Commodity producing and trading giant Glencore expects to post a profit of $3.3 billion in its marketing division for the first half of the year, as extreme market volatility during the Iran war generated windfall earnings for the energy commodity traders. Glencore expects to report next week a strong half-year marketing adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of about $3.3 billion in its Marketing segment, which includes oil trading, the company said on Wednesday in its half-year production report. The trading giant didn't specify how…

Rio Tinto and Glencore have posted near-record updates thanks to this year’s sky-high commodity prices and the uncertainty wrought by the Middle East conflict. Mining juggernaut Rio Tinto notched a 43 per cent jump in profit over the first six months of the year, pointing to persistently elevated metals prices and the ambitious efficiency programme it launched in 2025. Glencore – the world’s largest miner that also boasts an enormous commodity trading arm – said its trading division made $2.9bn (£2.4bn) between January…

Indian Oil Corp. is seeking 50% ownership stakes in very large gas carriers, a first for an Indian refiner, as the company prepares to transport higher volumes of U.S. liquefied petroleum gas under India’s plan to source up to one-quarter of its LPG imports from the United States in 2027 and reduce its exposure to charter-market freight rates, the Business Standard reported on Wednesday. Indian Oil is accepting bids for ships with carrying capacity between 80,000 and 93,500 cubic meters. Eligible vessels must be no more than 12 years old.…

Indian Oil Corp. is seeking 50% ownership stakes in very large gas carriers, a first for an Indian refiner, as the company prepares to transport higher volumes of U.S. liquefied petroleum gas under India’s plan to source up to one-quarter of its LPG imports from the United States in 2027 and reduce its exposure to charter-market freight rates, the Business Standard reported on Wednesday. Indian Oil is accepting bids for ships with carrying capacity between 80,000 and 93,500 cubic meters. Eligible vessels must be no more than 12 years old.…

Crude oil inventories in the United States saw a decrease of 7.2 million barrels during the week ending July 24, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The decrease brings commercial stockpiles to 404.5 million barrels, according to government data, which are now 7% 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 reported that crude oil inventories had fallen by 3.296 million barrels in…

Taiwan has suspended approximately 500,000 metric tons of liquefied natural gas purchases from Papua New Guinea every six months, removing roughly $800 million of spot-market demand after Port Moresby ordered the closure of Taipei’s representative office. The decision leaves Taiwan’s long-term LNG supply contract untouched. Taipei will continue importing 1.2 million metric tons of PNG LNG annually through 2030, preserving a supply agreement that accounts for roughly one-third of Papua New Guinea’s LNG exports. Papua New Guinea…

Taiwan has suspended approximately 500,000 metric tons of liquefied natural gas purchases from Papua New Guinea every six months, removing roughly $800 million of spot-market demand after Port Moresby ordered the closure of Taipei’s representative office. The decision leaves Taiwan’s long-term LNG supply contract untouched. Taipei will continue importing 1.2 million metric tons of PNG LNG annually through 2030, preserving a supply agreement that accounts for roughly one-third of Papua New Guinea’s LNG exports. Papua New Guinea…

The US Senate delivered one of its strongest bipartisan endorsements of Ukraine since President Donald Trump returned to office, voting 86-12 on July 28 to advance sweeping legislation aimed at tightening economic pressure on Russia and Iran. The procedural vote, held just hours after the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the bill's chief architect, came immediately after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a personal appeal to senators behind closed doors before watching the vote from the Senate chamber. The legislation,…

Oil prices surged more than 7% on Wednesday as renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities and fresh threats to shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb pushed WTI above $84 and Brent toward $90, confronting the Federal Reserve with another inflation shock just hours before one of its most uncertain interest-rate decisions in years. The rally accelerated after President Donald Trump vaguely told Fox News that the United States would “hit Iran hard” following an attack on a U.S. base in Jordan, while Iran-backed Houthis weighed imposing fees on commercial…

Oil prices surged more than 7% on Wednesday as renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities and fresh threats to shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb pushed WTI above $84 and Brent toward $90, confronting the Federal Reserve with another inflation shock just hours before one of its most uncertain interest-rate decisions in years. The rally accelerated after President Donald Trump vaguely told Fox News that the United States would “hit Iran hard” following an attack on a U.S. base in Jordan, while Iran-backed Houthis weighed imposing fees on commercial…

