Azerbaijan is working hard to coax Turkmenistan out of its shell and integrate Ashgabat into trans-Caspian trade routes. Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev exchanged a variety of trade-related agreements with Turkmenistan’s titular head of state, Serdar Berdymukhamedov, during a June 22 ceremony in Baku. A joint statement issued after the ceremony highlighted an agreement to streamline “technical specifications” concerning the movement of goods and vehicles between the two countries, and another to harmonize “customs statistics…

Construction has begun on the Western world’s first grid-scale Small Modular Reactor (SMR), though small is not what comes to mind, considering that the machine will fit on two soccer fields. According to AutoNotion, a 953-tonne slab of steel and concrete was lowered into a 35-meter shaft at Ontario’s Darlington New Nuclear Project site, “ending a decade of talk” about the new nuclear technology and ushering in a period of action. The slab is the base mat of the first BWRX-300 modular plant designed by GE Vernova —…

Russia should require its oil companies to refine at least 30% of their crude domestically to ease the fuel supply crunch, according to Igor Sechin, chief executive of Russia’s state-controlled firm Rosneft, which is the biggest oil producer in the country. Sechin sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of May, outlining potential measures to alleviate the fuel crisis, Russian daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday. In the letter, Sechin proposes firms to process at least 30% of their crude oil production, as well as…

With hyperscalers set to spend roughly $800 billion on data-center capex this year alone, alongside reshoring and broader grid electrification, baseload power demand is poised to surge. We have made the case that intermittent solar and wind are no match for the scale and reliability requirements of the modern economy, and that nuclear power is emerging as the clean, always-on power source needed to power the AI era. The Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday morning that the Trump administration plans to supercharge the deployment of nuclear power…

The Moscow Oil Refinery is highly unlikely to resume production before 2027 after suffering extensive structural damage from multiple strikes by Ukraine’s long-range drones, dealing a further blow to a country grappling with severe fuel shortages, Reuters reports. Operated by Gazprom Neft, the facility in southeast Moscow is likely to remain offline for at least six months due to the severity of the damage it sustained after being struck twice within a single week in mid-June. According to industry sources cited by Reuters, the strikes compromised…

The Moscow Oil Refinery is highly unlikely to resume production before 2027 after suffering extensive structural damage from multiple strikes by Ukraine’s long-range drones, dealing a further blow to a country grappling with severe fuel shortages, Reuters reports. Operated by Gazprom Neft, the facility in southeast Moscow is likely to remain offline for at least six months due to the severity of the damage it sustained after being struck twice within a single week in mid-June. According to industry sources cited by Reuters, the strikes compromised…

The Moscow Oil Refinery is highly unlikely to resume production before 2027 after suffering extensive structural damage from multiple strikes by Ukraine’s long-range drones, dealing a further blow to a country grappling with severe fuel shortages, Reuters reports. Operated by Gazprom Neft, the facility in southeast Moscow is likely to remain offline for at least six months due to the severity of the damage it sustained after being struck twice within a single week in mid-June. According to industry sources cited by Reuters, the strikes compromised…

The Moscow Oil Refinery is highly unlikely to resume production before 2027 after suffering extensive structural damage from multiple strikes by Ukraine’s long-range drones, dealing a further blow to a country grappling with severe fuel shortages, Reuters reports. Operated by Gazprom Neft, the facility in southeast Moscow is likely to remain offline for at least six months due to the severity of the damage it sustained after being struck twice within a single week in mid-June. According to industry sources cited by Reuters, the strikes compromised…

Crude oil inventories in the United States decreased by 6.1 million barrels during the week ending June 19, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The decrease brings commercial stockpiles to 412.1 million barrels, according to government data, which is now 7% below the five-year average for this time of year. The EIA’s data release follows API’s figures that were released a day earlier, which reported that crude oil inventories saw a draw of 765,000 barrels in the period.…

UK’s slower-than-expected electrification exposes households to fossil fuel price shocks, the country’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) said on Wednesday, urging faster electrification and removal of policy costs to lower the energy bills. While the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) has accelerated and the latest renewable energy auctions awarded record new capacity, progress in heat pump installations has slowed, the independent panel said in its annual report. The CCC’s annual assessment warned that “households are facing…

