Hello from The National and welcome to the Energy This Week newsletter, our expert analysis on oil and gas, renewables and clean energy.

Record global energy investments but oil spending slips

• Oil prices enjoyed a good week, gaining $2.57 per barrel, and jumping more than a dollar on Friday. They were aided by the latest oscillation to optimism on a US-China trade deal, and a decline in US inventories. US President Donald Trump said: “We have a deal with China. We were straightening out some of the points, having to do mostly with rare earth, magnets and some other things.” Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports have caused problems for manufacturers.
• Global energy investments will reach $3.3 trillion this year, up about 2 per cent in real terms to an all-time high, says the International Energy Agency. $2.2 trillion of this will go to low-carbon systems, such as nuclear and renewables, with solar becoming the largest single item at $450 billion. But upstream oil investments are set to slip by 6 per cent, the biggest drop since the price war year of 2016. The Middle East’s share of world upstream investment will hit a record 20 per cent, mostly because of spending on major gas developments in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.
• The US produced a record amount of energy last year, says Energy Information Administration: 103 quadrillion British thermal units, or enough to run the UAE 21 times over, led by natural gas with 38 per cent and oil with 27 per cent.

Turkey’s new energy tool

• Turkey has never had more than a dribble of domestic oil and gas production. New discoveries in the Kurdish-dominated south-east, and the Black Sea, are changing that. They boost the Turkish economy, and give Ankara new geopolitical tools.
• Since the fall of Bashar Al Assad, Syria has received a flow of major new investment commitments, the largest being $7 billion from a Qatari-Turkish consortium to build four gas-fired power stations and one solar farm.
• Adnoc showcased its AI tool MEERAi to Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, as he chaired a meeting of its executive committee.
• Adnoc Gas has awarded $5 billion worth of contracts for its key Rich Gas Development project. Winners included UK-based Wood and Petrofac and Dubai-based Kent, for work on the Habshan, Asab and Buhasa fields. The project will increase extraction of valuable liquid hydrocarbons from natural gas.

Trump-Musk fight hits Tesla

• Electric car-maker Tesla is suffering from the feud between chief executive Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump. The company’s shares dropped more than 14 per cent on Thursday, dropping its valuation below $1 trillion. The budget bill going through Congress, lambasted by Mr Musk, would eliminate the tax credit for buying electric vehicles. Tesla is “being eaten alive in Europe and Asia by Chinese competition, and Elon Musk’s irritating involvement in politics”, says Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.
• UAE steelmakers hope to avoid the worst impact of the US’s doubling of tariffs on the metal. Emirates Steel’s exports to the US are just 2 per cent of its total sales, says chief commercial officer Michael Rion. The UAE is the second-largest aluminium exporter to the US, but stands far behind the leader Canada.
• Abu Dhabi’s International Resources Holding has agreed to buy 56 per cent of Alphamin, a Canadian-listed tin producer operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for $367 million. Tin is an underappreciated but crucial metal for electronics.

Britain all-in on the atom

• The UK has decided to bet big on nuclear power: energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced £14.2 billion ($19.2 billion) for the Sizewell C nuclear plant, a series of small modular nuclear reactors to be delivered by British firm Rolls-Royce, and £2.5 billion for research into fusion.
• The International Air Transport Association is worried that its 2050 net-zero carbon data is at risk from tardy progress on sustainable aviation fuels. It thinks net-zero will cost $174 billion annually by 2050. Governments are not supporting SAF enough, sustainable fuel is expensive, plane-makers are lagging on delivering more fuel-efficient models, and the airline industry is not sufficiently co-ordinated with its fuel suppliers.

Hot oceans awash with plastic

• UAE President Sheikh Mohamed marked World Environment Day by promoting a sustainable vision and committing to “drive meaningful climate action”. “Our strongest communities are those that recognise their dependence on, and responsibility to, the natural world,” wrote Razan Al Mubarak, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in The National.
• World Environment Day’s theme for this year is #BeatPlasticPollution. Hotels in Abu Dhabi are recycling soap for disadvantaged people. The UAE’s ban on single-use plastic bags has taken more than 360 million out of circulation, and is part of safeguarding turtles. Microplastics are one of the worst threats to the health of global waters, turning up everywhere from rivers and oceans to drinking water and the air. Synthetic fabrics and car tyres are the biggest offenders.
• The North Atlantic experienced a severe heatwave in 2023. Now, scientists think they know what caused it: unusually weak winds, preventing cooler deep waters from emerging, and a lack of clouds because of lower sulphur pollution from ships, in combination with climate change.
• The UAE’s Minister of Climate Change and the Environment, Dr Amna Al Dahak, warns: “From the impacts of climate change, evidenced by coral bleaching and rising sea levels, to the pressures of unsustainable fishing practices, the health of our oceans is at risk”. And famed naturalist David Attenborough, fresh from his new documentary Ocean at the age of 99, remains hopeful: “Wherever we have given the ocean time and space, it has recovered faster and on a greater scale than we dared to imagine possible.”
• The first sighting of the whitespotted grouper in the waters of Abu Dhabi is a “major biodiversity milestone”, possibly indicating an improved habitat.