British transport minister Grant Shapps has urged Britons to behave normally and stop making a fuss over fuel by queuing at filling stations and buying up petrol.
“There’s plenty of fuel, there’s no shortage of the fuel within the country,” the minister said, as quoted by Sky News
“So the most important thing is actually that people carry on as they normally would and fill up their cars when they normally would, then you won’t have queues and you won’t have shortages at the pump either,” he added.
Shapps also said that the country’s authorities were stepping in to ease the shortage of haulage drivers bringing fuel to petrol stations.
The government announced plans to issue 5,000 three-month visas for drivers of fuel tankers and food lorries, and 5,500 for poultry workers amid a severe labour crisis that has caused difficulties for several sectors, from supermarkets to fast-food chains in recent months.
Earlier this week, Shapps blamed the fuel issues on logistics problems, saying that the country has been plagued by the lack of lorry drivers, while UK refineries had “plenty of petrol” stockpiled. He also suggested that London might bring in the army to distribute fuel and other goods.
The fuel supply issues come amid a deepening gas crunch experienced by the UK over the past few weeks with skyrocketing prices already pushing a lot of smaller energy enterprises out of business.
Asian states are on course to double their spending on food by 2030 to some $8 trillion, with over $1.5 trillion of investment needed to keep up with the demand, a new report finds.
According to joint findings of investment firms PwC, Rabobank and Temasek, much of the spending increase will come from the fast population growth in the region, expected to reach 4.5 billion people by 2030.
Changing consumer habits is another factor contributing to increased demand, with people in the region increasingly turning toward healthy food.
“Folks want healthier food, they want safer food, they want to buy online, they want food that is sustainable,” Anuj Maheshwari, managing director of agribusiness at Temasek, told CNBC.
All this will inevitably lead to Asia becoming the world’s largest food and beverage market in less than a decade, the report states.
According to the findings, India and Southeast Asia will boost spending the most, however, China will retain its position as the largest market overall.
The report states that some $1.55 trillion of investment will be required across the entire Asian food chain to meet the growing demand, which could be a great commercial opportunity for investors.
The report urged producers and investors to shift their focus to six “critical trends,” including healthy diets, fresh produce, safe sources, sustainable consumption, alternative proteins and online purchasing.
“These trends (are) what agribusinesses need to focus on and make sure consumers can get this kind of food in addition to the volume that we need in places like Asia,” Maheshwari summed up.
An imminent power-supply shock is reportedly expected to hit China just as the world’s second-biggest economy is gripped with uncertainty over the probable bankruptcy of one of the country’s real estate majors, Evergrande.
The crackdown on power consumption has reportedly been triggered by surging demand for electricity, along with soaring prices for coal and gas that are exacerbated by strict targets set up by China’s authorities to cut emissions.
The country’s manufacturing sector with energy-intensive aluminum smelters, textiles factories and soybean processing plants became the first to get hit hard, as they had to curb activities or shut down.
“With market attention now laser-focused on Evergrande and Beijing’s unprecedented curbs on the property sector, another major supply-side shock may have been underestimated or even missed,” Nomura analysts said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Nearly half of the country’s 23 provinces missed targets set by the government with Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong – China’s key industrial hubs that account for about a third of its economy – being among the worst, thus remaining under pressure to slash power use.
“The power curbs will ripple through and impact global markets,” Nomura’s Ting Lu said. “Very soon the global markets will feel the pinch of a shortage of supply from textiles, toys to machine parts.”
China’s energy crisis, which is partially attributed to Beijing’s decarbonization campaign, comes amid an extreme global shortage of energy supplies that has sent European markets into chaos. The power crunch may be overshadowed by current concerns over Evergrande, which could default on its massive debts.
The Chinese economy is reportedly at risk of a dire shortage of coal and gas during the upcoming winter, as the country has never had to deal with global prices for those fuels at their current levels.
“Policymakers seem to be willing to accept slower growth in the rest of this year in order to meet the carbon emissions target,” Larry Hu, head of China economics at Macquarie Group, told the agency. “The GDP goal of more than 6% is easily achievable, but emissions targets are not easy to hit given robust growth in the first half.”
Global energy firms are expanding fossil-fuel production in the Arctic region, driven by boosting their profits and with no regard for the consequences, research by Paris-based climate watchdog Reclaim Finance claims.
According to the group’s data, there are currently 599 oil and gas fields in the resource-rich Arctic region, with some 220 sites already in production. Also, some 338 new fields have been discovered and may enter development at any time. This means that if the companies find the necessary financing to exploit all these deposits, the reserves in production could double in the near future. And the group believes financing will soon be found.
“The Arctic is a climate bomb, and our research shows that the oil and gas industry is hellbent on setting it off, thus blowing up our chances of avoiding runaway climate breakdown. But they aren’t the only culprits: financial institutions have bankrolled these companies, making a mockery of their own climate commitments,” Alix Mazounie, co-author of the report, claims, as cited by Bloomberg. According to the group’s estimations, some 120 major global banks provided more than $314 billion in investments for Arctic resource development from 2016 to 2020.
Researchers claim that Gazprom PJSC, ConocoPhillips, and TotalEnergies SE are the largest of the energy firms expanding their fossil-fuel extraction in the region, able to boost production of Arctic oil and gas by 20% over the next five years.
The report questions the intentions of financial institutions and energy companies that often declare green credentials but act contrary to them, investing in the development of fossil-fuel sites in the sensitive Arctic region. According to researchers, two-thirds of the top 30 banks that finance Arctic reserve exploration have so-called Arctic restriction policies.
Next month, the world’s leaders are scheduled to hold climate talks following a warning in August from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which claimed that the goal for keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is unreachable under current extraction levels. The new research adds that developing Arctic reserves could lead to a climate crisis.
“The more the ice melt accelerates in the Arctic, the more fossil fuel reserves become accessible. However, the more oil and gas projects there are in the Arctic, the less the Arctic can play its role as an air conditioner for the planet,” it states, suggesting that the region should be excluded from fossil-fuel production altogether.
“In order to truly protect the Arctic, financial players must apply their policy of exclusion to the Arctic perimeter, which makes the most sense from an environmental and climatic point of view,” the group concludes.
Crude prices extended gains on Monday, rallying to their highest levels since 2018 as global refineries fail to keep up with fuel demand that is projected to reach pre-pandemic levels by early next year.
Brent futures for November delivery grew 1.23% to more than $79 a barrel, the highest price since October 2018, while US crude benchmark West Texas Intermediate surged 1.28% to nearly $75 a barrel after a run of five consecutive weekly gains.
The rally is being attributed to the swift recovery of demand across the world as economies open up with the easing of pandemic restrictions. At the same time, a natural gas rally is expected to further push demand for oil higher as users switch fuels. However, global oil refining capacity is inevitably weighing on the supply-demand balance.
One reason markets are tightening is because the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allied producers including Russia have been easing the agreed production limits, but not enough to meet global demand. Another is the extreme weather conditions impacting US crude output.
Oil “continues to be supported by broader concerns over tightness in energy markets,” Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING Group NV told Bloomberg.
“Demand is looking as though it will be stronger than expected in the near term,” the expert added.
