Oil & Energy

Hysteria Clashes with Missing Oil Barrels

Published

4 months ago

October 27, 2025

A looming oil glut has taken over the energy commodities market as the dominating sentiment among traders and analysts. Everyone is predicting a glut—the only difference is in its size. But there is a fly in the bearish ointment. The IEA admitted this week that it was unable to account for 1.47 million barrels of supply.

The International Energy Agency deepened the glut mood last week, when it predicted a supply overhang of 2.35 million barrels daily for this year, and an all-time high surplus of 4 million barrels daily for 2026. In the same report, however, the IEA admitted it cannot place some 1.47 million barrels daily in global supply for August.

This is nothing abnormal in oil supply estimation, Reuters’ Ron Bousso noted in a report on the matter, but the size of the barrels that are unaccounted for casts a shadow over the accuracy of the IEA’s predictions. It suggests that in August, the global supply overhang may have been 1.47 million barrels daily larger than the IEA estimated or, then again, 1.47 million barrels daily smaller. The number for August gains even more significance in light of the fact that it is a sizable increase on earlier “missing barrel” estimates: 850,000 bpd for July and 370,000 bpd for the second quarter of the year, per Bousso, who cited IEA data.

While the IEA looks for the lost barrels, other agencies are updating their supply and demand forecasts for 2026—and prices just inched up because apparently some traders got fed up with the glut hysteria.

BloombergNEF, for instance, not known for its bullish tendencies, has revised its supply growth prediction for 2026 by 200,000 barrels daily for an oversupply size of 3.3 million barrels daily. For this year, the agency sees oversupply at 1.16 million barrels daily, which raises the question of how the prediction for 2026 would come true when gluts tend to push prices and drilling down, curbing output instead of boosting it twofold.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects a supply overhang of 1.9 million barrels daily this year, growing to 2.1 million barrels daily in 2026. The numbers are an upward revision of earlier forecasts for a 1.7-million-bpd surplus this year and a 1.6-million-bpd overhang for 2026.

Bloomberg, meanwhile, stoked the glut fire by reporting there were 1 billion barrels of crude oil on tankers at sea. The report noted this was oil in transit, meaning some of it, at least, is en route from seller to buyer, but the implication was that a lot of the oil was actually looking for a buyer in an oversupplied market.

“Crude cargoes from the Middle East are starting to go unsold and key price gauges signal that supply scarcity is ending,” Bloomberg wrote, which is an interesting point to make, seeing as there has not been talk about any sort of supply scarcity for months.

“For the last 12 months we’ve all known that there’s this surplus that’s coming,” Trafigura’s global head for oil, Ben Luckock, said earlier this month as quoted by Bloomberg. “I think it really is just about here now.”

“The most straightforward of economic concepts is driving this decline: There’s simply too much supply relative to how much the world is consuming,” analyst Rory Johnston from Commodity Context told the Financial Post.

The IEA, meanwhile, reported in its latest monthly update that in August, oil on water declined by 8 million bpd. It followed up with preliminary estimates that oil on water surged to 102 million over the next month. That would be quite a sudden buildup in oil in floating storage over a very short period of time and would perfectly justify preparations for a glut.

Oil prices, in the meantime, however, have ticked higher. One of the reasons seems to be that some market observers have developed something of a glut fatigue and are starting to doubt the predictions. As UBS’ Giovanni Staunovo wrote this week in a note, “While supply concerns have increased in recent weeks again, we believe the oil market is oversupplied but not in a glut.”

Concern about supply security from Russia also contributed to the latest in oil, suggesting that the supply overhang is not large enough, indeed, to leave traders cold to the news that a peace summit between the presidents of Russia and the United States had been put on hold. According to Reuters, U.S. pressure on Asian oil buyers from Russia had also contributed to the shift in oil supply sentiment.

Now, if the supply excess was as large as the IEA, the EIA, BloombergNEF, and Bloomberg proper, plus dozens of other forecasters have suggested, then the above developments in geopolitics would not have really mattered much for oil prices. The fact that they do suggests still existent sensitivity to supply disruptions, meaning the perception of a glut is a fragile one.

