Wednesday, January 14, 2026

How to Save the World: Give Up War, Cars, and Leaf-Blowers... and Unveil the Stars

It’s imperative that we stand up to the forces of ecocide, while developing a more realistic vision of the better world that awaits us once we’ve jumped off the growth-by-carbonization bandwagon.



A night starry sky is shown against the background of the Milky Way and trees.
(Photo: Believe_In_Me/ iStock via Getty Images)


Stan Cox
Jan 14, 2026
TomDispatch


Let me start by putting things bluntly: Don’t bother to tell Donald Trump, but with his distinct help, we’re doing nothing less than cooking ourselves. Thanks to the continued use of fossil fuels in a staggering fashion and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, almost half of the world’s population now suffers through 30 additional days of extreme heat annually. Heatwaves roll in thicker and faster every year.

On average, according to the medical journal The Lancet, 84% of the extremely hot days we’ve faced over the past five years would not have occurred without human-induced climate change that the American president seems intent on making so much worse. Heat-related deaths are already 63% more frequent than in the 1990s. That Lancet article also reported that heat- and drought-related hunger, as well as deaths from wildfire smoke and industrial air pollution, are breaking records globally almost yearly.

Climate Impacts Tracker dubbed 2025 “The Year of Climate Disasters,” noting:
Flash floods tearing up a Himalayan village in India, hurricanes and wildfires ravaging the US, heatwaves and wildfires scorching Europe, record-breaking heat in Iceland and Greenland, torrential rains and floods roaring through Southeast Asia—2025 marked yet another year of human tragedies, driven by extreme weather events.

The number of environmental disasters and their destructiveness are only ratcheting up in step with increases in global greenhouse gas emissions, ever more extraction of key minerals, the ever-greater exploitation of biological resources, and outbreaks of resource wars (most recently with the US assault on Venezuela). All of that is linked to one crucial phenomenon: the single-minded pursuit of economic growth by the owning and investing classes. Not surprisingly, they reap the lion’s share of the benefits from such growth and bear next to none of its devastating consequences.

Though it’s seldom highlighted, the world economy has indeed reached an astounding physical scale. During the past century, resource extraction has doubled every 20 years or so. Indeed, humanity reached a grim milestone in 2021, when the global quantity of human-made mass—that is, the total weight of all things our species manufactured or constructed—surpassed the total weight of all living plant, animal, and microbial biomass on this planet. And worse yet, that mass of human-made stuff continues to grow, year by year, even as the natural world diminishes further.

In other words, our species is vainly striving to circumvent what’s come to be known as Stein’s Law from an aphorism credited to economic guru Herbert Stein: “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”

Societies could indeed achieve a distinctly better quality of life because of (not in spite of) degrowth.

Count on this: At some point, global economic growth will finally have to grind to a halt and shift into reverse. After all, if the corporate and political powers carry on with business as usual, such growth will end in chaotic, violent collapse. (Think Mad Max.) But if the elites can be thwarted and we can dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and other resources in a reasonably well-planned way, we might be able to avoid that fate.

That’s the pitch put forward by the degrowth movement. In essence, it’s a refutation of the “green growth” doctrine. (Green-growthers, ignoring Stein’s Law, claim that technological “innovation” will ensure that economies can continue to grow indefinitely.) In that debate, degrowth finally seems to be getting a leg up. A 2023 survey of nearly 800 climate-policy researchers found that almost three-quarters of them favored degrowth or no growth over green growth.

And here’s the reality the rest of us need to take in: Societies could indeed achieve a distinctly better quality of life because of (not in spite of) degrowth, since full-scale restraints on the endless extraction and consumption of fossil fuels could force them to ensure that their limited resources would be used to satisfy basic human needs instead of being wasted on yet more increasing profits for the already wealthy few.

The growth-addled political and economic forces pushing us toward ecological doom are many and formidable indeed. And that makes it ever more important that people in rich, overconsuming countries like ours come to realize how important it is that we stand up to the forces of ecocide, while developing a more realistic vision of the better world that awaits us once we’ve jumped off the growth-by-carbonization bandwagon.

