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The world’s ongoing energy crisis is quickly turning into a global food security crisis. Ongoing conflict between some of the world’s most prominent economies on two major fronts – Russia’s war in Ukraine and the United States’ and Israel’s war in Iran – is creating geopolitical shockwaves through critical global trade routes and threatening some of humanity’s most essential commodities, from oil and gas to grain and fertilizer. A "multidirectional squeeze on world agriculture" is taking form,…
Inflation rates remain blistering high across the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’s most recent Consumer Price Index, released last week, revealed numbers that were higher than most projections, indicating long-term pain for consumers and a nightmare election cycle for Donald Trump. And the reason for all of it is huge and persistent volatility in global oil and gas markets. The October 14 Consumer Price Index showed that overall, prices for goods and services across the United States have risen 3.7 percent over the last…
The ghosts of Baghdad and Kabul should be enough to silence any talk of sending American troops into Iran. Yet here we are, more than seven months into a war that began on 28 February with U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and voices in Washington and Tel Aviv are again whispering that only boots on the ground can finish the job. Plans to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, or push inland to seize Iran’s enriched uranium have circulated since March. They are wrong. An invasion would be a…
The Hormuz crisis is not only hitting crude oil and gas, but also container shipping. It is also tightening its grip on global shipping through the fuel tanks of vessels carrying world trade. Disrupted exports, constrained refinery supplies, and increasingly unreliable deliveries are clearly at present pushing the bunker market into a dangerous position. Fuel remains available internationally, but securing the right grade at the right port within a commercially workable window is becoming harder. The consequences will be severe, especially for…
Despite the Iran war and the Hormuz crisis, the Middle East’s low-cost chemicals production is set to retain its long-term advantage over other regions. Near-term shifts in the sourcing of polymers are taking place due to the current constraints in the Persian Gulf’s industrial base, benefiting U.S. chemicals companies. But in the long run, the Middle East is likely to retain its buyers’ base because it still has the two levers to be competitive on the global market—an extensive production base and, most of all, low-cost…
Rystad Energy’s fifth edition of its flagship annual report, Global Energy Scenarios (GES) 2026, finds that global reliance on imported energy is projected to peak by 2034 as energy security concerns accelerate the shift towards electrification. Against the backdrop of two major energy crises in five years, the report highlights how a broader range of rapidly deployable technologies is helping the energy system withstand major disruptions to energy flows. It explores how energy import dependency could evolve under three possible future scenarios,…
The only commercial-scale uranium enrichment plant in the United States is now three-quarters of the way through its latest expansion, a milestone for the country's push to build out a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. Urenco USA said Oct. 8 that the sixth of eight new centrifuge cascades at its National Enrichment Facility in New Mexico has started production, with the seventh due later this year and the last in spring 2027. As the Trump administration works to reestablish the country as the global leader in nuclear energy, cutting reliance…
President Donald Trump has announced a massive new energy agreement with Taiwan, claiming the island will purchase between $70 billion and $80 billion worth of liquefied natural gas from Alaska over the next two decades, as Asian importers scramble to secure supplies beyond the increasingly dangerous Strait of Hormuz. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said Taiwan had committed to purchasing 30% of the planned Alaska LNG project's output for 20 years, alongside a $4.4 billion equity investment. The president described the arrangement as…
Permian producers spent much of this year paying buyers to haul away the natural gas that comes up with their oil. Waha Hub spot prices stayed below zero for a record 90 days in a row before turning positive on June 16, Reuters reported, and the hub had averaged minus $2.19 per million British thermal units for the year up to that point. Four of the five companies below still posted record results in the second quarter. Three of the five don’t drill at all, and one of the two that do works mostly in North Dakota, far from Waha. The U.S. Energy…
A new breakthrough in high-temperature heat pumps could provide a critical pathway toward relieving global reliance on fossil fuels in industrial contexts. A team of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Fraunhofer ISE) in Germany tested heat pumps at 320 degrees Fahrenheit and proved that they can produce hot water and steam, showing promise for replacing coal in hard-to-abate industrial sectors. “Data collected from the test rig could allow manufacturers to design heat pumps and heat exchangers for high temperatures,…
Nuclear energy stocks have suffered heavy losses over the past year, even as technology companies commit billions of dollars to securing nuclear electricity for AI data centers. The Global X Uranium ETF (URA) has lost more than 20% over the past 12 months, compared with gains exceeding 40% for the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE). Investors have grown increasingly concerned about valuations, financing requirements and the long development timelines for companies that don’t yet generate any meaningful commercial revenues. The market has…
Mexico is dependent on oil and gas imports for two-thirds of its energy consumption, despite the fact that the country has abundant domestic fossil fuel resources. But instead of exploiting its own producing power to the greatest potential, Mexico relies on its neighbor to the north for the majority of its energy needs, leaving it in a vulnerable position. However, the answer to Mexico’s energy insecurity is not building up more domestic oil and gas production and refining capacity, according to a recent assessment from the International…
