The scale and speed at which solar power has exploded around the world is reshaping energy systems in transformative ways. As the price of solar energy has plummeted over the past decade, solar energy has become a no-brainer for energy capacity addition in contexts around the globe, and its accelerating growth trends show no sign of stopping. At this rate, the world could run on solar much sooner than previously imagined. As of 2024, solar energy provided 7 percent of the world’s electricity – a stunning two-fold increase in just two…

Russian officials have potentially opened a new revenue stream to help them generate profits from oil exports needed to keep their war effort going in Ukraine. And it runs through Georgia. Moscow is dealing with growing energy isolation and a wave of Ukrainian drone strikes that have crippled its oil infrastructure, reducing refining capacity by roughly 40 percent, according to a Washington Post report. Georgia is now providing a safe haven for Russian oil at a new refinery in Kulevi, situated on the shores of the Black Sea.  A tanker, the…

Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, told U.S. President Donald Trump at their meeting in Tokyo earlier this week that Japan would find it difficult to ban LNG imports from Russia, Japanese government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.  President Trump visited Japan earlier this week and held bilateral talks with Takaichi and other top Japanese officials. The two leaders praised a new “golden age of the ever-growing U.S.-Japan Alliance” and signed a framework agreement to support the mining and processing…

Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, told U.S. President Donald Trump at their meeting in Tokyo earlier this week that Japan would find it difficult to ban LNG imports from Russia, Japanese government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.  President Trump visited Japan earlier this week and held bilateral talks with Takaichi and other top Japanese officials. The two leaders praised a new “golden age of the ever-growing U.S.-Japan Alliance” and signed a framework agreement to support the mining and processing…

Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, told U.S. President Donald Trump at their meeting in Tokyo earlier this week that Japan would find it difficult to ban LNG imports from Russia, Japanese government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.  President Trump visited Japan earlier this week and held bilateral talks with Takaichi and other top Japanese officials. The two leaders praised a new “golden age of the ever-growing U.S.-Japan Alliance” and signed a framework agreement to support the mining and processing…

Crude oil inventories in the United States decreased by 6.9 million barrels during the week ending October 24, after losing 1 million barrels in the week prior, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The increase brings commercial stockpiles down to 416 million barrels according to government data, which is 6% 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 suggested that crude oil inventories…

India is weighing a bailout package for its indebted state-owned power distribution companies that could be worth more than $11.3 billion (1 trillion Indian rupees), according to a draft plan by the Indian Power Ministry seen by Reuters. Indian authorities plan to reorganize the state distribution companies which have been run inefficiently for years and which are a major drag on India’s power system.  The plan, expected to be announced in February, envisages private companies to meet at least 20% of the total power consumption in any…

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Donald Trump to press China to end its support for Russia in its war against Ukraine when the US President meets his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during a tour of Asia this week. In wide-ranging comments made to reporters that were released on October 28, the Ukrainian leader said he was ready to hold peace talks anywhere except for Russia and its ally Belarus, though Ukraine is not ready to cede territory. "It's absolutely clear that we're approaching diplomacy only from the position where we currently…

Copper prices hit a record-high on the London Metal Exchange on Wednesday amid a series of supply disruptions and brighter global economic prospects.  The benchmark three-month copper futures jumped to $11,146 per ton in London early on Wednesday, exceeding the previous record high of $11,104 a ton set in May last year.  This year, copper prices have rallied amid threats from the Trump Administration to impose tariffs on the industrial metal crucial for electrification and grid expansion. Trump backed off plans for a tariff, for now,…

India’s biggest refiner, state-held Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, is preparing to launch in early 2026 a trading joint venture with the world’s biggest independent oil trader, Vitol, to trade crude and fuels, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Wednesday.  Indian Oil, which together with its unit Chennai Petroleum holds about 31% of all of India’s refining capacity, had discussed a venture with supermajors BP and TotalEnergies and commodity trading giant Trafigura, before picking Vitol for the new trading JV, according…

