After having a year to forget in 2020, the energy sector has this year emerged as the best-performing of all 11 U.S. market sectors. Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLE) is up 41% in the year-to-date, making the broader market S&P 500’s 11% gain appear downright anemic. Oil prices appear to have stabilized in the upper 60s, with WTI price finding support around $63 per barrel while Brent is seeing support around $65 per barrel.

The year 2020 was a watershed moment for the fossil fuel sector. Faced with a global pandemic, severe demand shocks, and a shift towards renewable energy, experts warned that nearly $900 billion worth of reserves--or about one-third of the value of big oil and gas companies--were at risk of becoming worthless.

OPEC’s oil exports have jumped by 1 million barrels per day (bpd) so far in May, while the OPEC+ group started easing the production cuts by 350,000 bpd this month, tanker tracker Petro-Logistics said on Monday.

The US. Enerey Information Administration (EIA)released it short-term Energy outlook for May 2021. The study remains subject to heightened levels of uncertainty because responses to C0VID-19 continue to evolve. Economic activity has increased significantly after reaching multiyear lows in the second quarter of 2020.

Russia’s oil reserves will last until 2080 at the current pace of annual production, Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov told Russian outlet RBC in an interview this week.

Canada has recently increased its climate commitment by announcing a more ambitious mid-term target for 2030 on its path to net-zero by 2050. Still, the federal government expects crude oil production to continue growing and peak only a decade before 2050.

Within the last month, Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco has announced the sale of a minority—but large—stake in its pipeline business, the possibility to sell another 1 percent of its stock, and intentions to put up for sale stakes in some oil fields.
Neighbor, ally, and fellow OPEC member UAE in the meantime, has announced plans to list its state oil firm’s drilling business and has launched its own oil futures in a bid to change the face of Middle Eastern oil.

The most important point of agenda, of course, is the political unity of Libya – without it the Libyan NOC will not be able to breathe new life into exploration drilling and to allocate new acreage, not to speak of even more delicate tasks

OPEC’s crude oil production is estimated to have increased to a three-month high of 24.96 million barrels per day (bpd) in April, thanks to a major jump in Iran’s output, the latest survey by Argus showed.

President Biden is coming under fire for his attack on oil and gas once again as Canada pleads to keep the cross-border Great Lakes oil pipeline open. Canada is battling against the state of Michigan to keep the cross-border pipeline open as calls to enhance the joint response to climate change seem to be at odds with the two countries’ oil industries. To create meaningful policy change towards clean energy the U.S. and Canada must work together to support their oil and gas sectors while establishing a clear strategy for the eventual movement away from fossil fuels.

When writing the article on this year’s Top Oil Wildcats, one of the hottest candidates had to be dropped out of the list. Not because the prospect turned out to be sub-commercial, far from it, it remains one of Africa’s most interesting untapped plays, potentially opening up a new country with no previous exposure to the world of energy. As Senegal and Mauritania started to break their way onto the energy maps of Western Africa, Guinea Bissau has remained a relative outlier. At the same time it needs to be pointed out that lack of officially recognized discoveries does not necessarily mean lack of hydrocarbons, as can be attested by the Atum prospect. Atum remains one of the hottest plays in offshore Africa, an overlooked gem that would only need a little bit of political stability to shine.

China’s crude oil imports in April fell by 11 percent, according to energy analytics firm OilX, to 10.41 million bpd.
While lower than March volumes, the April average was more than 5 percent higher than the April average for 2020, OilX also said, as quoted by EnergyVoice.