One way to bring that better world into sharper focus is to examine a few of the many miseries and dangers that degrowth would help us alleviate or even leave behind. What follows is just a handful of examples.
Goodbye, War Machine

Topping the list of American institutions and resources that a degrowth economy could starve would be the US military-industrial complex. After all, the Pentagon is actually the largest institutional user of fossil fuels in the world. The greenhouse gases our military emits, even in peacetime, are believed to have a global-warming impact of 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. The Earth can’t handle that any longer.

To begin shrinking our military’s now trillion-dollar annual budget would not only prevent a significant amount of global warming but also save countless human lives and greatly enhance the quality of life in this country and across the planet.

With degrowth, for example, the Defense (not—thank you, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and crew!—War) Department’s nearly 3 million employees, who enable the resource-heavy, deadly work of war-fighting, imperialism, and, if the Trump administration gets its way, the suppression of domestic political protest, can find themselves better jobs. After all, employees in all but the top echelons of the military, underpaid and exploited, endure often harsh working and living conditions. Zeroing out the Pentagon would free up a vast workforce to help meet people’s actual needs rather than killing all too many of us on this planet (most recently, at least 115 in the bombing of Venezuelan boats and 40 more in the January 3rd attack on Caracas). And they’d be better off losing those jobs.

Enlisted personnel receive such small paychecks that many are eligible for SNAP (“food stamp”) benefits, even if only 14% apply for them. Among the families of junior enlisted troops, 45% often can’t afford enough food. More than 286,000 of them don’t get an adequate variety or amount of food and, of those, about 120,000 report sometimes skipping meals and eating less than they need for fear of running out of money.

And that’s not all. A nationwide analysis suggested that towns and cities abutting military bases have higher crime rates (19% greater for property crimes and 34% for violent crimes) than similar towns not near such installations.

Worse yet, people living or working in or around military bases are often exposed to dangerous levels of toxic contamination over long periods and can also be plagued by noise pollution. Not surprisingly, studies have also found high rates of hearing loss among the troops. In the United States, almost 15% of active-duty personnel suffer hearing impairment of some sort (and it’s one of the most common health problems among veterans as well).

Dismantling our war machine would also help restore a better quality of life for tens of millions of people elsewhere. Consider the death and misery our military has inflicted during the past six decades on Indochina, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and now the Caribbean Sea, the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and of course Venezuela.

As if that weren’t bad enough, for decades, our military-industrial complex has provided armaments to repressive, murderous regimes around the globe—Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people being the most recent example.
Adiós, Vehicular Supremacy

In a much less resource-intensive American society, human needs would also no longer be subordinated to those of gasoline-driven motor vehicles, and our collective quality of life would improve dramatically.

Based on the importance of keeping this planet livable, any ecologically sane society would break free from what Gregory Shill has labeled “automobile supremacy” and that, of course, would be a particularly significant accomplishment for any degrowth movement in the United States or other wealthy countries.

As a start, motor vehicles are regularly among the top 10 causes of death for US residents under the age of 55. Worse yet, pedestrian fatalities, which had been falling for decades, shot up by 71% between 2010 and 2023, while fatalities caused by increasingly taller, heavier, more aggressively armored pickups and SUVs climbed at precisely twice that rate, 142%.

Starving militarism and automobile supremacy of resources, while improving the quality of life of our communities, would also go a long way toward halting the ecological breakdown of this planet while the sources of many smaller-scale dangers and ills would also fade into the past.

With private gas-driven vehicles largely replaced by extensive transit networks, electric vehicles, and bike and foot traffic, we also won’t have to contend with as many road-raging drivers in armored pickup trucks the size of World War II tanks. We won’t face the health dangers posed by air and noise pollution from vehicle traffic. Our cities will have vastly more green space, because significant parts of the 30% of their soil surface now covered by concrete or asphalt solely to accommodate motor vehicles could be revegetated. And we won’t suffer the extra-blistering summer heat that comes with such over-paving.

