Light crude oil futures surged more than 8% this week, driven by aggressive short-covering and geopolitical risk after the U.S. slapped new sanctions on Russia’s top oil exporters. However, despite the sharp rally, underlying supply and macroeconomic concerns continue to cap the upside, keeping traders cautious about the sustainability of the move. The week began with crude trading near multi-month lows as sentiment remained firmly bearish. Concerns about oversupply, a deteriorating demand outlook, and a structurally bearish contango in the…

Last month, we reported that commodity analysts at Standard Chartered have been bucking the overwhelmingly bearish sentiment pervading Wall Street, maintaining a decidedly bullish outlook even as oil prices continue trending lower. StanChart has acknowledged that U.S. oil output has continued taking out all-time highs in the current year, with June production climbing by 133000 barrels per day to an all-time high of 13.58 million bpd. However, the analysts have been betting that U.S. producers will eventually be forced to curtail production due…

In December 2023, Angola stunned global energy markets by announcing it would leave OPEC after 16 years of membership. The decision followed months of tension over production quotas. Angola had been assigned a daily output cap of 1.1 million barrels of oil – far below what Luanda considered fair. At the time of its withdrawal, however, Angola’s production had already collapsed by almost 40% in 8 years, sliding from 1.7 million b/d to 1.1 million b/d. The decline owed less to OPEC than to geology and high government intake: mature fields…

The United States and Australia this week closed a deal to cooperate in the development of a local critical mineral supply. The deal, worth more than $3 billion, according to the White House, could open up access to resources worth $53 billion or more. Theoretically, but it’s a good start. Critical minerals first came to the fore as a hot issue during the Biden administration, which realized the U.S. was uncomfortably dependent on China for its supply, which was vital for advancing the energy transition agenda. Yet critical minerals are not…

Annual conventional discovered volumes once averaged more than 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per year in the early 2010s, but these have fallen to nearly one-third of that, with analysis by Rystad Energy showing global discoveries have averaged slightly over 8 billion boe annually since 2020 despite several standout frontier finds in Namibia, Suriname, and Guyana. Despairingly, the yearly average declines further to about 5.5 billion boe between 2023 and September this year. The contraction reflects a strategic change where the global…

The Trump administration has moved to reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, reversing one of President Biden’s signature environmental restrictions and cementing Alaska’s return to the energy map. The Interior Department said Thursday it will restore the full 1.5-million-acre Coastal Plain to leasing, along with reinstating previously canceled leases held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The decision marks the most aggressive push yet to expand exploration in Alaska’s…

The Trump administration has moved to reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, reversing one of President Biden’s signature environmental restrictions and cementing Alaska’s return to the energy map. The Interior Department said Thursday it will restore the full 1.5-million-acre Coastal Plain to leasing, along with reinstating previously canceled leases held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The decision marks the most aggressive push yet to expand exploration in Alaska’s…

Electric bills are up across the country. Residential electricity prices have risen roughly 25% since 2020, outpacing both inflation and wage growth. There are several culprits, but an explosion of power-hungry AI data centers and increasing exports of liquefied natural gas are near the top of the list. But while you can’t control these rate hikes, you can control how much power you use — and when you use it. Below are practical, real-world ways to bring those costs back down, drawn from my own experience in the energy industry and…

Crude tankers are once again firing on all cylinders, with freight rates surging across all segments as oil in transit reaches its highest level in more than five years. According to data from Vortexa, total crude and condensate in transit rose to 1.31 million barrels per day in mid-October, a level not seen since May 2020 during the pandemic-era floating storage boom. The surge is being driven less by traditional supply-and-demand dynamics and more by geopolitical disruptions, notably delivery delays of sanctioned oil cargoes bound for China and…

It appears that the Trump Administration can’t have it all. Soaring LNG exports to assert America’s energy dominance have intensified competition for U.S. natural gas supply, pushing domestic energy prices higher—the opposite of what President Trump promised during his election campaign at this time last year.     As more U.S. LNG export facilities come online or ramp up operations, demand for LNG exports is set to exceed U.S. residential gas demand for the first time ever, according to estimates by Reuters based…

