Italian gas distributor Italgas plans to invest nearly $15 billion by 2032 as it accelerates the use of AI in increasingly smarter and flexible networks, Europe’s largest natural gas distributor said on Tuesday. Total planned investments under the company’s Strategic Plan 2026-2032 unveiled today will be 13 billion euros, or $14.8 billion, through 2032. This would be a 14.6% increase compared to the previous strategic plan. A total of $9.5 billion (8.3 billion euros) is earmarked for the development, digitization, and repurposing of…

US-Iran talks and a 60-day sanctions waiver have eased supply fears, but traders remain cautious on the outlook for Iranian oil exports. From War Shock to Weather Shock: Super El Niño Threatens Fresh Commodity Chaos - Record high sea temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are paving the way for an unprecedentedly severe ‘Super’ El Niño, with equatorial temperatures currently 1.7C above the 30-year average. - This summer would witness the largest temperature deviation from the historical average for the month of June since 1981.…

Russia is considering a full ban on diesel exports as authorities scramble to stabilize the domestic fuel market amid refinery disruptions, rising prices, and supply shortages linked to Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Tuesday that the government is weighing a complete prohibition on diesel exports alongside other measures to support domestic fuel supplies. Speaking at a government meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, Novak acknowledged that the situation in Russia's fuel market was…

Russia is considering a full ban on diesel exports as authorities scramble to stabilize the domestic fuel market amid refinery disruptions, rising prices, and supply shortages linked to Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Tuesday that the government is weighing a complete prohibition on diesel exports alongside other measures to support domestic fuel supplies. Speaking at a government meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, Novak acknowledged that the situation in Russia's fuel market was…

In 2024, China announced export controls on antimony.      It’s a metal most people have never heard of, but antimony goes into more than 200 types of military munitions. Within weeks, the price went from $1,400 per ton to $38,000 — a 2,600% spike — and shipments to the United States fell 97%. Today, Beijing is setting up for something bigger. And REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) — a U.S.-based mine-to-magnet rare earth company — has spent years getting ready for it.  The company holds an exclusive 80% offtake…

A growing number of oil tankers have been broadcasting their position and intention to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in recent hours, in a sign that a tentative recovery of traffic through the chokepoint is underway. Before the U.S. and Iran signed the memorandum of understanding to negotiate a peace deal, most tankers were moving through and around the Strait of Hormuz in the so-called dark mode, with transponders and AIS positioning switched off. Once the hallmark of Iran’s sanction-evading tactics, dark mode has become mainstream in…

A growing number of oil tankers have been broadcasting their position and intention to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in recent hours, in a sign that a tentative recovery of traffic through the chokepoint is underway. Before the U.S. and Iran signed the memorandum of understanding to negotiate a peace deal, most tankers were moving through and around the Strait of Hormuz in the so-called dark mode, with transponders and AIS positioning switched off. Once the hallmark of Iran’s sanction-evading tactics, dark mode has become mainstream in…

Iran and the United States cited progress in talks toward reaching a final peace deal, though comments from both sides highlighted the fragile state of negotiations. Hours after US Vice President JD Vance left Switzerland on June 22 after a round of talks over the weekend that he said made "good progress," President Donald Trump issued a warning to Tehran that "I will do what I have to do" if it does not stick to its agreement with Washington. "If Iran ‌doesn't live up to their agreement, or if they're not behaving, I will do ‌what I…

further accelerate through 2030 as utility-scale projects lead growth, the SolarPower Europe association said in a new report on Tuesday. Last year, the European battery storage market saw 36 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of new installations, up by 48% from 2024, when growth had slowed. Installations rebounded strongly in 2025, and are set to continue accelerating. This year, annual installations are expected to top 50 GWh, SolarPower Europe said. The annual pace of new additions is then projected to jump to as much as 138 GWh in 2030, which would be a…

Despite higher prices, India is set to import the biggest ever volumes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from the United States in June as it seeks to replace still-constrained supply from the Middle East. India is estimated to receive between 1.1 million and 1.2 million tons of America’s LPG this month, Indian refining sources told Reuters on Tuesday. These would be a record high, and nearly double the 648,300 tons of LPG from the U.S. imported in May, as per Kpler data cited by Reuters. India’s LPG imports from the United Arab Emirates…

