Trafigura Group and several other traders delivered more than 20,000 tons of copper into LME warehouses on Tuesday, the biggest one-day build in on-warrant stock since April, and the squeeze that had gripped the London market for the past week came apart. The cash-to-three-month spread settled at a $248-a-ton backwardation, down from as much as $545 on Monday, which was the widest since 2021. Trafigura was behind a large share of the metal placed on warrant, according to people familiar with the deliveries, and traders expect more to follow in…

Kyrgyzstan has provided some clarity on the source of the recent blackout that impacted four states in Central Asia, while vigorously denying blame for the cascading outage.  Power outages were first reported in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek during the afternoon of August 14 before spreading to southern Kazakhstan and portions of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry initially attributed the disruption, which lasted several hours, to a “sudden change in the power flow” of the regional grid.  Confusion…

The world’s largest battery-electric aircraft has completed its first flight using just $5 worth of electricity, with Heart Aerospace’s 25,000-pound X1 demonstrator flying for 27 minutes and putting a megawatt-scale electric propulsion system through its first airborne test. Heart Aerospace’s X1 demonstrator flew for 27 minutes from Plattsburgh International Airport in New York, climbing to 1,100 feet, with its electric propulsion system delivering more than one megawatt of power. The aircraft weighs more than 25,000 pounds at…

The world’s largest battery-electric aircraft has completed its first flight using just $5 worth of electricity, with Heart Aerospace’s 25,000-pound X1 demonstrator flying for 27 minutes and putting a megawatt-scale electric propulsion system through its first airborne test. Heart Aerospace’s X1 demonstrator flew for 27 minutes from Plattsburgh International Airport in New York, climbing to 1,100 feet, with its electric propulsion system delivering more than one megawatt of power. The aircraft weighs more than 25,000 pounds at…

Romania spent more than 2 million euros this month detonating rocks and sinking barges in the Danube, trying to shove enough water toward the Cernavoda nuclear plant to keep its reactors cool. It didn’t work.  On Aug. 13, Nuclearelectrica began a controlled shutdown of the plant’s second reactor, the first time drought has taken Cernavoda fully offline since 2003. That is about a fifth of Romania’s electricity. Dacia and Ford idled their Romanian factories to free up power for everyone else. Europe’s drought has its…

Saudi Aramco will supply full contractual crude volumes to at least three European refiners in September, offering deliveries from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and through ship-to-ship transfers off Malta as the war disrupts the kingdom’s normal export routes, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday via The Edge Malaysia. Two European refiners will take their barrels from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, while a third can choose between Sidi Kerir, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu or a ship-to-ship transfer off Malta, Bloomberg reported…

Saudi Aramco will supply full contractual crude volumes to at least three European refiners in September, offering deliveries from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and through ship-to-ship transfers off Malta as the war disrupts the kingdom’s normal export routes, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday via The Edge Malaysia. Two European refiners will take their barrels from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, while a third can choose between Sidi Kerir, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu or a ship-to-ship transfer off Malta, Bloomberg reported…

Saudi Aramco will supply full contractual crude volumes to at least three European refiners in September, offering deliveries from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and through ship-to-ship transfers off Malta as the war disrupts the kingdom’s normal export routes, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday via The Edge Malaysia. Two European refiners will take their barrels from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, while a third can choose between Sidi Kerir, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu or a ship-to-ship transfer off Malta, Bloomberg reported…

Inflation has leaped up following the reset of the energy price cap, official data has revealed, marking the likely beginning of a long run of increases in price growth.  The Office for National Statistics (ONS) put the consumer price index inflation reading at 2.9 per cent for the 12 months to July. The previous inflation reading was 2.6 per cent. Services inflation, a measure closely watched by Bank of England policymakers given it provides signals on wage pressures, eased to 3.4 per cent while core inflation, which strips out food and energy,…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is halting all trade, financial, and commercial ties with Iran until further notice, after saying Tehran had fired ballistic missiles targeting its territory. Late on Tuesday, the UAE’s Defense Ministry said that “assessments revealed the two ballistic missiles detected, originating from Iran, were targeting maritime navigation and fell into the sea.” A few hours earlier, the ministry had announced that the UAE’s air defense systems detected two ballistic missiles launched from Iran towards…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is halting all trade, financial, and commercial ties with Iran until further notice, after saying Tehran had fired ballistic missiles targeting its territory. Late on Tuesday, the UAE’s Defense Ministry said that “assessments revealed the two ballistic missiles detected, originating from Iran, were targeting maritime navigation and fell into the sea.” A few hours earlier, the ministry had announced that the UAE’s air defense systems detected two ballistic missiles launched from Iran towards…