UK’s slower-than-expected electrification exposes households to fossil fuel price shocks, the country’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) said on Wednesday, urging faster electrification and removal of policy costs to lower the energy bills. While the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) has accelerated and the latest renewable energy auctions awarded record new capacity, progress in heat pump installations has slowed, the independent panel said in its annual report. The CCC’s annual assessment warned that “households are facing…

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Abu Dhabi on June 23, opening a high-stakes Gulf tour aimed at reassuring Washington’s closest Arab allies after a fragile cease-fire framework between the United States and Iran raised fresh questions over regional security and Tehran’s future ambitions. Rubio landed at Al Bateen Executive Airport before meetings with leaders in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain over the next two days, as Gulf capitals weigh the implications of a US-brokered de-escalation deal with Tehran. The…

The euro has sunk to a one-year low, with easing of tensions between the United States and Iran helping to cool oil prices and raise expectations that the European Central Bank will turn more dovish. The euro was quoted at $1.135 against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday, down from $1.165 before the U.S. and Iran first agreed to a conditional ceasefire on 8th April. A provisional peace agreement to restore oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz has dramatically cooled global energy markets, with Brent crude for August delivery trading at $74.76 per…

The euro has sunk to a one-year low, with easing of tensions between the United States and Iran helping to cool oil prices and raise expectations that the European Central Bank will turn more dovish. The euro was quoted at $1.135 against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday, down from $1.165 before the U.S. and Iran first agreed to a conditional ceasefire on 8th April. A provisional peace agreement to restore oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz has dramatically cooled global energy markets, with Brent crude for August delivery trading at $74.76 per…

Oil tanker rates have soared since the U.S. and Iran announced the memorandum of understanding as oil importers scramble to charter vessels to pick up Persian Gulf cargoes in the hope these can transit the tentatively reopening Strait of Hormuz.  One tanker has been provisionally booked to ship crude from the Persian Gulf to India at a rate that’s nine times the benchmark for the route, shipbrokers told Bloomberg on Wednesday.   South Korea’s Sinokor shipping group, which before the war went on a buying and chartering…

The biggest investment opportunity of the AI era has very little to do with software or chips. The market has already priced both. The real story is power: who owns it, where it sits and how cheaply it can be delivered to AI workloads at scale. A small data center company that almost no one on Wall Street has heard of just answered all three of those questions in front of the entire industry. In May 2026, Bitzero Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:AIBZ) signed a binding letter for a 15-year lease with OneQode for the entire 110 megawatts at its Namsskogan,…

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the stranding of more than 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in the Persian Gulf was a wake-up call for import-dependent countries to expand their capacity to hold strategic and commercial reserves. Many countries, especially in the Asia Pacific, are looking to build new reserve capacity to boost their energy security and never again be caught off-guard by a massive supply disruption like the one triggered by the closure of the most important oil and LNG chokepoint. From India to Australia, energy…

The U.S. federal government will reduce costs for oil and gas drillers by slashing red tape for the industry, aiming to tempt drillers to expand on federal lands. In a news release this week, the Interior Department said it would revise the Bureau of Land Management’s rule for federal land leasing for oil and gas drilling as well as the BLM’s waste prevention rule, by essentially loosening both to reduce the cost burden on energy companies. Under the revised rules, the cleanup cost of an abandoned well will fall from $500,000 to as…

The United States is still the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world – but probably not for long. Decades of political ambivalence have left the domestic nuclear sector in a state of neglect. Far more reactors are aging out than being constructed, and the country’s few attempts at building new nuclear fission reactors have been controversial, expensive, and slow to get off the ground. After Georgia’s Plant Vogtle finally came online years late and billions over budget in 2024, zero new reactors have since come under…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 765,000 barrels in the week ending June 19. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by 8.33 million barrels. Although commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR have been falling rapidly for the last 2+ months, shedding 53 million barrels over the last ten weeks, US crude inventories are only down 2.1 million barrels so far this year, according to API data, kept in check by draws from the SPR. Slowing the inventory bleeding…