The Houthis confirmed a ballistic missile hit on Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia's biggest refining complex. Brent jumped 1.62 per cent to $115.70 on the session. European gas hit fresh 2022 highs the same day, so the pressure spread well beyond crude.

Ras Tanura handles a huge share of Saudi export throughput, so physical damage there tightens refined product supply fast. US inventories were already falling before this strike, and reports of US military preparations tied to Iran mean the spare capacity that kept prices in check is getting eaten from multiple directions.

Gulf-exposed energy names are taking the most direct hit right now, but European utilities look just as squeezed given the gas move. Are you watching upstream oil producers or European gas utilities more closely as this develops?

I was just listening to the Volts episode on Denmark from 16 Oct. david roberts put it to Kristian Jensen (CEO of Green Power Denmark) that the country has about 70 GW of requests to connect to a grid with roughly a 7 GW peak. Jensen's answer was basically: that's not real demand.

His explanation is the familiar one. data centre developers are "throwing darts at a board", applying at three or four locations when they only want one, plus batteries hoping to get on. he thinks something like 20 to 25 GW in ten years is the realistic target, which is still a huge increase.

He also made a point I found more interesting.. some existing data centres already have a big connection they barely use, his example was a 1 GW connection running about 200 MW. so there's headroom sitting inside contracts that are already signed.

Env consultant here, and this is the bit that bugs me from the planning side. a queue is a count of applications, not a load forecast. if a network plan or a cumulative impact assessment takes the queue as an input, it inherits every duplicate, and you end up sizing substations, lines and land take for load that never shows up. and going the other way, nobody's counting the unused capacity in existing connections.

the numbers I'd actually want are what share of requests ever reach energisation, and requested vs actually used capacity on existing connections. as far as I can tell neither gets published routinely, in Denmark or elsewhere.

For people who do grid planning or interconnection work: what do you actually use instead of the raw queue? historical attrition rates, deposits/milestones, something else?

sources:
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-up-with-denmark

To Europeans "gas prices" are important to them like "gas prices" are to Americans. They mean something different with the word "gas".

They are up 212% year on year to the highest level since the last crisis in late 2022. They are higher than the peak of winter of 2022/2023 but substantially lower than the summer/autumn peak of 2022.

My country (the UK) has responded to this with an energy support package announced today which benefits frugal households but penalises high gas consumption households.

Data center power demand is forecast to grow 175% by 2030. What happens to the buildings and land?

IOUs are unsustainable. People cannot afford this profiteering madness.

The states analysis reveals a more accurate but still conservative estimate of a 150% increase.

Investor returns should never come before essential life services.