With degrowth and the end of automobile supremacy, traffic jams will vanish into the past; we’ll no longer risk being killed while simply walking, biking along a roadway, crossing a street legally, or engaging in lawful, peaceful protest; and everyone will all too literally be able to stop driving everyone else crazy.
Farewell to So Many Other Fossil-Fuelized Plagues

Starving militarism and automobile supremacy of resources, while improving the quality of life of our communities, would also go a long way toward halting the ecological breakdown of this planet while the sources of many smaller-scale dangers and ills would also fade into the past. Taken alone, each might appear insignificant, but cumulatively, such culprits severely degrade the quality of life in our wildly growth-oriented economy. As just one example of something that, with degrowth, we could say “good riddance” to, let me suggest that loud-mouthed neighborhood bully, the leaf blower.

Generating wind speeds approaching those of an EF5 tornado, gas-powered leaf blowers blast out noise at 95 to 115 decibels (two to eight times louder than the safe upper limit set by federal agencies). Electric leaf blowers, while less noisy, still significantly exceed the maximum safe noise level near schools, hospitals, daycare centers, retirement homes, or anywhere else where there are vulnerable people present.

Most gas-powered blowers and other deafening lawn machinery are operated for long hours by commercial landscaping crews, whose ears are just a couple of feet from the roar. Often surrounded by other leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and gas-powered equipment, such workers commonly suffer hearing loss.

The noise of a leaf blower, like that produced by vehicular traffic and wind turbines, is rich in low-frequency sound that carries long distances, easily passing through walls. Exposure to such noise raises the risk of a range of health problems, including sleep disruption, mental stress, high blood pressure, heart ailments, stroke, and immune-system dysfunction.

And keep in mind that the substitution of leaf blowers for perfectly functional rakes is just the tip of the iceberg. Our economy is now chock-full of unnecessary products that diminish the quality of life and would be left in the nearest ditch if energy consumption were deeply reduced.
Hello Again, Night Sky

By ending profligate energy consumption, degrowth could also restore much-loved wonders of nature that the growth economy has stolen from us.

Consider the night sky. Since 2010, in cities and towns, as well as anyplace near them, “skyglow” (a bleaching out of the night sky that hides stars from view) has been increasing at an astonishing rate of 10% a year.

This surge in light pollution has coincided with the rapid adoption of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for streetlights and other outdoor illumination. Such LEDs produce far more light per watt of energy consumed than older light sources. Unfortunately, companies and municipalities have taken advantage of LED efficiency not by cutting their energy consumption, but by flooding parking lots, streets, billboards, sports fields, and car dealerships with even brighter light.

We’d reap myriad benefits by deeply cutting resource use while ensuring that collective sufficiency and justice for all become the focus of our world.

Most LED lighting now in use is rich in short wavelengths at the “cool-blue” end of the visible spectrum, which ensures that it will be scattered by the atmosphere more efficiently and so produce a rapid increase in skyglow. As a result, stars have all but disappeared from the night sky in cities, suburbs, and nearby rural areas.

Exposure to cool-blue light at night also threatens humans and other species by disrupting our circadian sleep-wake cycle. Among the impacts on human health are gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer.

A degrowth society dialing down its energy use would not only reduce light and noise pollution but achieve significant advances in environmental justice. Brightly lit industrial and commercial facilities and parking lots are all too often placed in low-income, racialized communities. As a consequence, across the United States, light pollution is more severe in neighborhoods where a larger proportion of the population is Black, Latino, or Asian.

Amid mounting ecological and humanitarian crises and with Donald Trump still in the White House for another three potentially devastating years, the vanishing of the heavens may be regarded as a problem only for astronomers and aesthetes. But such a view badly underestimates how important the starry night sky has proven to be to our culture, scientific progress, and social cohesion. It was an unalloyed good, shared freely and equally by all humanity. And it could be so again if, with degrowth, we put our cities and towns on a dimmer switch.

To be clear, the degrowth movement’s not claiming that the way to prevent ecological and civilizational collapse is simply to play Whac-A-Mole by working our way through individual problems like traffic congestion or light and noise pollution. In fact, the point of degrowth is that societies should leave all such problems, including the potential disaster of climate change, in history’s trash heap. We’d reap myriad benefits by deeply cutting resource use while ensuring that collective sufficiency and justice for all become the focus of our world.

© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Stan Cox is the author of The Green New Deal and Beyond (2020), The Path to a Livable Future (2021), and the ‘In Real Time’ blog, all from City Lights Books. See the evolving ‘In Real Time’ visual work at the illustrated archive; listen to the ‘In Real Time’ podcast for the spoken version of this article; and hear a discussion of it on the Anti-Empire Project podcast
Full Bio >

 

JPMorgan warns of ‘more volatility’ facing energy transition

Stock image.

The outlook for the global energy transition is likely to be more volatile than investors may have expected, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“We’ve had a bit of a reset,” James Janoskey, the London-based global co-head of JPMorgan’s natural resources group, said in an interview. The clean-energy transition is “still going to happen, but it will be more elongated than we thought previously, with more volatility and with some sub-sectors going faster than others.”

He says JPMorgan isn’t planning to back away from financing companies tied to the energy transition, noting that the bank is convening a summit in March intended to help clean-tech firms raise equity growth capital. At the same time, the geopolitical, business and economic context means that fossil fuels continue to attract capital, in large part due to the rise of artificial intelligence and the data centers needed to power it.

There’s still growth in the amount of capital being allocated to the low-carbon economy, said Janoskey, whose role within JPMorgan’s investment banking unit covers global energy, power, renewables and mining. “But the predicted trend line that showed traditional fossil fuels going down and then leveling off — and low carbon sources going up and to the right — has not materialized.”

It’s clear that “oil and gas will remain a meaningful part of the energy mix for the foreseeable future,” he said. “So we are not really talking about a transition or replacement at this point, it’s more of an addition to meet growing demand.”

The outlook for a transition away from high-carbon technologies and toward cleaner, greener alternatives has been complicated by a cocktail of political backlash in the US, competitiveness concerns in Europe and the rise of AI globally. Clean energy is drawing record investment, green stocks are outperforming, and renewables are generally the cheapest form of power. At the same time, the Trump administration has pitted itself against sectors such as wind and solar, as it works to turbocharge the production of oil, gas and even coal.

There’s still transition dealmaking to be done, albeit with a somewhat different focus than might once have been expected, Janoskey said. “Today the conversation is not just about energy transition, but also energy security, energy dominance and affordability,” he said.

JPMorgan is looking at financing opportunities in the nuclear power industry, including for small modular reactors, Janoskey said. The bank is also interested in doing deals to help finance power grid modernization and battery storage, he said.

No bank is bigger than JPMorgan when it comes to financing energy deals overall, according to BloombergNEF. For every dollar JPMorgan provided to the fossil-fuel industry — either via direct loans or debt and equity underwriting — it allocated 69 cents to green projects, according to a September BNEF report that looks at transactions through the end of 2024.

BNEF says “fragmentation” has beset global efforts to deliver a low carbon future. Still, while “climate mitigation is no longer the shared priority it once was” and despite “some awkward mood music,” the energy transition “keeps on trucking,” it concluded in a Jan. 6 report.

For the world to have a chance of limiting global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5C, capital allocations to green projects need to be four times the amount those spent on fossil fuels, BNEF has calculated.

Janoskey says JPMorgan continues “to look to actively finance the lower carbon part of that business and try to scale that up.” But the bank has “put in less capital to that area than we may have hoped as some clients pulled back or delayed projects in recent times,” he said.

(By Alastair Marsh)


Credit: Martin Brazill/Shutterstock.com

Today’s historic results from the latest offshore wind auction shows the difference a Labour government can make to our communities.

After months of our opponents on the right casting doubt on the benefits of clean power, the results announced today, alongside new analysis on costings are emphatic: we have secured a record amount of clean power at a price that is significantly lower than that of building and operating new gas fired power plants.

The results announced today mean offshore wind in every corner of the country, from Dogger Bank off the Yorkshire coast, to Awel y Mor in Wales, to Berwick Bank in the North Sea.

Labour is delivering our historic promise made at the last election, to deliver energy security through clean power, and bring down bills for good.