By: Irina Slav

Oil & Energy

The Tofu Brine Battery That Could End the Lithium Era

Published

2 days ago

March 2, 2026

The Tide

Researchers in Hong Kong and China have developed a new form of battery that is more eco-friendly and longer lasting than lithium ion batteries – and it runs on tofu brine. The new water battery is still in research phases, but if the technology proves to be scalable enough to hit commercial markets, it could be a game-changer for the energy and tech sectors.

“Compared with current aqueous battery systems … our system delivers exceptional long-term cycling stability and environmental friendliness under neutral conditions,” the research team, composed of scientists from the City University of Hong Kong and Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, Guangdong, said in a paper published this month in Nature Communications.

The researchers found that their battery model can be recharged over 120,000 times. “At over a hundred thousand cycles, this could mean a single water-based battery could last at least a decade or so,” states a recent report on the breakthrough from Interesting Engineering. “For applications like grid storage (solar farms, wind balancing), that’s extremely valuable,” the article went on to say.

This kind of lifespan would represent a drastic improvement over the battery technologies that dominate today’s market. Lithium-ion batteries degrade after between 1,000 and 3,000 charge cycles. This could prove revolutionary, as finding an alternative to lithium-ion batteries to power rechargeable devices is a major priority for Big Tech and the global energy sector.

Moreover, these tofu-brine batteries could prove safer and more environmentally friendly than lithium-ion batteries. According to the study authors, the full cells are environmentally benign and nontoxic and can be directly discarded to environments according to various standards.” Water based (also called aqueous) batteries can also potentially be cheap to produce as they rely on ingredients that are less rare in addition to being less hazardous.

Lithium is environmentally harmful to extract, prone to fires, and its supply chains are geopolitically fraught. Currently, China alone controls half of the global lithium market, and is rapidly increasing its stake. In 2024, more than eight in ten battery cells on the planet were made in China. This means that finding a battery model that can compete with lithium-ion batteries in applications like grid-scale energy storage and electric vehicles would have revolutionary implications for global markets.

Researchers around the world have been racing to develop battery models that could diversify the market and make it more competitive and resilient. These models range widely in size, components, and application, with models currently under development for next-gen sodium-ion batteries, quantum batteries, nuclear batteries, and even sand and dirt batteries.

Of course, the irony is that the leading alternatives to lithium-ion batteries are also being developed in Chinese labs. If this new tofu-brine battery proves scalable and applicable outside of a laboratory environment, it could just be another step toward Beijing’s goal of near-total domination of clean energy technology value chains and status as the world’s first and premiere ‘electro-state.’

China’s extreme advantage in global battery making gives it a major point of leverage in global economies as the world continues to electrify at a rapid pace. It is estimated that European demand for lithium in batteries will reach kilo tonnes (thousands of tonnes) of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent by next year, and North American demand will reach 250 kit LCE. it’s all but certain that the vast majority of that demand will be supplied by China.

Other nations are aware of the risk of this dependency, and are taking pains to protect and promote domestic battery manufacturing, but these efforts may be too little, too late. “For globally competitive battery manufacturing industries to emerge outside of Asia over the next ten years, companies will need to do far more than ensure regulatory compliance,” summarizes a McKinsey & Company report released in January. “Challenges will need to be overcome on multiple fronts spanning supply chains, talent management, operations and technology.”

By: Haley Zaremba

Oil & Energy

REA TO Spend N100bn On Hybrid Mini-grids For Govt Agencies In 2026

Published

2 days ago

March 2, 2026

The Tide

The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) says it will spend N100 billion in 2026 to deploy hybrid mini-grids for government agencies within and outside Abuja.

The Managing Directors, REA, Abba Aliyu, disclosed this while addressing newsmen on the sidelines of the 2026 budget defence session organised by the House Committee on Rural Electrification in Abuja, Friday.

The approved funds form part of the National Public Sector Solarisation programme, a component of the agency’s broader N170 billion budget proposal for 2026.

