RIYADH: Oil prices pulled back from a three-month high on Wednesday as industry data showed an increase in US crude inventories. Brent crude futures slipped 93 cents to $82.71 a barrel by 04:17 p.m. Saudi time, while US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $78.68, down 95 cents. Both fell by more than $1 earlier in the session. US crude stocks rose by about 1.32 million barrels in the week ended July 21, according to market sources citing American Petroleum Institute figures on Tuesday. Equinor profit down 57 percent in Q2 Equinor posted a 57 percent year-on-year decline in second-quarter core profit on Wednesday, while maintaining its dividend and share buyback levels. The Norwegian energy group’s adjusted earnings before interest and tax for April-June fell to $7.54 billion from $17.6 billion a year earlier. “Equinor delivered solid earnings in a quarter affected by turnarounds and energy prices down from the extraordinary levels last year,” CEO Anders Opedal said in a statement. Equinor maintained its plan to distribute $17 billion to shareholders this year in the form of $11 billion in dividend payments and $6 billion in share buybacks, he added. Equinor, Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas, is the continent’s first major energy group to report results for the second quarter of 2023. Oil and gas prices soared last year as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to supply disruptions but the cost of energy has since fallen as fears of shortages eased amid global economic headwinds. Majority state-owned Equinor’s operating profit was also down from $12 billion in the first quarter. Japan’s Sumitomo to study carbon capture project at gas field in UAE Japan’s Sumitomo on Tuesday said it and Sharjah National Oil Corp. will study a carbon capture and storage project at a mature gas field in the UAE. Energy-poor Japan is actively diversifying its economy away from fossil fuels and is promoting its green technology in the Gulf countries, as the region aims to turn from the world’s biggest oil producer into the global clean energy hub. The project would capture carbon dioxide from nearby power and industrial plants and other emitters in Sharjah and neighboring emirates and store it in SNOC’s on-shore gas field with capacity of over several hundred million tons of carbon dioxide, Sumitomo said in a statement. Sumitomo and SNOC would conduct a joint feasibility study of the potential project which could use Japanese technologies in carbon capture, transport and storage, the statement added. The company, however, did not provide financial details or timing of the possible project. “We believe there is big potential for CCS in the Middle East, as it is a key technology to materialize energy transition,” Hajjime Mori, managing director of Sumitomo Corp. Middle East, said in the statement. Greenpeace challenging UK’s new North Sea oil and gas licenses The UK’s decision to authorize new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea came under scrutiny at London’s High Court on Tuesday, as Greenpeace argued the government failed to assess emissions produced by burning extracted fuel. The environmental campaign group says Britain’s failure to assess the greenhouse gases produced by consuming oil and gas — so-called end-use or downstream emissions — renders its offshore energy plan unlawful. But lawyers representing the government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero say ministers were not required to assess end-use emissions, though they nonetheless considered them. Last year, the UK held its first oil and gas exploration licensing round since 2019, with a view to boosting domestic hydrocarbon output as Europe weans itself off Russian fuel. The government says domestic oil and gas production is key to its plan to improve energy security — and that doing so is consistent with its target of net zero by 2050. However, Greenpeace argues the government should have assessed downstream emissions because the whole point of the new licensing rounds is to provide a secure domestic energy supply by extracting and then consuming oil and gas. (With input from Reuters)