Crude oil inventories in the United States saw a massive increase of 4.4 million barrels during the week ending August 14, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The increase brings commercial stockpiles to 428.8 million barrels, according to government data, which is now right about at 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 328,000 barrels…

Ukraine hit a refinery in Russia’s Bashkortostan region overnight in a drone attack that sparked a fire, as Kyiv continues to pound Russian energy infrastructure to reduce Russian fuel supply. One of the refineries in Ufa, in the Bashkortostan republic, caught fire as a result of the attack, the region’s governor Radiy Khabirov said on Wednesday. Ufa and the area around it host three refineries, all owned and operated by Bashneft, a unit of Russia’s biggest oil company Rosneft. The Ukrainian attack overnight caused “a small…

Ukraine hit a refinery in Russia’s Bashkortostan region overnight in a drone attack that sparked a fire, as Kyiv continues to pound Russian energy infrastructure to reduce Russian fuel supply. One of the refineries in Ufa, in the Bashkortostan republic, caught fire as a result of the attack, the region’s governor Radiy Khabirov said on Wednesday. Ufa and the area around it host three refineries, all owned and operated by Bashneft, a unit of Russia’s biggest oil company Rosneft. The Ukrainian attack overnight caused “a small…

Ukraine hit a refinery in Russia’s Bashkortostan region overnight in a drone attack that sparked a fire, as Kyiv continues to pound Russian energy infrastructure to reduce Russian fuel supply. One of the refineries in Ufa, in the Bashkortostan republic, caught fire as a result of the attack, the region’s governor Radiy Khabirov said on Wednesday. Ufa and the area around it host three refineries, all owned and operated by Bashneft, a unit of Russia’s biggest oil company Rosneft. The Ukrainian attack overnight caused “a small…

A popular former defense minister whose dismissal last month sparked protests has delivered a videotaped address to Ukrainians in which he assailed wartime corruption, warned of a systemic crisis of governance, and said the country must find a way to hold elections despite the continuing Russian invasion. Mykhaylo Fedorov's remarks late on August 18 came hours after lawmakers said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who abruptly pushed him out in mid-July, has asked parliament to confirm acting Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara in the role. A vote is expected…

UK household energy bills are set to further rise from October by 4% to their highest level since the summer of 2023, as the Iran war has tightened global gas supply and made gas restocking in Europe more difficult and expensive, Cornwall Insight said on Wednesday. The energy consultancy expects Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem to raise the price cap that energy providers can charge by 4% from October, with household bills rising to their highest level since July 2023 on a unit-for-unit basis. The UK has a so-called Energy Price Cap in place,…

The Iran war has created an extraordinary earnings season for U.S. refiners. Brent crude has fallen to around $90 per barrel from a wartime peak of $126, but the shortage of refined fuels has only deepened. According to Reuters, Global refinery throughput in July was nearly 5 million barrels per day below year-earlier levels as Middle Eastern refineries remained constrained and Ukrainian attacks pushed Russian processing close to a 20-year low. U.S. refiners have stepped into the gap, running at or near record utilization rates and exporting more…

There have been perhaps a handful of events since the end of the Second World War that have fundamentally reshaped the world’s oil markets and consequently its geopolitics while remaining largely unnoticed at the time. The quiet agreement between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud struck on 14 February 1945 that would define the energy, economic, political and military relationship between the two countries until the rise of American shale in the early 2010s is one, as analysed in my latest…

Palantir chairman and hedge fund owner Peter Thiel bought a 1% stake in one of the biggest companies operating in the Vaca Muerta shale formation in Argentina in the latest evidence of the play’s prospects as the world’s second-largest shale oil and gas deposit amid a global crunch. Thiel bought the stake in Vista in the form of American depositary shares worth $76 million, according to a security filing cited by Reuters. The purchase came four months after a meeting between the venture capitalist and Argentina’s president, Javier…