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Octopus boss Greg Jackson has called on Andy Burnham to deliver “urgent reform” to the energy market to protect households from “volatile” gas prices. Jackson, founder of the UK’s biggest household electricity supplier, said: “The government’s decision to take VAT off electricity and remove some of the levies from bills has helped soften the blow this winter, but bills are still too high. “Britain remains far too exposed to volatile global gas prices. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have created an unprecedented…
U.S. refineries have been running at full speed for months to make up for lost fuel supply from the Middle East. Fuel exports from the United States have been breaking records. This may be about to change, and not because of the war. It is oil sands maintenance season in Canada. In September, Canadian crude oil production may drop by 300,000 barrels daily due to maintenance activities in the oil sands, Rystad Energy said this week, as quoted by Bloomberg. Usually, whenever such a seasonal disruption occurs, it gets offset with crude from storage.…
The fertilizer crisis is usually framed as a natural gas problem. When gas prices rise, ammonia costs rise, fertilizer plants reduce production, and farmers become exposed to a global commodity chain they cannot control. That diagnosis is correct but incomplete. Across Europe, thousands of anaerobic digesters are already producing a methane-rich gas close to the farms and food industries that consume fertilizer. Most sites burn it in a combined heat and power unit, upgrade it to biomethane, or flare a small surplus. Very few ask a more disruptive…
Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex and Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras are joining efforts and expertise to drill prospects in Mexican waters in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to unlock huge oil resources from source rock formations that are miles deeper and eight times older than the currently producing formations in the U.S. Gulf. Exploration in the Jurassic formations deep under the Mexican Gulf seabed in the Campeche Bay carries high risks, but the reward in case of a discovery could be enormous, geologists and analysts tell Bloomberg.…
Order a heavy-duty gas turbine from GE Vernova today and it won’t arrive until 2031. That’s the company’s actual production schedule, confirmed on its July 22 earnings call, and it’s the fact sitting underneath every AI data center power plan announced in the last two years. It comes up far less often than the announcements do. Goldman Sachs put hard numbers on the demand side in May. U.S. data center power demand climbs from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 41 GW this year and 66 GW in 2027. Year-over-year capacity additions accelerate…
Countries around the globe are racing to become the world’s first geologic hydrogen hotspot. A few years ago, the United States Department of Energy released a bombshell report that estimated that there are trillions of metric tons of natural hydrogen deposits sitting in underground pockets around the world – and that a considerable amount of that could be extracted for industrial use. Energy companies around the world have been eagerly exploring for the most ideal locations to put that theory to the test – and they’re zeroing…
Solar power is far and away the world’s fastest-growing form of energy production, beating out every other form of energy on Earth in 2025. Despite a recent political pivot away from renewable energies in the world’s largest economy, solar power additions continue to shatter its own records year over year as the sector has long since outgrown any need for subsidies. Solar power has simply become too cheap to fail. “We have a plentiful and cheap source of electricity that can be built quickly, almost anywhere in the world,”…
Oilfield services giant SLB is preparing to reactivate as many as 15 drilling rigs in Venezuela, potentially removing one of the biggest obstacles to increasing the country’s crude production. SLB and energy-focused private equity firm Formentera Partners are working on separate efforts to increase Venezuela’s drilling capacity, executives said at an industry conference in Houston on Wednesday. Formentera is discussing importing rigs with international service companies, while SLB is focused on equipment already inside Venezuela. SLB…
AI is changing energy systems, but data centers are only a small part of the impact. Much has been written and said about how the data center and AI boom are consuming and will consume increasingly higher shares of global electricity demand, and grids are struggling to meet soaring demand. Fossil Fuel Gains Could Outweigh Emissions Cuts from Renewables Arguably, a fundamental change in the energy system may not come from surging power demand, but from the efficiencies and productivity gains AI will help energy companies achieve, according to a…
The proposed Libya–Egypt crude oil pipeline has, surprisingly quickly, entered a phase in which Cairo and Tripoli are actively discussing it. The pipeline, expected to be 800 kilometers long, will connect Tobruk in eastern Libya to Egypt’s port of Alexandria, allowing Libyan crude to flow directly into Egypt's Mediterranean refining system. With an expected cost of over $1 billion, it represents a significant strategic opportunity. However, neither the final capacity, financing structure, nor investment decision has yet been agreed.…
With less than three full months left until the start of heating season in much of Europe, the issue of gas inventories is becoming increasingly pressing. Current inventory levels are at the lowest in 17 years, and supply available for purchase is tighter than it was back in 2022. Yet Europe needs to start buying gas now—or risk shortages. The energy import dependence of most of Europe has been in the spotlight for the past four years. The sanction barrage against Russia led the European Union—and Germany specifically, as Russia’s…
The Trump administration is pushing for a homegrown nuclear power renaissance. The United States is still the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world, but that won’t last long without drastic changes in energy policy and investment at the state and federal level. The United States’ nuclear energy fleet, while sizable, is aging out, with far more plants being decommissioned than coming online. Moreover, the country is heavily dependent on foreign imports of nuclear fuel, presenting another major challenge for Trump’s goal…