Google has signed the first U.S. corporate power purchase agreement involving natural gas with carbon capture, marking a major shift in how Big Tech plans to fuel the data-hungry future of artificial intelligence. The deal centers on the Broadwing Project, a 400-megawatt gas-fired power plant planned for Decatur, Illinois, developed by privately held Low Carbon Infrastructure. The plant will capture and store about 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions in underground wells 5,000 to 7,000 feet deep. Power will flow to Google’s expanding network…

Google has signed the first U.S. corporate power purchase agreement involving natural gas with carbon capture, marking a major shift in how Big Tech plans to fuel the data-hungry future of artificial intelligence. The deal centers on the Broadwing Project, a 400-megawatt gas-fired power plant planned for Decatur, Illinois, developed by privately held Low Carbon Infrastructure. The plant will capture and store about 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions in underground wells 5,000 to 7,000 feet deep. Power will flow to Google’s expanding network…

Google has signed the first U.S. corporate power purchase agreement involving natural gas with carbon capture, marking a major shift in how Big Tech plans to fuel the data-hungry future of artificial intelligence. The deal centers on the Broadwing Project, a 400-megawatt gas-fired power plant planned for Decatur, Illinois, developed by privately held Low Carbon Infrastructure. The plant will capture and store about 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions in underground wells 5,000 to 7,000 feet deep. Power will flow to Google’s expanding network…

Previously, we reported that the Trump administration has lately been taking over Canada’s rare earths companies as Washington looks to counter Beijing’s dominance in the sector. To wit, Canadian rare earths developer, Trilogy Metals (NYSE:TMQ), more than tripled three weeks ago after the U.S. government purchased a 10% stake in the company with warrants to purchase an additional 7.5% stake. The Trump administration announced that it will reverse a ban on the construction of the Ambler Road project in Alaska by the Biden administration…

CenterPoint Energy (NYSE: CNP) beat the Street in Q3 on a very simple story: Houston’s industrial appetite for electrons is exploding, and regulators are letting the utility recoup what it spends to keep up. Adjusted EPS landed at $0.50 (vs. $0.44 est.), up more than 60% y/y on a non-GAAP basis. The drivers were textbook utility levers—about $0.07/share from growth and regulatory recovery and $0.12/share from leaner O&M—partly shaved by $0.04/share in higher interest expense. GAAP EPS was $0.45 on net income of $293 million.…

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are striving to reduce their digital dependence on Russia and tilt their economic attention a bit more to the West. The two countries are moving forward with a plan to lay a fiber-optic cable beneath the Caspian Sea to establish a connection with Azerbaijan. At present, virtually all Kazakhstan’s and Uzbekistan’s Internet traffic passes through Russian-controlled systems. Uzbekistan’s Internet connections to the outside world even must pass through Kazakhstan before reaching Russia, where the Kremlin…

Spain has rapidly transformed its energy industry to be a global leader in renewable deployment and to ease its reliance on foreign oil and gas imports. The sun-baked country now sources more than 40 percent of its electricity supply, with more to come. But while this transition has been a boon for the nation’s energy independence, climate goals, and cheap and abundant clean energy, the costs of clean energy production in Spain have become too cheap for their own good. Instead of serving as a green energy inspiration for the rest of the world,…

Algerian state energy firm Sonatrach resumed oil and gas exploration drilling in Libya in mid-October, Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Thursday, as several international majors have restarted work in Libya’s oil and gas basins.   Algeria’s Sonatrach is drilling an exploration well in the Ghadames basin close to the Libyan-Algerian border, according to an NOC statement carried by Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.  Sonatrach is back working at the site in the Ghadames basin, after quitting more than 10…

The U.S. sanctions on the top Russian oil firms are reverberating through markets with Russia’s main crude buyers as India’s Reliance Industries will stop importing crude under a long-term deal with the now-sanctioned Russian oil giant Rosneft, sources with direct knowledge of the plans told Reuters on Thursday.  Reliance, India’s top private refiner which operates the world’s biggest refinery complex at Jamnagar with 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of processing capacity, has a long-term deal with Rosneft to buy…

Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE: VLO) easily beat analyst forecasts of third-quarter earnings as refining margins surged by 44% from a year earlier, exceeding the average increase in U.S. refining margins.  Valero reported on Thursday an adjusted net income of $1.1 billion, or $3.66 per share, for the third quarter of 2025. This compares to $371 million, or $1.16 per share, in net income for the third quarter of 2024.  The $3.66 per share income easily beat the $3.05 consensus estimate for EPS in the Wall Street Journal.   The…