The United States is producing more crude oil than ever. According to the Energy Information Administration, U.S. crude production is on track to average a record 13.8 million barrels per day in 2026, surpassing the previous record set last year. Yet diesel prices recently climbed to record highs, while distillate inventories remain unusually low. The EIA expects those inventories to stay below the five-year range through much of 2027, with stocks falling below 100 million barrels for the first time in more than two decades. At first glance,…
This year’s global energy crisis has revived international interest in hydrogen’s potential to replace fossil fuels in a wide range of industrial applications, from steelmaking to shipping. Green hydrogen is still massively expensive to produce, reducing its potential for commercial scaling, while gray and blue hydrogen relies on the same fossil fuels that many global markets are trying to move away from. But scientific breakthroughs are piling up to expand the hydrogen rainbow in ways that could sidestep these pitfalls and potentially…
Electrification has become the focus of global climate talks as COP31 draws closer. We already have the technologies to transition away from direct consumption of fossil fuels and toward electricity in our vehicles, homes, businesses, and industry – it is now just a matter of scaling those technologies and doing it at an unprecedented pace, supported by strong policy measures from global leadership. The central pledge that will be on the table at the upcoming 31st annual United Nations climate conference, to be hosted in Türkiye…
The global energy landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation as the age of electrification takes hold and the runway growth of artificial intelligence introduces new challenges and possibilities for energy production and use, as well as the ways that our power grids operate. As a result, an increasingly complex nexus is emerging at the intersection of digitalisation, artificial intelligence and grid flexibility that could be make-or-break for the future of energy security. The issue is not that we don’t have the technology to keep up…
Singapore is in an energy pickle. The island nation is still reeling from high oil and gas prices driven by the war in Iran, and is scrambling to build up alternative and indigenous energy sources. The problem is that there’s almost nowhere to build it. As the second-most densely populated country in the world (after Monaco), Singapore has an enormous need for energy and problematically scarce land parcels on which to develop it. Because of these parameters, Singapore needs to look toward the most energy-dense energy production options, leading…
China this week announced it will suspend all fuel exports this month to keep its domestic market supplied. Also this week, President Donald Trump demanded that Germany and France release 120 million barrels of diesel from their storage or get hit with a U.S. diesel export ban. Europe is running out of options to stay well supplied with a critical fuel. Diesel is the fuel, on which any economy runs. While it may feature less commonly in passenger cars these days, diesel is the default fuel for heavy machinery, agriculture, and freight transport.…
The green hydrogen hype has all but stalled out – but could white hydrogen take its place as the next big thing in decarbonization? Geologic hydrogen, so-called ‘white’ hydrogen, could potentially bypass the most critical barriers to scaling hydrogen use without significantly expanding the sector’s carbon footprint. While the technology is still nascent, it could one day decarbonize some of the world’s hardest-to-abate industrial sectors. This form of hydrogen involves sourcing naturally occurring hydrogen found…
President Donald Trump said Friday that South Korea’s investment agreement with the United States now includes $8.4 billion for an enhanced oil recovery project. Seoul says it agreed to no such thing. “The Republic of Korea Deal keeps getting BETTER! 8.4 Billion Dollars for an enhanced Oil Recovery Project. Producing more Oil and Gas means American Energy Dominance and Energy Security in the World for the Future!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is used to squeeze more production from aging fields after…
Venezuela’s oil exports fell nearly 9% in September to 1.08 million barrels per day as soaring tanker costs forced traders to demand steeper discounts and delayed cargoes leaving the country. Global trading houses, including Vitol and Trafigura, pressed PDVSA for better terms as freight costs chew into margins, and tanker reroutings added to shipping delays that had already accumulated over the summer. The United States took more Venezuelan crude despite the overall decline. Shipments rose to 629,000 bpd from 553,000 bpd in August. India…
The United States Department of Energy (DoE) is offering up $215 million in funding to help domestic firms develop the world’s first reliable quantum computer. The race to unlock quantum computing has heated up as the next-gen technology has arisen as a potential solution to the Pandora's box of energy demand that the AI boom has opened. The DoE’s Quantum Genesis Q Competition is now accepting proposals on ideas for how to “deploy quantum computers with at least 100 logical qubits that are capable of performing hundreds…
The U.S. federal government has come up with an alternative to a diesel fuel export ban that could alleviate the price pain at the pump by boosting the availability of a tax-free sort of diesel. That’s according to unnamed sources quoted by Reuters this week. It is unclear if the idea is a replacement for the ban or will complement it, should a ban be approved. The fuel in question is red-dyed diesel, which is used in agriculture and construction, among other industries. Also called off-road diesel, the fuel is literally dyed red to distinguish…
The fuel trading market is expanding from an established group of specialized desks at oil majors, commodity trading houses, and refiners to AI-assisted trades. AI could either make the sometimes opaque fuel trading a level playing field for many new entrants or break the market by overcrowding it in some trades, as Reuters columnist Clyde Russell notes in a recent commentary. The AI boom and the race to offer and receive “actionable insights” in seconds are equally tempting for the developers of the technology, the commodity analytics…
