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The global energy crisis could be fomenting a massive surge of clean energy tech adoption and innovation as countries around the world scramble to replace the fossil fuel imports they typically depend on. Thanks to the lengthy closure of the Strait of Hormuz – Tehran's response to the United States' and Israel's attack on Iran – the cost of oil and gas has skyrocketed in global markets as competition heats up over increasingly scarce supplies. This market shock is providing fresh incentive for a rapid clean energy transition, as home-grown…
Saddam Hussein’s favorite movie was reportedly “The Godfather.” A central theme in the story is the attempts of Michael Corleone, the godfather, to turn the Corleone Family into a legitimate business. Many of today’s leaders of Iraq’s Iran-aligned militias (and their families) were persecuted by Saddam’s security services and could not enjoy the luxury of foreign films, but they would understand Michael’s dilemma. The “founding charter” of Iraq’s militias is arguably Coalition Provisional…
Pakistan has been at the center of media coverage of the Middle East war as the country that took up the initiative to moderate peace talks. It also happens to be the country arguably most hurt by the war without being directly involved in the hostilities. Pakistan is a big importer of liquefied natural gas from Qatar. With QatarEnergy suspending production following Iranian strikes on its LNG infrastructure, Pakistan has been in a race with many others to secure deliveries from alternative sources. Yet Pakistan is among the poorest nations in…
The oil market is heading into unknown spaces. To paraphrase Starship Enterprise, “Oil markets ('Space' the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. As we can now see, there is a moment in every crisis when the language of markets, which is normally based on price discovery, marginal barrels, and supply-demand balance, quietly but dangerously stops making sense. For the oil…
China is on track to import record-high volumes of ethane from the United States this month as Chinese and other Asian petrochemicals producers rush to secure replacement feedstock amid plunging naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supply from the Middle East. China is expected to import as many as 800,000 tons of U.S. ethane in April, which would be a record high for any month and about 60% higher compared than the usual monthly imports of the feedstock from the United States, per estimates from Chinese consultancy JLC cited by Bloomberg.…
