Energy Update

With crude prices falling a further 17% since the start of 2016, Platts editors gather to look at the big trends, themes and issues for the year ahead. They discuss whether the incredible change in the spread between the WTI and Dated Brent crude benchmarks has become the 'new normal'; how, amid unrelenting OPEC output and oversupplied markets, the expected fall in US crude shale oil production may be offset by the return of Iranian oil.

* Pakistan-Qatar seek to clinch bigger deal (Recasts, adds price detail, background)

Storage batteries that are being bought by owners of rooftop solar systems in Germany may eventually help cut the costs of renewing the country’s power grid, a study showed.

We’ve just completed a record-breaking year for renewable technology of all kinds. No matter where you look – be it on television or in newspapers, your neighbor’s roof or along a rural countryside – the presence of wind turbines, solar energy panels and energy storage systems is growing weekly.