The COP29 climate summit presidency released a draft finance deal on Friday that would have developed nations take the lead in providing $250 billion per year by 2035 to help poorer nations - a proposal that drew criticism from all sides. World governments represented at the summit in the Azerbaijan capital Baku are tasked with agreeing a sweeping funding plan to tackle climate change, but the talks have been marked by division between wealthy governments resisting a costly outcome and [Read more]

Goldman Sachs expects Brent prices to average around $80 per barrel this year, despite a 2024 deficit and geopolitical uncertainty, citing an anticipated 0.4 mb/d surplus next year, the bank said in a note on Thursday. "Our base case is that Brent stays in a $70-85 range, with high spare capacity limiting price upside, and the price elasticity of OPEC and shale supply limiting price downside. However, the risks of breaking out are growing," Goldman Sachs said. Oil prices rose on Friday, [Read more]

Oil prices extended gains on Friday, heading for a weekly uptick of more than 4%, as the Ukraine war intensified with Russian President Vladimir Putin warning of a global conflict. Brent crude futures gained 10 cents, or 0.1%, to $74.33 a barrel by 0448 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 13 cents, or 0.2%, to $70.23 per barrel. Both contracts jumped 2% on Thursday and are set to cap gains of more than 4% this week, the strongest weekly performance since late September, as [Read more]

Shale gas producers in the U.S. Permian Basin are sounding out data-center operators building up capacity to power a boom in AI applications, aiming to ease the pressure from a nearly two-year slump in the prices of the commodity. Devon Energy, Expand Energy, Diamondback Energy, and Permian Resources have highlighted the potential for AI and data centers to drive gas demand and said they were in initial discussions with many operators. U.S. data centers' energy needs could boost gas demand [Read more]

A spike in electricity demand from the world's big data providers is raising a worrying possibility for the world's climate: a near-term surge in fossil-fuel use. Utilities, power regulators and researchers in a half-dozen countries told Reuters the surprising growth in power demand driven by the rise of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is being met in the near-term by fossil fuels like natural gas, and even coal, because the pace of clean-energy deployments is moving too slowly to [Read more]