India’s biggest refiner, state-held Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, is preparing to launch in early 2026 a trading joint venture with the world’s biggest independent oil trader, Vitol, to trade crude and fuels, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Wednesday.  Indian Oil, which together with its unit Chennai Petroleum holds about 31% of all of India’s refining capacity, had discussed a venture with supermajors BP and TotalEnergies and commodity trading giant Trafigura, before picking Vitol for the new trading JV, according…

Equinor (NYSE: EQNR) booked lower-than-expected earnings for the third quarter as liquids prices dropped from a year earlier. The Norwegian energy major on Wednesday reported an adjusted operating income of $6.21 billion for the third quarter of 2025, lower than the company-provided consensus of 21 analysts who had expected $6.31 billion, and below the $6.89 billion booked in the third quarter of 2024. Yet, the lower liquids prices were partially offset by higher production and higher gas prices in the U.S., Equinor said.   The Norwegian oil…

The OPEC+ group will decide this weekend on production levels for December, in the first meeting since the United States slapped sanctions on the two biggest oil firms in Russia, a key member of the OPEC+ alliance and its second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia.  The producer group led by the Kingdom and Russia has been managing supply to the market for nearly a decade, mostly by restricting oil output to ensure “market stability” in OPEC+ lingo; in other words, to support oil prices or at least put a floor under them. …

Shandong Yulong Petrochemical, China’s newest refinery, has swiftly become a potent emblem for the unintended effects of Western sanctions. Barely a year after its launch, the 400,000 b/d complex in Shandong province has purchased around 350,000 b/d of Russian crude for November delivery, effectively running almost entirely on discounted Russian oil after losing access to Western supplies following sanctions by the UK and EU. Its rise illustrates how punitive measures meant to isolate Moscow have instead bound together sanctioned Russian…

Liquefied natural gas has once again become trendy. After several years under attack from environmentalists, even the EU has accepted that natural gas, in whatever form it can get it, is going to stay in the energy mix for quite a while yet. The U.S. is building new export capacity like there is no tomorrow; Qatar is ramping up output; and Malaysia is boosting coal imports so it has more LNG to export. Over the first half of the year, Malaysia imported a record amount of thermal coal—the sort used for power generation. The total for the six-month…

US retail power prices have surged 13% since 2022, outpacing the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and driving higher costs for consumers. While many have pointed to rising demand from data centers as the culprit for the increase, Rystad Energy’s analysis shows that data centers have yet to significantly influence power prices in the current terms. Our research points to the full price impact of data centers emerging closer to 2030, driven by the completion of a wave of data center infrastructure and more centers coming online. Rystad predicts that…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States saw a large dip of 4 million barrels in the week ending October 24, when analysts had expected oil inventories to contract by a  smaller 2.9 million barrels. Crude oil inventories in the United States are so far showing a net loss of 6.4 million barrels for the year, according to Oilprice calculations of API data. Earlier this week, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States saw a large dip of 4 million barrels in the week ending October 24, when analysts had expected oil inventories to contract by a  smaller 2.9 million barrels. Crude oil inventories in the United States are so far showing a net loss of 6.4 million barrels for the year, according to Oilprice calculations of API data. Earlier this week, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have…

Back in 2009, British oil and gas giant BP along with its then-Chinese partner China National Petroleum Corporation secured a technical services contract with Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Company to develop Iraq’s largest oil field – Rumaila – in the first such foreign exploration on the country’s energy sector in 40 years. The company’s activation earlier this month of a US$25 billion five-pronged oil and gas megadeal in the same country may prove even more historic. The 2 October activation of the deal means…

Fossil fuel dependence has long been a geopolitical liability. The crises over Middle East embargoes, pipeline disruptions, and Russia’s weaponization of gas supply have repeatedly exposed how brittle energy systems built on oil and gas can be. By contrast, renewable energy offers a fundamentally different strategic logic: once deployed, solar and wind farms are far less exposed to conventional geopolitical disruption. They are not immune from supply chain risks, but as electricity systems mature, renewables provide a pathway out of fossil…