after six years of exploration work in the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwestern China. The geology of the formation is challenging, the report said, requiring ultra-deep drilling, at a record 8,470 meters.

Oil jumped by the most in a month amid a weaker dollar and as key timespreads surged with expectations for further supply declines at the biggest storage hub in the U.S.

Oil may surge to $100 a barrel next year as travel demand rebounds, Bank of America Corp. said, the strongest call yet among major forecasters for a return to triple digits.

The reporter learned from the Tarim Oilfield Branch of China National Petroleum Corporation on the 20th: The Tarim Oilfield has drilled 56 100-ton wells in the Fuman Oilfield, and found out the geological laws of the oil and gas reservoirs in the Fuman region, and found a 1 billion tons. This is the largest oil exploration discovery in the Tarim Oilfield Basin in the past 10 years.

Oil prices sank on Thursday as the Fed’s hawkish comments sent the dollar higher.

Crude oil is down more than 1% on Thursday afternoon, with WTI falling 1.32% at $71.20 per barrel, and Brent down 1.57% to $73.22. Both prices are still up on the week, but down nearly $2 from Wednesday highs.

Russia’s oil and gas industry has been the driving force behind its economy ever since the first oil fields were discovered in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century at the shores of the Caspian. In the 21st century, the Russian economy remains highly dependent on the production of oil and gas. Therefore, the rosy outlook of the fossil fuel industry is good news for Moscow and its political ambitions.

A decade ago, fossil fuels accounted for just over 80 percent of final energy consumption in the world. During the last ten years, renewable energy has boomed, and installations continue to soar to record highs. But oil, gas, and coal still represent over 80 percent of final energy consumption, despite the rising share of renewable energy in the world’s total energy consumption.

There are a number of observable trends in oil supplies and by extension prices, presently. I am going to discuss one of them in this article. A lack of capital investment in finding new supplies of oil and gas. A favorite analogy of mine comes to mind, the ship is nearing the dock. In nautical parlance that means the time for course corrections is at an end. So we shall see if that is the case for oil. The massive "ship" that is world oil demand is on an unalterable collision with supplies that will have profound implications for consumers. This key metric reveals what the future is likely to hold for our energy security as the world continues to recover from the virus to those who will listen. The level of drilling and by extension capital investment is insufficient and has been for a number of years to sustain oil production at current levels. It's no secret that even with the lower break-even costs for new projects thanks to cost-cutting by the industry the last few years, oil extraction is a capital-intensive business. The chart below from WoodMac, an energy consultancy, shows just how severe the decline in capex has been.