READ MORE: ’25 years of offshore wind shows what can be achieved by energy and climate ambition’

We made that promise in the shadow of the cost of living crisis that was, and still is, affecting so many families across our country today.

As Russia invaded Ukraine, the failure by successive Tory governments to invest in our energy system was laid bare.

Households from the Highlands to Cornwall were left to pick up the tab through eye-wateringly high energy bills, and still today face bills that are significantly higher than before the crisis.

At the general election we vowed to never let this happen again, and today we take a significant step forwards in meeting that commitment.

Not only have we secured enough projects to power the equivalent of over 12 million homes, but we are also getting ahead in floating offshore wind, an emerging technology in which we can be a leader here in the UK.

With two successful floating wind projects in the North Sea and Celtic Sea, we are delivering where previous Tory governments failed.

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter roundup of Labour news, analysis and comment– and follow us on BlueskyWhatsAppX and Facebook.

I am particularly pleased to see the Pentland project in Scotland secure a contract, building on the backing it has been given by Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund.

Taken together, the results we are announcing today will support 6,000 highly skilled jobs in every corner of the country, backed by £22bn in private investment going into our communities.

This is on the back of more than £60bn of private investment that we have secured since coming to office.

While our opponents peddle false arguments around cost, today we are also publishing definitive evidence that clean power is the cheaper option when compared to new gas fired power stations.

This analysis shows that the projects secured today are as much as 40% cheaper than the cost of building and operating new gas capacity in the energy system.

Not only that, but the overall results for all technologies in AR7 will contribute to lower bills for households compared to today.

We were elected with a clear mission to end the cost of living crisis facing families, secure our energy system and create the jobs our communities so urgently need.

Today we take a significant step forwards in delivering on that promise to the British people.

UK Awards Record Offshore Wind Capacity in Latest Auction

The UK on Wednesday awarded a record-breaking 8.4 gigawatts (GW) capacity of offshore wind in its latest auction round, which puts Britain “firmly on track to achieve its clean power mission by 2030,” the government said.   

The Contracts for Difference AR7 auction secured offshore wind capacity capable of generating enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 12 million UK homes.  

“The results deliver the biggest single procurement of offshore wind energy in British and European history - confounding the global challenges facing the industry - a major vote of confidence in the UK’s new era of energy sovereignty and abundance,” the UK government said in a statement. 


Projects in all parts of the UK, including Scotland and the first Welsh project to win a contract in more than a decade, won in the offshore wind tender. 

The government also noted that offshore wind is cheaper to build and operate than new gas-fired power generation. In new figures published on Wednesday using the LCOE industry metric, the cost of building and operating a new gas fired power station is £147, or $198, per megawatt hour (MWh). By contrast, the results for fixed offshore wind in today’s auction were £90.91, or $122, per MWh on average. That’s 40% cheaper than the cost of building and operating new gas-fired generation, the UK government said. 

With the latest record-breaking auction, Britain is “taking back control of its energy, and lowering bills for good,” the cabinet noted. 

The UK aims to have at least 43 GW of offshore wind by 2030 to meet its clean power target. To compare, current offshore wind capacity is 16.6 GW while another 11.7 GW is under construction. 

Despite the offshore wind auctions returning back on track, the UK will find it very challenging to connect all these projects to the grid and have it running 95% on clean energy, including renewables and nuclear, analysts say.    

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Vattenfall Finalizes Investment for Germany’s Largest Offshore Wind Project

offshore wind farm
Vattenfall finalized the investment decision after receiving permits for Germany's Nordlicht project (Vattenfall)

Published Jan 13, 2026 8:48 PM by The Maritime Executive


Offshore wind energy developer Vattenfall confirmed that it is moving forward with the Nordlicht offshore wind cluster. With construction due to start later this year, the two-phase project will become the largest wind project for Germany and a key contributor as the country struggles to accelerate development in the offshore wind energy sector.