Big Tech companies are quietly moving farther and farther away from their decarbonization goals. Back in 2019, Amazon pledged to become carbon neutral by 2040, thereby setting a goalpost ten years ahead of the Paris climate agreement in a show of dedication to becoming a leader in decarbonization. The next year, in 2020, Google and Microsoft upped the ante when each pledged to become carbon-free by 2030. Now, just six years later, those companies are heading in the opposite direction, seeing their emissions balloon by double-digit increments thanks…
China has driven the world’s solar energy deployment, adding capacity at such a blistering rate that the nation’s existing and planned wind and solar generation nearly doubles the rest of the world put together. However, China’s deployment of supportive infrastructure for all that new solar has not kept pace, leading to curtailment during peak hours and increased quantities of wasted clean energy. But Beijing is working hard to fix that problem, and a brand new, state-of-the-art thermal solar farm may provide a critical solution.…
For decades, the joke was that nuclear fusion was and would always be 30 years away. But a rapid string of breakthroughs over the last five years, catalyzed by privatization and the pressure as well as the support of the AI boom, has changed the calculus and suddenly brought the technology onto a real and achievable timeline. Nuclear fusion is treated as a ‘holy grail’ of clean energy because, if harnessed in a commercially viable and scalable way, it could provide limitless energy production with zero greenhouse gas emissions and negligible…
The Middle East conflict and the heightened threats to shipping in the Red Sea have prompted China to boost the use of the Arctic to move containers from the Chinese east coast to Europe. The fast-melting Arctic ice offers an alternative shipping route in the summer as the Houthi threats to shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait make cargo operators more cautious in transiting the key chokepoints in the Middle East. Shipping through the Arctic is not something new, but this time around – driven by melting ice caps and more dangerous…
With over 90% of Iraq’s annual budget still coming from oil exports and historically around 95% of that crude shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, securing an alternative export route while the Strait remains effectively blockaded has become an existential matter for Baghdad. Aside from the billions lost in immediate oil revenues for OPEC’s second-largest oil producer, the blockade meant Iraq’s domestic oil storage tanks filled quickly to maximum capacity, forcing the shutdown of several production wells. The longer that…
U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing another suspension of the Jones Act as gasoline prices above $4 a gallon threaten to become a liability for Republicans heading into the midterm elections. The move would again open domestic oil and fuel shipments to cheaper foreign-flagged vessels, extending an emergency waiver Trump imposed after the Iran war sent crude prices sharply higher in March. The problem is that the first waiver barely moved gasoline prices. Shipping costs account for only a small part of what Americans pay at the pump, leaving…
Southeast Asia has been hit harder than anywhere else on Earth by the energy crisis stemming from the War in Iran, leaving many nations scrambling to shore up localized energy supply chains. The newfound volatility in global energy markets has catalyzed the clean energy transition worldwide, but particularly in cash-strapped, import-dependent nations, of which there are many in Southeast Asia. But the rapidly developing region’s ageing and overburdened grids are ill prepared for a quick build-out of indigenous renewable energy capacity, threatening…
Global energy grids are under unprecedented stress as energy flows become more complex with the addition of intermittent energy sources and the artificial intelligence boom drives demand to new heights. Managing variable inflows and outflows of electricity while also keeping up with data center hyperscalers will require expanding and enhancing the grid at an unprecedented scale. “Modernizing the grid to make it ‘smarter’ and more resilient through the use of cutting-edge technologies, equipment, and controls that communicate and…
Intense summer heat waves are threatening energy security across Europe. The continent is facing a scorching and arid summer, causing electricity demand for air conditioning to skyrocket at the same time that rivers warm up and dry out with devastating consequences for the nuclear energy industry and for hydropower reserves. Last month, France had to reduce output and shut down nuclear reactors at a record pace without sufficient and safe water supplies to cool its reactors. And now, this week, Hungary had to shut down the Paks nuclear power plant…
Venezuela’s oil production is growing at a crucial time, with conflict in the Middle East disrupting traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, thereby crimping global petroleum supply. Since the U.S. captured President Nicolas Maduro in a daring night raid in early January 2026, Venezuela’s petroleum output has soared to multiyear highs. Recent regulatory reforms, the easing of U.S. sanctions and greater foreign investment are all key to reviving Venezuela’s struggling petroleum sector and increasing oil output in what was once South America’s…
Lithium has become a hot-button geopolitical issue as the critical mineral has become omnipresent and all-important in the tech and energy sectors. Chances are very good that you have more than one device powered by a lithium-ion battery within arm’s reach at this very moment, and chances are equally as good that that battery was made in China. At present, China has a near-chokehold on global lithium supplies and refining capacity, granting Beijing significant geopolitical leverage. Moreover, as the world continues its trajectory toward a…
China is winning the race for global clean energy dominance. Beijing has outspent every other country on Earth for years now, and controls critical global clean energy supply chains. Over the same time period, the United States has taken a major step back from clean energy objectives under the Trump administration, giving Beijing even more leverage. But while China’s ascension to global energy superpower status may seem like a foregone conclusion against this backdrop, the United States may have a unique opportunity to even the playing field…
