RIYADH: Oil prices eased on Thursday after weak US job openings data signaled cooling economic conditions which may hit demand. Brent crude fell 51 cents, or 0.60 percent, to $84.48 a barrel at 12.00 PM Saudi time, while West Texas Intermediate US crude dipped by 57 cents, or 0.71 percent to $80.04. Prices jumped by more than 6 percent on Monday after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia, collectively known as OPEC+, pledged voluntary production cuts. Investors join activists to press TotalEnergies on climate targets A group of investors with $1.1 trillion in assets under management has joined climate activist group Follow This in asking TotalEnergies shareholders to push for more ambitious targets on emissions cuts. The resolution filed for the company’s May 26 annual general meeting follows others that Follow This has filed for coming shareholder meetings at rival energy majors BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell. “To achieve the goal of (the) Paris (climate deal), the world has to almost halve emissions by 2030, but TotalEnergies has no plan to drive down emissions this decade,” Follow This founder Mark van Baal said. “These climate resolutions at Big Oil will show which investors are serious about resolving the climate crisis and which prefer to just talk about it.” The investor group co-filing the latest resolution represents 1.5 percent of TotalEnergies’ shares. Follow This wants the companies to commit to absolute emissions cuts by 2030, rather than intensity-based targets, including Scope 3 emissions from the combustion of the fuels they sell. TotalEnergies has said its emissions will not register a big reduction by 2030 in absolute terms. Shell sees stronger LNG volumes in Q1 Shell expects higher liquefied natural gas output in the first quarter after outages at its Australian plants last year as well as stable earnings from LNG trading, it said on Thursday. Shell, which recorded a record $40 billion profit last year, said in an update ahead of results due on May 4 that it expected first-quarter liquefaction volumes of 7 to 7.4 million tons, up from 6.8 million tons in the previous quarter. Its oil products division also likely boosted earnings through a “significantly higher” trading performance, the world’s biggest fuel retailer said. It expects to have paid between $2.6 and $3.4 billion in tax for the first quarter, down from $4.4 billion. Its renewables unit is set to contribute $100 to $700 million to adjusted earnings, compared with $300 million in the last quarter of 2022. Colombia’s oil output up 2.29 percent in February Colombia’s crude oil production in February rose 2.29 percent versus the same month a year earlier, the government said on Wednesday. Oil output was up to an average of 757,339 barrels per day in February, compared with production of 740,358 bpd in the same month in 2022, the Ministry of Mines and Energy said in a statement. Natural gas output in February was 1.08 billion cubic feet per day, the ministry said, up a very slight 0.22 percent from the year before. The ministry had not previously released January figures, but said in the statement that oil production in that month was 773,565 bpd, while gas output was 1.02 billion cubic feet per day. (With input from Reuters)