The permit issued by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) has become irrevocable, making the final step to move forward with the project. Vattenfall had announced in March 2025 that it had made the investment decision for the project, conditional on the receipt of the necessary permits. The company agreed to repurchase the shares in the Nordlicht cluster that BASF acquired in 2024. At the same time, BASF secured access to a long-term supply of renewable electricity, as part of the agreement. The companies said the agreement would secure renewable power for BASF’s chemical production in Europe at a time when such additional supply will be needed.

The Nordlicht wind cluster will be located just over 50 miles north of Borkum in the German region of the North Sea. The company reports monopile installation for Nordlicht I is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year, and when completed, the 980 MW project will be the largest capacity offshore wind farm in Germany. The second phase will add a further 630 MW. Nordlicht II should begin construction in 2027, and both wind farms are expected to be operational in 2028, adding over 1.6 GW to Germany’s energy supply. Electricity production is expected to total around 6 TWh annually.

Catrin Jung, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Area Wind for Vattenfall, called this a “defining moment” for the project. “This project is about more than building offshore wind capacity – it’s about strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. By producing clean electricity locally, we help create a more resilient energy system,” said Jung.

The decision to move forward on the project comes as Germany, like other Northern European countries, has experienced reduced interest in future projects due to the challenges and economic pressures on the industry. 

Despite having a target to reach 30 GW by 2030, Germany has been stuck at around 1,600 installed wind turbines since late 2024. It currently has a capacity of approximately 9.2 GW installed. While it has grown from just over 7 GW in 2021, future projects have been delayed. In August 2025, Germany received no bids in its latest allocation round, prompting the government to say it would have to adjust the strategy. It scaled back its plan for offshore-wind auctions in 2026 to between 2.5 and 5 GW, from an original plan for 6 GW. The next allocation was expected to proceed in February, with further rounds planned for mid-year.

Despite similar economic challenges in the Netherlands, Vattenfall highlights that it is moving forward with another large-scale project. Together with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, the company has received an irrevocable permit for the Zeevonk wind farm, which will have an installed capacity of 2 GW. It is also designed to produce green hydrogen in a key development for the Dutch industry.
 The project will be built in phases and is now delayed to a target completion of 2032.


 

Norway Renews Commitment to Offshore Oil & Gas With 57 New E&P Leases

"We have just left behind the warmest year ever measured. The fact that the government chooses to respond to this development by handing out even more oil licenses is a threat to our future,"

Statoil
File image courtesy Equinor

Published Jan 13, 2026 6:44 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Though Norway may be known best for leadership in green solutions like electric ferries and carbon sequestration, it remains firmly committed to oil and gas E&P, its energy minister reaffirmed this week. The ministry has just approved 57 new offshore energy licenses in the North Sea, Norwegian Sea and Bering Sea, which will help to extend the time horizon of its regional leadership in energy production. 

"Norway is Europe’s most important energy supplier, but in a few years production will begin to decline. Therefore, we need new projects that can slow the decline and deliver as much production as possible," said Minister of Energy Terje Aasland in a statement. "That activity is important for jobs, value creation, and Europe's energy security."

Offshore energy has strong mutual benefits for Norway and for Europe. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Norwegian natural gas has become more important to EU energy security than ever. Norway now accounts for about one third of all EU gas imports; Russia is now in second place, providing only 12 percent as of 2024 (from pipeline and LNG import pathways combined). In turn, oil and gas revenue provides the Norwegian state with about $60 billion in revenue each year, and it underpins the vast wealth of Norway's $2 trillion Government Pension Fund - the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. About 200,000 Norwegians are employed directly or indirectly by the domestic petroleum sector. 

This round of licensing awarded leases to 19 different companies for areas on the Norwegian continental shelf, including five leases in the Barents Sea. 13 firms hold operator status. Participants include Equinor, ConocoPhillips, Aker BP, TotalEnergies, Repsol and a wide variety of independent producers. To keep the leases, the holders will have to execute a work program to explore and develop their claims. 

Oil prices are at an ebb compared to recent years, but interest in the lease auction remained strong. Aasland said that the high turnout among bidders showed "faith in the opportunities that lie in further exploration" in the region. 

Climate advocates protested the awards. On Tuesday, activists from Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, Nature and Youth and other groups gathered outside of the meeting hall for the award ceremony to demonstrate their opposition. 