Oil prices surged more than 7% on Wednesday as renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities and fresh threats to shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb pushed WTI above $84 and Brent toward $90, confronting the Federal Reserve with another inflation shock just hours before one of its most uncertain interest-rate decisions in years. The rally accelerated after President Donald Trump vaguely told Fox News that the United States would “hit Iran hard” following an attack on a U.S. base in Jordan, while Iran-backed Houthis weighed imposing fees on commercial…

As nuclear energy gains momentum amid energy security concerns and spiking power demand, global annual investment is seriously lagging the spending needed to reach the current capacity expansion goals, the nuclear industry's main body, the World Nuclear Association, said in a report on Wednesday. A major nuclear revival is underway in Europe and the United States amid efforts to boost clean energy and meet rising electricity demand from AI and data centers. Separately, China and India have huge plans to boost their nuclear power fleets in the coming…

Just recently, in a span of about six weeks, one impressive company was selected by the U.S. Army to build and operate rare earth processing facilities on an American military base…the first time the Army has ever done this. That same company closed $100 million in institutional financing, giving it a war chest of roughly $130 million. It was also formally added to the Russell 3000 Index. And it locked in MOU’s for feedstock agreements covering billions of tonnes of rare earth-bearing material from sources across Wyoming, Appalachia…

Oil price movements since the start of March this year have become the topic of dozens of discussions. Many have been puzzled by futures prices and why they haven’t gone through the roof given the severe disruption in Middle Eastern supply. It appears the reason is sheer optimism and a bet on market adaptability. However, there is a problem with that. Adaptability has limits. Many commentators like to compare the current oil price—and supply—situation to 2022, when Russia’s incursion into eastern Ukraine prompted an actual…

Modern power grids require a constant, real-time balance between supply and consumption. Unfortunately, the integration of wind and solar energy makes power grids unstable due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy generation. To prevent localized grid blackouts or harmful voltage spikes, utilities are increasingly pairing renewables with battery storage and/or rapid-response natural gas plants to smooth out fluctuating supply. However, Finland has now come up with a rather eccentric method to store excess renewable energy and release it…

Oil prices have just come off a fresh two-month high as the crude oil market has tumbled this week amid signals of de-escalation in the U.S.-Iran conflict. Despite the slump in crude prices and the extreme volatility in the past five months, the refined product market continues to tighten with refining margins at record highs because the supply of petroleum products is much tighter than crude supply. Refining margins held at record highs even as crude oil prices soared last week to $100 per barrel. That’s because global gasoline, diesel,…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States rose by 3.296 million barrels in the week ending July 24. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories grew by 2.603 million barrels. Commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR have lost just over 54 million barrels over the last fifteen weeks, with US crude inventories down just 3 million for the year, according to API data, kept in check by draws from the SPR. For the week ending July 24, another 3.7 million barrels left the SPR, bringing the…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States rose by 3.296 million barrels in the week ending July 24. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories grew by 2.603 million barrels. Commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR have lost just over 54 million barrels over the last fifteen weeks, with US crude inventories down just 3 million for the year, according to API data, kept in check by draws from the SPR. For the week ending July 24, another 3.7 million barrels left the SPR, bringing the…

Solar power is far and away the cheapest form of new energy to install in nearly every context around the world. Even in the United States, where the cost of solar additions has jumped up 18 percent since Trump’s tariffs took hold, solar remains the most affordable option for energy capacity expansion. It stands to reason that solar is therefore the fastest growing form of energy in the world, However, as the solar sector has gone gangbusters, profitability has been squeezed thanks to an increasingly competitive market. Developing more advanced…

President Donald Trump revealed on Monday that sales of Venezuela’s oil by his administration have generated more than $13 billion since the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, claiming that the revenue has effectively “paid for that war many times over”.  Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump was responding to a Financial Times’ report that came out a week ago that estimated that roughly $13 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue is held in frozen U.S. Treasury accounts as a black box…