EU Boosts Military Funding To Mozambique To Secure Gas Projects

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 16, 2022, 

As the EU grapples with an energy crisis and seeks alternatives to Russian pipeline gas, the bloc plans to increase its financial support to a military mission in Mozambique – a gas-rich country in Africa plagued by Islamist attacks and insurgents in recent years that have delayed offshore gas projects.

The EU now looks to increase fivefold the financial backing to an African military mission in Mozambique, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing an internal EU document. 

International oil majors have several projects offshore Mozambique, where large volumes of gas have been discovered in recent years. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Africa is one of the EU’s options to replace part of the Russian pipeline deliveries, which have not only been reduced in recent weeks, but are highly uncertain going forward. 

However, insurgents and attacks near areas of LNG developments have stalled some projects in Mozambique, such as that of TotalEnergies. The French supermajor declared last year force majeure on its US$20-billion LNG project in Mozambique following Islamist militant attacks in towns close to the site. The project site is close to the town of Palma in the Cabo Delgado province, where Islamic State-affiliated militants have been active for a few years. The TotalEnergies-led Mozambique LNG Project, for which the Final Investment Decision (FDI) was taken in 2019, is currently on track to deliver LNG in 2024, the company says. 

But Italy’s Eni expects to begin LNG shipments from another project offshore Mozambique in the second half of this year after the group announced in June that the Coral South Project had safely achieved the introduction of hydrocarbons to the Coral Sul Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) plant from the Coral South reservoir. 

“Following the introduction of gas in the plant, Coral Sul FLNG will now be ready to achieve its first LNG cargo in the second half of 2022, adding Mozambique to the LNG-producing countries,” Eni said two months ago. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

BP To Sell Mexican Oil Assets As It Ramps Up Renewable Business

By Irina Slav - Aug 16, 2022

BP is selling its oil assets in Mexico as it seeks to focus even more on its renewable energy business.

The political environment in the country is another reason for the decision, Bloomberg reported.

BP has already sold some of its stakes in Mexican oil projects and is currently returning some blocks it won at auctions to the Mexican oil industry regulator, a company representative told Bloomberg.

Like other supermajors, BP entered Mexico during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, which enacted sweeping reforms aimed at opening up Mexico’s markets to foreign companies.

Since leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador became president, however, there has been a marked change in attitude. The current government wants to reestablish state-owned companies as the dominant players in energy markets, including Pemex, the oil major.

That’s despite Pemex’s financial troubles and lack of capacity to conduct on its own the exploration and production activities that would reverse the long-term decline in Mexico’s oil production.

According to the Bloomberg report, one of the projects that BP has already quit is a deepwater one, in which it partnered with French TotalEnergies and Norway’s Equinor. The Norwegian company also quit the project, with TotalEnergies buying both their shares.

Another project that BP quit was a shallow-water block it won the rights to develop together with TotalEnergies, Equinor, Hokchi Energy, and Qatar Petroleum. According to the supermajor, the likelihood of success at the block was “very low,” hence its decision to quit it.

BP has one of the most ambitious renewable energy programs among Big Oil majors, first announced in 2020 when Bernard Looney took the reins from Bob Dudley as chief executive.

The company plans to have 20 GW of renewable energy generation capacity by 2025, rising to 50 GW by 2030. As part of its transition to a low-carbon company, BP is also betting big on natural gas and hydrogen, along with carbon capture and storage.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Bill Gates-Backed Firm Raises $750M To Develop Small Nuclear Reactors

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 15, 2022,

TerraPower, a company working on small-scale nuclear reactor development backed by Bill Gates, has raised $750 million in investment, including from South Korea's second-largest conglomerate, to pursue its plan to manufacture mini-reactors.

TerraPower, a nuclear energy technology company, raised the funding co-led by Bill Gates to manufacture nuclear reactors that would be cheaper than conventional reactors.  

SK Inc, part of South Korea's SK Group, invested $250 million in TerraPower in the fundraising, the company said on Monday.

As the world looks to cut carbon emissions from energy sources, Gates has been betting on small nuclear reactors that could have lower costs than the typical reactors used in nuclear power generation plants. At the same time, nuclear energy generation is zero-emission.

Last year, TerraPower picked a remote coal town in western Wyoming as the site of its first innovative nuclear power plant. The U.S. Department of Energy welcomed the plans and said last November it was "extremely excited about this project."

The DOE plans to invest nearly $2 billion to support the licensing, construction, and demonstration of this first-of-a-kind reactor by 2028.

Earlier this year, TerraPower said the project was underway. During the first three years of this project, TerraPower is focused on advancing the plant design and submitting the construction permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Early construction activities will likely begin in 2024, TerraPower said in May.

Nuclear energy, especially innovative technologies such as small-scale nuclear reactors, could be an important breakthrough in the quest for low-carbon power generation.

