What mattered this week

We’re really, seriously nearly out of oil. This is NOT funny.

Serious restrictions already in Pakistan. Shops shut at 9pm, government fuel cut in half, no officials going on foreign trips. One course only at weddings, which have to end at 10pm. Not a suggestion, an order. (Dawn)

And Europe? Saudi told Europeans they’ll get ZERO crude October 😱. Panic buying: 11% French filling stations are dry this weekend. (Bloomberg £; OilPrice)

Meaning? For six months oil has been about price. This week it turned into who actually gets the stuff.

Read more: Al-Monitor on why Asia, not Europe; The Week on the Mecca Pact

Plus Europe’s gas could be screwed this winter - we aren’t in a good place

EU ready? No. The tanks are 68% full - a normal September is 82%. (AGSI+). Big problem: Forward power prices for this winter are very, very high.

How come? Qatar’s big LNG plant is still down, Russia’s gone, didn’t fill enough earlier this year. Gas is €81 a megawatt-hour, about 2.5x last year’s price.

And the plan? has cut diesel tax, Germany’s promising help at €2.45 a litre, and Meloni wants the whole thing reclassified as a defence emergency so Italy can borrow more. Notice what nobody is doing: using less. (Euronews)

Read more: Columbia on the world’s winter buffer

US: Diesel crisis here, already running out

Diesel moves everything? Yes, and US diesel hit $6.31 a gallon this week, an all-time record. Up 80% since Christmas. Stocks below the five-year low until well into next year. And the Senate is now “open to” stopping exports. (The National)

Can’t refineries just make more? Diesel is a quarter of every barrel and you can’t bend a refinery that far. As Javier Blas puts it, “delivering diesel out of thin air is even more impossible”. (Bloomberg £)

Read more: Bloomberg on the diesel crunch (£)

One thing to worry about

Exxon’s latest report reckons emissions gonna keep rising to 2050. Their number: 30B tonnes/year . Last year they said 27. The level that keeps us under 2C is 11.

Coal, they say, is “sticking longer”. Oil in 2050: same as today. And they’ve quietly cut tcarbon-capture forecast by a third.

Their economist’s conclusion: this implies 2.5 to 3C. (EnergyNow; the Outlook)

Well at least Exxon’s still making money?

One thing to be optimistic about

Here’s the other side of the story.

Carbon Brief reckons global fossil emissions fall this year. Oil demand is down two and a half million barrels a day; in January it was forecast to grow. High prices work. (Carbon Brief)

Look at China. It bought three million fewer cars this year, and the ones it did buy were electric: petrol cars down 30%, two in every three sold in August plugged in. (CarNewsChina)

Meanwhile Texas, that work place, will get more electricity from solar than coal this year. First time ever. 👏 (EIA)

If you’ve got more time…

Every story this week is about who controls your energy.

Ember’s new report, The Age of Power (Kingsmill Bond and team 😇), is about how you take control bac:

• 97% of the world’s people live in a country whose own wind and sun could supply TEN times the electricity they use.

• The kit to capture store and control this has fallen 99% in cost.

“The race of the 21st century is the race to master the electron, and it is well under way.”

Given the above, this can’t happen fast enough.