Electric vehicle sales, increasingly featuring Chinese vehicles, led an overall increase in car sales in Europe last month, with gasoline and diesel cars booking declines amid higher prices at the pump. Car registrations, as reported by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, gained 3.6% in May, with the sales increase over the first five months of the year at 4.5%, Reuters reported. Earlier figures, released by E-Mobility and New Automotive, showed a strong, 34% annual increase in European sales of electric vehicles for May.…

The UK will have sufficient electricity supply this winter despite the Strait of Hormuz crisis, NESO, the country’s grid operator, said today. “While we will continue to monitor global energy markets, households and businesses can be confident that electricity supplies remain secure,” NESO’s head of whole energy system resilience, Deborah Petterson, said in a statement, as quoted by Reuters. The UK has, in recent years, become increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas as several successive governments prioritized a…

Crude oil prices extended their decline today, with Brent crude sliding to $77.51 per barrel at the time of writing, and West Texas Intermediate at $73.62 per barrel, on reports that the United States and Iran were making progress in their peace talks. The latest updates from the negotiations table include a report that the United States will waive sanctions on Iran’s oil industry for the 60-day duration of the cessation of hostilities agreed earlier this month. The two parties also agreed on a mechanism to end fighting between Israel and…

Back in 2017, we did the math to figure out how much oil it takes to mine a single Bitcoin. The answer then was about 20 barrels of oil equivalent per coin. Today it's closer to 500. The Bitcoin network now draws somewhere between 138 and 175 terawatt-hours a year, depending on whose model you trust…  Split across the roughly 164,000 coins minted annually since the last halving, that lands at around 500 barrels of oil equivalent at today’s prices per Bitcoin, and past 600 on the higher estimates.  But Bitcoin is the warm-up…

Oil prices have continued to whipsaw since the U.S. and Iran announced last week signed a deal to make a deal as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is anything but straight and not expected to normalize within days. Contradictory messaging from Iran and the United States on the navigability of the chokepoint have intensified during the weekend amid a difficult start to the (delayed) talks in Switzerland. Shippers and insurers, who were already very cautious about returning to the Persian Gulf and its key trade lane, are wary of an operating environment…

Back in 2020, the electric vehicle sector witnessed a major evolutionary change after leading EV makers started using cobalt-free batteries at scale. Back then, Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) officially shifted to Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) for its standard-range vehicles while its leading Chinese rival, BYD Company (OTCPK:BYDDF), introduced its famous "Blade" batteries, triggering mass adoption of LFP batteries for electric vehicles by other automakers. LFP batteries have helped EV manufacturers to lower production costs, eliminate reliance on expensive…

Threats from President Trump to bomb Iran again and Iranian negotiators leaving the talks in Switzerland once again clouded the outlook for one of the world’s busiest oil chokepoints. Talks are progressing, but the degree of uncertainty about global oil supply security remains high—because of the risk environment in the strait, of which most appear to be oblivious. Social media users have started calling Hormuz the Strait of Schrodinger, and with good reason. It is not only about whether the passage of vessels is unobstructed by Iranian…

For the past few years, hydrogen has suffered from a credibility problem. Not because the technology itself stopped making sense, but because expectations ran too far ahead of reality. Governments announced hydrogen strategies worth hundreds of billions of euros. Companies unveiled ambitious projects stretching from Portugal to Poland. Analysts forecast a future hydrogen economy that would decarbonize everything from steel and chemicals to shipping and aviation. Then came the inevitable correction. Costs remained higher than expected. Financing…

As the City of London Corporation marks the fifth instalment of the Net Zero Delivery Summit this week, I reflect on the world we were in back in 2022. Only four years ago businesses and communities were recovering from Covid, war had returned to the European continent with the invasion of Ukraine, and surging fuel and food prices were driving global inflation to historic levels. Since then, global instability has only deepened, with conflict in the Middle East and tariff wars disrupting global trade.  We have to face a difficult truth that…

Billions of dollars in investments are flowing into Greece’s energy sector as the country tries to establish itself as a vital energy transit hub for Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe as the European Union prepares to completely phase out Russian gas imports by 2027. According to To Vima Finance, over €23 billion (~$26.3B) from major international investment funds and high-profile global entities including BlackRock, Capital, Covalis, QIA and K Group has poured into Greece's energy sector over the past one month alone as they…