Moreover, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nuclear power has returned to the spotlight as a way to reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels while keeping emissions in check. Even Germany is debating whether to end nuclear power generation at the end of 2022, as planned, in light of the gas crisis. Germany has three remaining nuclear power plants operating, and they should be shut by the end of this year under a plan the country adopted to stop the use of nuclear energy following the Fukushima disaster. Earlier this month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signaled that "it could make sense" to keep nuclear power plants operating.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

California Might Keep One Nuclear Plant Open

By Charles Kennedy - Aug 15, 2022, 

Anticipating electricity supply shortages well into 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed allowing the state’s last-remaining nuclear power plant to continue operations beyond its 2025 planned shutdown. 

The package of legislation, which included aggressive action against climate change,  must be passed by the end of August or be sidelined, according to ArsTechnica. 

Governor Newsom is proposing that the last nuclear plant be allowed to operate for an additional five to 10 years beyond 2025, arguing that it would help with the state’s ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions. 

The State of California is targeting 90% clean energy in 2035 for electricity generation. 

Saving the last nuclear plant–the 2.2 GW facility at Diablo Canyon–could help towards these goals, according to Newsom’s proposal, as it is carbon free energy. 

Diablo supplies a minimum of 5% and a maximum of 10% of California's electricity.  

That plant has two operational turbines, one set for decommissioning in 2024 and the other for the following year. The new plan–if passed by the legislature–would see the state provide the plant’s operator with a $1.4-billion loan to remain up and running. 

The proposal is expected to meet with significant opposition, not the least from environmentalists and others who are concerned about the seismic faults in the area of the plant, as well as the negative effects on the seawater that is used to cool the facility. 

However, Newsom believes that the state is at risk of missing its ambitious climate targets unless the nuclear plant is allowed to continue operations–suggesting that environmentalists will have to choose between these two eventualities.

“We are behind where we need to be in bringing our clean resources online,” Newsom stated during a webinar on Friday, as reported by E&E News, suggesting that decommissioning the nuclear plant could not happen without more advancement in adding clean energy to the mix. 

Newsom and his aides cited increasing demand and future demand projections for electricity with the growing adoption of electric vehicles, as well as the pressures of climate change and extreme heat. 

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

‘Right material’ to efficiently remove mercury from water shows promising results

Staff Writer | August 17, 2022 |

Mercury-polluted water. (Reference image by Joe.nehls, Wikimedia Commons).

Researchers at Drexel University have found the right material to efficiently catch mercury —even at low levels— and clean up contaminated bodies of water.


According to lead researcher Masoud Soroush, adsorption —the process of chemically attracting and removing contaminants— seems to be the most promising technology for removing mercury from water, due to its relative simplicity.

“Modern adsorbents, such as resins, mesoporous silica, chalcogenides, and mesoporous carbons, have higher efficiencies than traditional adsorbents, such as activated carbon, clays, and zeolites that have a low affinity toward mercury and low capacities,” Soroush said in a media statement. “However, the problem with all these materials, is that their mercury-removal efficiencies are still low, and they are unable to lower mercury level to less than 1 part per billion.”

Soroush’s team of researchers from Drexel and Temple University has explored synthesizing and using a surface-modified titanium carbide MXene for mercury removal. MXenes are a family of two-dimensional nanomaterials that was discovered more than a decade ago and has demonstrated many exceptional properties.

Titanium carbide MXene

For mercury ion removal, titanium carbide MXene’s advantages are its negatively charged surface and the tunability and versatility of its surface chemistry, rendering it attractive for heavy metal ion removal.

“We knew that 2D materials, such as graphene oxide and molybdenum disulphide, had previously been effective in removing heavy metals from wastewater through adsorption because of their chemical functionalities/structures that attract metal ions,” Soroush said. “MXenes are a similar type of materials but we estimated that titanium carbide MXene could have much greater uptake capacities than these other materials—therefore making it a better sorbent for mercury ions.”

But Soroush’s team needed to make a key adjustment to titanium carbide MXene’s chemical structure to further improve the material for one of its most challenging tasks.

“Mercury is called quicksilver for a reason—it’s quite evasive once emitted into the environment, whether by burning fossil fuels, mining, or waste incineration,” Soroush explained. “It quickly changes its chemical form—increasing its toxicity and making it tremendously difficult to remove from the bodies of water where it inevitably accumulates. So, to attract mercury ions even faster we needed to modify the surface of titanium carbide MXene flakes.”

There is a natural attraction between mercury ions and titanium carbide MXene surface, as metal ions are positively charged and the surface of the MXene flakes is negatively charged. However, to pull mercury ions out of water more strongly the team needed to give this attraction a boost. To this end, they treated the MXene flakes with chloroacetic acid —a process called carboxylation— which provides the MXene with highly mobile, strong carboxylic acid groups and increases the MXene-flakes surface negative charge, improving the ability of the flakes to attract and retain mercury ions.

Faster mercury-ion uptake

The result was a new sorbent material called carboxylated titanium carbide MXene, which demonstrated a faster mercury-ion uptake and greater capacity than all commercially available adsorbents.

“Carboxylated titanium carbide MXene proved to be far superior to sorbent material currently being used for mercury-ion removal,” Soroush said. “Within one minute it was able to remove 95% of mercury ions from a water sample contaminated at a concentration of 50 parts per million, which means it could be effective and efficient enough for use in large scale wastewater treatment.”