The initiative is designed to improve electricity reliability for public institutions while reducing operational costs and easing pressure on the national grid.

Aliyu explained that the agency’s total proposed budget for 2026 stands at N170 billion, with N100 billion of the amount dedicated specifically to the solarisation initiative targeting government agencies.

He said the hybrid mini-grid systems combine solar power with complementary energy sources to ensure an uninterrupted electricity supply.

“The total budget size for 2026 operations is N170 billion, out of which N100 billion had been approved for National Public Sector Solarisation.

“The managing director said that the N100 billion targets provision of hybrid mini-grid for government agencies within and outside Abuja”,

He stated that the intervention covers agencies in the Federal Capital Territory as well as other parts of the country with the aim of reducing energy costs for government operations while improving electricity reliability.

Aliyu cited the National Hospital in Abuja as an example where similar infrastructure had been deployed to ensure stable power and cut operational expenses.He added that beyond the Solarisation

programme, the 2026 budget includes over 500 electrification projects nationwide, covering grid extensions for nearby communities, deployment of transformers, mini-grids for agrarian and cottage-industry clusters, and solar home systems for sparsely populated areas.

Recall that earlier in February 2026, REA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to deploy solar power systems to 15 public institutions across Nigeria.

The project will be implemented under the Regional Off-Grid Electricity Access Project (ROGEAP), a World Bank-supported initiative aimed at expanding off-grid electricity access across West Africa and the Sahel.

ECOWAS will provide a $700,000 grant to fund the installation of solar photovoltaic systems in selected rural health centres and schools in the Federal Capital Territory, Niger, and Nasarawa States.

The initiative marked the formal commencement of Nigeria’s pilot implementation phase under ROGEAP, with REA serving as the technical and financial implementing agency.

through interconnected mini-grids.

Oil & Energy

PIA: TotalEnergies Transfers OLO Oilfield HCDT Obligation To Aradel ……Says HCDT Enabled Completion of 100 Projects In 2 years

Published

2 days ago

March 2, 2026

The Tide

Pursuant of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), TotalEnergies has handed over the OLO Oilfield Host Community Development Trust (HCDT) to Aradel Holdings Plc.

This transition follows Aradel’s earlier acquisition of the Olo and Olo West marginal fields (formerly part of OML 58) from the TotalEnergies/NNPCL Joint Venture, and formally completes the transfer of settlor responsibilities under the trust, ensuring that community development work already underway continues without interruption.

Speaking at the Hand-Over ceremony in Abuja, weekend, the Chief Executive, Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, said the development trust remains intact, its governance structure preserved and its statutory funding obligations transitioning seamlessly to the new settlor as envisioned by the PIA.

Represented by the Executive Commissioner, for Health, Safety, Environment, and Community (HSEC), John Tonlagha, Eyesan explained that the Commission would continue to provide firm and consistent oversight to ensure full compliance with the PIA for the benefit of both the communities and the industry.

Also speaking, the General Manager, Community Affairs, Projects and Development, TotalEnergies, Dornu Kogam, urged Aradel Holdings to maintain the same transparent, community-centered approach throughout project completion.

TotalEnergies further confirmed that all obligations up to the date of transfer have been fully met, and no outstanding liabilities remain adding that Aradel formally assumes full responsibility going forward, with the Commission’s regulatory consent granted.

In his remarks, the Community Affairs Manager, Aradel Holdings Plc, Blessyn Okpowo, affirmed the company’s commitment to honouring all PIA obligations and continuing Total Energies’ community engagement approach.“We want to say that in line with the PIA, we will honour commitments and duties required of the settlor and we want to work very smoothly with the way TotalEnergies has worked with them,” he stated.

The Chairman, Board of Trustees, OLO host community, Wales Godwin, commended the HCDT’s delivery of 118 projects out of 160 planned.

He recognised the Commission’s role in approving the Community Development Plan (CDP) before project start, underscoring regulatory excellence.The parties noted that between 2023 and 2025, the trust has enabled the completion of more than 100 community projects, spanning water supply, electricity, road infrastructure, education, and healthcare with a further 40 projects currently ongoing.