** U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday announced a number of investments in Indonesia spanning areas like climate and food security, including a $2.5 billion agreement between ExxonMobil and state-owned energy company Pertamina on carbon capture.
** The Environmental Protection Agency issued a revised version of its proposed methane rule Friday that would impose tougher measures on the fossil fuel industry than an earlier draft of the regulations aimed at curbing the potent greenhouse gas.
** US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has said that her country was happy for India to continue its purchases of Russian oil as much as it wants, even above the price cap set by G7 nations.
** Every time Lucid Group Inc or Rivian Automotive Inc sells an electric car, they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to staggering raw material and production costs, their latest earnings statements showed. Quarterly reports from electric vehicle (EV) makers from the past two weeks show them struggling to hit delivery targets and rapidly burning through cash reported Reuters.
** U.S. regulators project a quarter of all coal-fired capacity will be retired by 2029, with Texas and Tennessee among four states home to 42% of retirements.
World
** OPEC on Monday cut its forecast for 2022 global oil demand growth for a fifth time since April and further trimmed next year’s figure, citing mounting economic challenges including high inflation and rising interest rates. Oil demand in 2022 will increase by 2.55 million barrels per day (bpd), or 2.6%, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said in a monthly report, down 100,000 bpd from the previous forecast.
** Two ships with their trackers turned off sailed near the leak sites of the Nord Stream 2 pipelines just days before the pipelines were ripped open by subsea explosions, a satellite data analysis firm says. The vessels were both between 311 feet and 426 feet long, and had their automatic identification systems, or AIS trackers, switched off.
** Vermilion Energy Inc. in Calgary has announced it will suspend its share buyback program as the international oil and gas producer contends with the impact of a new windfall tax aimed at the hydrocarbon sector by the European Union.
** Chinese refiners are slowing down Russian crude purchases in December and paying lower premiums in the face of imminent European Union sanctions and uncertainty surrounding the G7’s plan to cap Russian oil prices, trading sources said.
** African nations want to increase how much money they receive from schemes that offset greenhouse gas emissions and are looking for ways to address the issue at U.N. climate talks currently underway in Egypt.
** European spot power prices rose on Monday, boosted by lower wind speeds and higher demand in main market Germany, with France back in business after a one-day holiday last Friday.