Within five minutes, titanium carbide MXene and carboxylated titanium carbide MXene removed 98% of mercury ions from a 10-millilitre water sample contaminated with mercury ions at concentrations between 1 and 1000 parts per million.

“This indicates that both [MXene] and [carboxylated MXene] are effective adsorbents to remove mercury ions from wastewater due to their special structural properties and high density of surface functional groups,” the team wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. “Generally, the adsorption mechanism of metal ions follows two steps; at first, the ions are quickly adsorbed on the available active sites, and the process is swift. The adsorption proceeds slower as the adsorption sites fill up, and the ions are required to diffuse into the pores and interlayer.”

Chile dictates measures against Lundin Mining for giant sinkhole

Reuters | August 16, 2022 

Credit: Lundin Mining

Chile’s SMA environmental regulator said on Tuesday it had issued a series of measures against a copper mine owned by Canada’s Lundin Mining Corp after a sinkhole opened up near one of the company’s mines.


The SMA ordered six “urgent and transitory” measures while it continues to investigate causes that generated the sinkhole that measures 36.5 meters (129 ft) in diameter in Tierra Amarilla, some 665 km (413 miles) north of Santiago.

“After several inspection visits to the area, we detected that the company was carrying out an over-extraction of material, which could have caused an increase in outcropping waters that have not been adequately controlled,” environment superintendent Emmanuel Ibarra said.

Mining Minister Marcela Hernando said last week the government would seek to apply harsh sanctions to those responsible for the sinkhole, citing the overexploitation of the nearby deposit.

Measures announced Tuesday include a soil stability study, monitoring levels in the waterhole, hydro-geochemical analysis of major compounds and trace elements of groundwater, and a study evaluating the current drainage system.

The regulator also requested a study to verify whether the volumes of water extracted by Ojos del Salado mine have detrimented nearby aquifers.

The Canadian firm owns 80% of the property, while the remaining 20% is in the hands of Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining and Sumitomo Corporation.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(By Fabián Andrés Cambero, Carolina Pulice and Stephen Coates)

CP-KCS deal wins OK from foreign investment committee in U.S.

The Canadian Press

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Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. is one step closer to receiving the regulatory go-ahead for its acquisition of Kansas City Southern.

The Calgary-based railway said Tuesday its purchase of KCS has received the required clearance from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment.

However, the deal — which would create the only single-line railroad linking the United States, Mexico and Canada — still requires approval by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which is currently reviewing the transaction. 

CP said it expects a decision from the STB early next year.

Last year, Canadian National Railway Co. dropped its rival takeover bid for KCS after the Surface Transportation Board rejected its request for a voting trust.

CP then agreed to buy KCS in an agreement valued at US$31 billion, including the assumption of US$3.8 billion of debt.

CP's deal closed in December, but the shares of KCS were placed into a voting trust that allows the U.S. railway to operate independently while the STB completes its review.

Mexican regulators have already given their approval to the deal.

CP has said its acquisition of KCS will enable significant growth for its rail customers, and allow for 60,000 truckloads annually to be shifted off public highways.

Following the completion of the transaction, CP expects the deal to generate $1 billion in annualized synergies within the first three years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 16, 2022.

Royal Bank CEO asks workers to come to the office more

Kevin Orland, Bloomberg News

Now Showing

Royal Bank of Canada is asking employees to come to the office more often, an early sign that the country’s big banks may follow their US rivals in cutting back on remote work. 

While many types of work can be done productively from outside the office, “technology can’t replicate the energy, spontaneity, big ideas, true sense of belonging and fun” of being together in person, Royal Bank Chief Executive Officer Dave McKay said in a memo to employees Tuesday. 

While McKay’s memo didn’t include specifics about how often employees will be expected to show up at the office, Royal Bank spokesman Rafael Ruffolo said in an email that hybrid arrangements will involve working in person two to three days a week for most office jobs. Those practices already are in place for some teams and regions, and the bank is aiming to have any new arrangements in place by the end of September, he said.

“For hybrid to continue to work effectively, we need to get the balance right and be a bit more deliberate about when and how we organize on site,” McKay said in the memo. “That’s why, as we move into the fall, I’m asking our leaders and colleagues to come together more often in person to work and collaborate.”

Bankers in Toronto, Canada’s financial capital, have typically faced less pressure throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to return to the office than their counterparts on Wall Street, where leaders like JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Solomon have been vocal proponents of in-person work.

Many of Canada’s financial institutions have started bringing workers back into the office on a regular basis in only the past six months. Bank of Nova Scotia began to allow workers to come back to the majority of its Canadian offices on a voluntary basis in March, and started a phased return the following month. Manulife Financial Corp. also began a full return in April, while Toronto-Dominion Bank started allowing employees back in offices around the same time and aimed for workers to officially transition to new working models by June.

Royal Bank, Canada’s largest lender by assets, has about 89,000 workers around the world, according to the memo.

“We’re a relationship-driven bank,” Royal Bank’s McKay said. “To put it another way, direct human connection is core to our culture and how we bring our purpose to life for all those we serve.”