I know nothing about oil and gas trading, but, and call me a cynic, I do notice who's benefiting from this: the same big banks pushing for the end of fossil fuels "to save the earth"

Trust us, we’re doing this for your own good

Energy trade risks collapsing in a “Lehman Brothers moment”.

Aside from fanning inflation, the biggest energy crisis in decades is sucking up capital to guarantee trades amid wild price swings. That’s pushing European Union officials to intervene to prevent energy markets from stalling, while governments across the region are stepping in to backstop struggling utilities. Finland has warned of a “Lehman Brothers” moment, with power companies facing sudden cash shortages.

“Liquidity support is going to be needed,” Helge Haugane, Equinor’s senior vice president for gas and power, said in an interview. The issue is focused on derivatives trading, while the physical market is functioning, he said, adding that the energy company’s estimate for $1.5 trillion to prop up so-called paper trading is “conservative.”

Many companies are finding it increasingly difficult to manage margin calls, an exchange requirement for extra collateral to guarantee trading positions when prices rise. That’s forcing utilities to secure multi-billion euro credit lines, while rising interest rates add to costs.

“This is just capital that is dead and tied up in margin calls,” Haugane said in an interview at the Gastech conference in Milan. “If the companies need to put up that much money, that means liquidity in the market dries up and this is not good for this part of the gas markets.”

And here’s the money quote, literally:

In the future, market participants would probably lean toward large credit-worthy players, he said.

Likewise, ]he liquidity crisis has largely spared the biggest trading houses, which are profiting from price volatility, while utilities bear most of the shocks, said Charif Souki, chairman of US LNG developer Tellurian Inc.

“I have not seen any of the major trading houses have a liquidity issue, they all managed to find lines of credits and bank facilities and they are all making more money than they have ever made,” Souki said in an interview at Gastech. “For the utilities in Europe, it is a serious issue because they are buying gas that is now all of the sudden is extremely expensive, and they are regulated by their respective governments.”

Our saviors

Today … BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, in his highly-anticipated annual letter, announced a sweeping new set of policies which aim to put climate change and sustainability at the center of BlackRock’s business model. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with almost $7 trillion in assets under management.

In response to today’s announcement Diana Best, Senior Strategist for the Sunrise Project which is a core partner of the BlackRock’s Big Problem campaign, said: “BlackRock’s new initiatives match the size of the crisis we’re seeing in 2020 and are the direct result of an outpouring of pressure from the global climate movement. BlackRock beginning its shift of capital out of fossil fuels, including today’s divestment of coal in its actively managed funds, is a fantastic start and instantly raises the bar for competitors such as Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors. We will be looking for additional leadership from the company in, as Larry Fink put it, ‘fundamentally reshaping finance to deal with climate change,’ including additional shifts of capital out of fossil fuels.”