Japan officially regained the spot as the world’s biggest LNG importer, pushing China to second place. According to the provisional data published by Japan’s finance ministry on January 19, the country’s LNG imports in 2022 were 71.99mn metric tons, down 3.1% year/year. China imported 63.44mn mt of LNG in 2022. …

Saudi Aramco has combined its main trading unit with that of US refiner Motiva Enterprises, as the oil giant consolidates its dealing operations before potentially listing them. Aramco has set up a new entity, Houston-based Aramco Trading Americas LLC, which will be the regional office for the Saudi company’s broader …

Crude oil inventories rose by 7.615 million barrels, American Petroleum Institute (API) data showed on Wednesday. U.S. crude inventories increased 13 million barrels last year, according to API data, while crude stored in the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves sunk by 221 million barrels. This week, SPR inventory held steady at …

Hungary is once again threatening to water down the European Union’s sanctions regime against Russia by insisting that nine people be removed from a list of restrictive measures imposed on more than 1,300 individuals and 170 entities during several rounds of action in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. …

Iran’s oil production in 2022 increased seven percent compared to the previous year, according to OPEC’s first monthly report released in 2023. According to the OPEC report, the Islamic Republic produced 2.554 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in 2022, 162,000 bpd more than the figure for 2021, …

Equinor has made a commercially viable gas discovery in the Norwegian Sea believed to contain between 2 billion and 11 billion cubic metres of recoverable gas, the company said on Wednesday. The find is located 23 kilometres south of the Irpa gas discovery and also close to the Aasta Hansteen …

After a decade of exponential growth, the U.S. shale patch is no longer the swing producer on the global markets. That role is now back in the hands of OPEC and its largest and most influential members in the Middle East, analysts and industry executives say. From growth of over …

Kazakhstan has secured approval from Russia to use its pipeline infrastructure to transport 300,000 tons of oil to buyers in Germany in the first quarter of this year, a state-run company announced on January 13. Kaztransoil, a state-owned oil transportation company, said in its statement that oil sourced from the …

Qatar has been a principal beneficiary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, securing its top liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter position and vigorously pursuing an expansion program in its flagship North Field. As a corollary of this ambitious plan, Qatar announced last week that it is to move …

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries increased its December production, according to the most recent Monthly Oil Market Report published on Tuesday. OPEC-13’s average December production rose by 91,000 barrels per day, according to the MOMR, to 28.971 million bpd, with nearly all of the gains coming from Nigeria. …