** Occidental Petroleum stock was declining Monday after the oil company announced it will acquire energy producer CrownRock in a deal valued at $12 billion. Occidental said Monday that the acquisition will help increase the company’s position in the Midland Basin, and will add 170,000 barrels of oil per day to the company’s production. The Midland Basin is part of the oil-rich Permian Basin in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
** US oil production is having a blockbuster year, and 2024 could see fresh highs, putting more pressure on Saudi Arabia to regain control over crude prices. Analysts at Rapidan Energy estimate US output will average 13.3 million barrels a day next year, up from 2023’s average of 13 million and above the current all-time record of 13.2 million reached in September.
** Large oil companies back the Biden administration’s proposal to require insurance to clean up abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico, which would fall most heavily on smaller companies.
** An Ohio offshore wind project that would have been the first in the Great Lakes is indefinitely suspended as the U.S. Energy Department revokes $37 million in funding for failing to meet project milestones.
** Maine regulators will soon decide if the state will phase out gas-fueled vehicles in favor of electric models, but will not mandate electric vehicle purchases.
** Opposition to a proposed wind power facility — and to a new law allowing the state to override local energy decisions — unites residents of a rural northern California county.
World
** Negotiators at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai remained far apart on the future role of fossil fuels on Sunday as talks at the Dubai summit entered their final stage. The question of whether the world should, for the first time ever, agree on an eventual end to the oil age has been central to the international conference where nearly 200 countries are trying to hash out a solution to climate change.
** The world is still off track to limit global warming to the crucial 1.5-degree threshold, despite pollution-slashing pledges made by dozens of countries at UN-backed climate talks in Dubai, an analysis by the International Energy Agency published Sunday shows.
** Al Gore criticized the United Arab Emirates for hosting a United Nations climate conference and appointing an oil executive to serve as the summit’s president, saying the move was “ridiculous” and “a direct conflict of interests.”
** China is changing its power system in ways that reduce payments to solar providers while making energy storage more profitable, as it seeks to digest an unprecedented boom in new solar panels across the country.
** Canada on Sunday introduced new economic incentives for beef cattle farms in order to reduce methane emissions from cows, according to a statement from the Canadian government. The new draft protocol, Reducing Enteric Methane Emissions from Beef Cattle (REME protocol), will incentivize farmers to implement changes that would cut enteric methane emissions from their beef cattle operations.
** An explosion consumed an oil refinery in Iran over the weekend. The damage has yet to be assessed, state media said, adding that all 18 reservoirs at the refinery have caught fire. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said the initial stages of the fire had consumed around 400,000 gallons of fuel.
** A power blackout hit Kenya on Sunday evening, paralyzing large parts of the country, and the transport minister called for an investigation into “possible acts of sabotage and coverup” over the third nationwide outage in three months.