"We have just left behind the warmest year ever measured. The fact that the government chooses to respond to this development by handing out even more oil licenses is a threat to our future," said Elise ƅsnes, advisor at Greenpeace Norge.


Equinor Secures 35 New Licenses to Boost Norwegian Shelf Exploration

Equinor has been awarded 35 new production licenses on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) as part of Norway’s 2026 Awards in Predefined Areas (APA) licensing round, the company said Tuesday. The licenses span the North Sea, Norwegian Sea, and Barents Sea, with Equinor named operator on 17 of them.

The new acreage strengthens Equinor’s exploration pipeline at a time when Norway’s offshore sector is under pressure to offset natural production decline while maintaining stable energy supplies to Europe. Twenty-one of the licenses are located in the mature North Sea, ten in the Norwegian Sea, and four in the Barents Sea, reflecting a balance between near-field exploration and frontier opportunities.

Equinor said the awards support its ambition to sustain a high level of drilling activity, with plans to drill between 20 and 30 exploration wells annually. Roughly 80% of that activity will be focused near existing infrastructure, enabling faster and lower-cost tie-backs, while the remaining 20% will target less-explored areas and new geological concepts.

The APA system has long been a cornerstone of Norway’s petroleum policy, encouraging incremental exploration around established infrastructure to maximize resource recovery and extend the life of offshore hubs. For Equinor, access to new acreage is critical as it seeks to develop between six and eight new subsea projects per year through 2035 - significantly above current levels.

The company reported a strong exploration performance in 2025, with 14 discoveries from 31 wells drilled, including seven operated by Equinor. Those finds added an estimated 125 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, underscoring the continued prospectivity of the NCS despite its maturity.

Equinor has repeatedly emphasized that new discoveries are essential to curb the expected decline in Norwegian oil and gas output over the next decade. The company is targeting production of around 1.2 million barrels of oil and gas per day from the NCS in 2035, roughly in line with 2020 levels—an ambitious goal that hinges on sustained exploration success.

The new licenses also align with Equinor’s broader role in European energy security. As Europe’s largest supplier of gas, the company operates a vast offshore and onshore infrastructure network, including gas processing plants, pipelines, terminals, and an LNG facility. Phasing new oil and gas volumes into this existing system remains a core pillar of its strategy.

Technology is playing an increasing role in that effort. Equinor has highlighted the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate seismic interpretation, improve well planning, and support real-time decision-making, tools that are particularly valuable when exploring complex or lesser-known geology.

While the energy transition continues to reshape investment priorities across Europe, Norway’s offshore sector remains a critical source of reliable supply. Equinor’s latest APA awards signal that exploration on the NCS will remain a central part of that equation well into the next decade.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com


EIA Shows Crude Oil Inventories Continue to Rise

Crude oil inventories in the United States increased by 3.4 million barrels during the week ending January 14, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The decrease brings commercial stockpiles to 422.4 million barrels according to government data, which is 3% below the five-year average for this time of year.

The EIA’s data release follows API’s figures that were released a day earlier, which suggested that crude oil inventories grew by 5.27 million barrels.

Crude prices were trading up again on Wednesday morning after gaining significant ground on Tuesday. The catalyst is a combination of factors, including concerns about a possible oil production disruption in Iran amid protests. At 7:42 a.m. in New York, Brent was trading at $65.88 per barrel—up $0.41 (+0.63%) on the day and up more than $5.25 per barrel week over week. WTI was also trading up, by $0.32 per barrel (+0.52%) in early trade

For total motor gasoline, the EIA reported that inventories had increased by 9 million barrels. The most recent figures showed average daily gasoline production increased to 9.0 million barrels. For middle distillates, inventories fell slightly, with production decreasing by 18,000 barrels daily to an average of 5.3 million barrels daily.

Total products supplied—a proxy for U.S. oil demand—came in at 20 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, down 1.1% compared to the same period last year. Gasoline demand averaged 8.5 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, while the distillate four-week average supplied averaged 3.7 million barrels—up 2.2 percent year over year.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com