The Asian Development Bank is on a spending spree in Central Asia, authorizing billions in support for states in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin. The bank’s primary aim appears to be stimulating the development of the Middle Corridor trade route. On March 2, the ADB announced up to $5.4 billion in financing covering the next four years for Kazakhstan following a meeting between the bank’s president, Masato Kanda, and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The commitment is designed to support Tokayev’s modernization program…

JP Morgan has warned that Iran’s oil production could be slashed in half and oil exports could virtually stall if U.S.-Israeli seize Iran's Kharg Island, worsening the ongoing global oil shock. Located in the Persian Gulf, the continental island is the "backbone" of Iran's oil infrastructure, handling approximately 90% of its crude exports.  The island collects oil transported via pipeline from Iran’s largest producing fields, including Marun, Ahvaz and Gachsaran. Iran--OPEC’s third-largest producer--pumps about 3.3 million…

JP Morgan has warned that Iran’s oil production could be slashed in half and oil exports could virtually stall if U.S.-Israeli seize Iran's Kharg Island, worsening the ongoing global oil shock. Located in the Persian Gulf, the continental island is the "backbone" of Iran's oil infrastructure, handling approximately 90% of its crude exports.  The island collects oil transported via pipeline from Iran’s largest producing fields, including Marun, Ahvaz and Gachsaran. Iran--OPEC’s third-largest producer--pumps about 3.3 million…

When oil hit $55 per barrel in late 2025, the drilling and completions side of the industry surrendered. A few months later, war breaks out in Iran, and WTI climbs past $100. That’s a marker at which meaningful drilling should occur. Yet, that’s not what I’m hearing. Rising oil prices are all over the press and inside politics, but they’re not in the conversations I’m having with E&Ps and the service side. On Day Nine of “Epic Fury,” I was talking with a chemical supplier (I am the owner of a frac company…

Record volumes of nearly 40 million barrels of sanctioned Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan crude are idling in floating storage on tankers near China, according to Kpler data cited by Bloomberg on Monday.   The crude volumes in floating storage, with more than three-quarters of the tankers laden with Iranian oil, have jumped by 17% compared to the week before the Middle East war started.   The proximity to China and the willingness of Chinese refiners, especially the private crude processors, to buy sanctioned crude could ease…

Record volumes of nearly 40 million barrels of sanctioned Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan crude are idling in floating storage on tankers near China, according to Kpler data cited by Bloomberg on Monday.   The crude volumes in floating storage, with more than three-quarters of the tankers laden with Iranian oil, have jumped by 17% compared to the week before the Middle East war started.   The proximity to China and the willingness of Chinese refiners, especially the private crude processors, to buy sanctioned crude could ease…

Oil prices are soaring as the Middle East war chokes crude supplies, but fuel price premiums over crude are climbing even faster as the de facto closed Strait of Hormuz forces refiners in Asia to consider slashing processing rates and limiting exports. The product market came under more severe stress than the crude markets as the war dislocated oil and fuel supplies and sent jet and diesel premiums over Brent to astronomical highs. Nowhere has the stress been more severe than in jet fuel cracks and prices, signaling acute price pain for airlines…

The last time the oil industry chased a frontier like this, it changed the map of global energy. In 1968, a wildcat well on Alaska’s North Slope unlocked Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field ever discovered in the United States. In 2015, Exxon drilled a well offshore Guyana that opened the Stabroek Block, now estimated to hold more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Both discoveries started the same way: a small group of geologists drilling a well in a place most of the industry had already written off. A company called Greenland Energy…

Tankers carrying jet fuel and diesel have sharply diverted toward Asia and away from their initial destinations in the west as the world’s most important oil-consuming region is grappling with a supply crunch amid halted traffic at the Strait of Hormuz.   At least five vessels with diesel and jet fuel cargoes originating from the Gulf and India have made a U-turn near Africa’s southeast coasts and are now signaling their destinations are in Asia, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed on Monday.  In recent…

Iran marked the first hours after the naming of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader by launching missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states, who have begun expressing increasing anger over Tehran’s retaliatory strikes. "Iran fires first wave of missiles under the leadership of Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei toward occupied territories," Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said on Telegram early on March 9. The post carried a photo showing a projectile with the words: "At Your Command, Sayyid Mojtaba." The broadcaster said there were…

Saudi Aramco has begun reducing oil production at two of its fields as the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz starts to choke off crude exports across the Gulf, according to sources cited by Reuters on Monday. The move comes just hours before the Saudi oil giant is due to report its 2025 earnings on Tuesday, placing the focus squarely on whether the world’s largest oil exporter can keep crude moving during the escalating U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. It was not immediately clear which oilfields were affected or how much production had been…

The Middle East war and the resulting production halt at the world’s second-largest LNG exporter, Qatar, are erasing the projected glut of the fuel that was expected before the region was set on fire, according to Morgan Stanley.  Qatar’s state energy firm QatarEnergy last week halted LNG production at its Ras Laffan hub, the world’s largest LNG complex, and later issued force majeure notices to buyers, following a drone attack at the facility and the all but halted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.   …

1m ago 9:56pm CST Israel Launches New Strikes in Iran and Lebanon Israel has launched a new wave of strikes against targets in Iran and Lebanon as the conflict continues to escalate. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it began “an additional wave of strikes” targeting infrastructure linked to the Iranian regime in central Iran. Israeli officials said the strikes are part of ongoing operations aimed at Iranian military and command infrastructure. In Beirut, the IDF said it also struck infrastructure belonging to the Iran-backed militant…

Oil prices surged in early Asian trading on Monday, breaking above $100 per barrel for the first time in nearly four years as the Iran conflict escalated and Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader. At the time of writing, WTI crude was trading at $108.66, up $17.76 or 19.54%, while Brent crude was at $108.69, up $16.00 or 17.26%. The rally follows a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel over the weekend, with attacks on energy infrastructure and military targets across the region heightening…

Oil prices surged in early Asian trading on Monday, breaking above $100 per barrel for the first time in nearly four years as the Iran conflict escalated and Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader. At the time of writing, WTI crude was trading at $108.66, up $17.76 or 19.54%, while Brent crude was at $108.69, up $16.00 or 17.26%. The rally follows a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel over the weekend, with attacks on energy infrastructure and military targets across the region heightening…

Oil prices surged in early Asian trading on Monday, breaking above $100 per barrel for the first time in nearly four years as the Iran conflict escalated and Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader. At the time of writing, WTI crude was trading at $108.66, up $17.76 or 19.54%, while Brent crude was at $108.69, up $16.00 or 17.26%. The rally follows a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel over the weekend, with attacks on energy infrastructure and military targets across the region heightening…

Back in September 2025, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA), a landmark pact elevating their security cooperation to a formal alliance. The agreement dictates that an attack on one nation is considered an attack on both, potentially extending Pakistan's nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia and strengthening joint military intervention. The pact alters the regional security architecture, particularly affecting Iran, India, and Israel, while potentially signaling a shift in Saudi reliance away from the U.S.…

The European Union’s gas in storage levels are below 30%, benchmark gas prices are the highest in over a year, and QatarEnergy just shut down the world’s single biggest LNG production facility. The situation looks like a recipe for disaster, and the chances of a painless solution are slim. EU’s benchmark natural gas price has gained as much as 60% since the United States and Israel started bombing Iran on Saturday, and while some of these gains were erased this week, significant upside potential remains. Not only has QatarEnergy…

Solar power is on a meteoric rise around the world. Over the next five years, solar photovoltaics will account for an astonishing 80 percent of new renewable power additions, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. And that will amount to a whole lot of added capacity on a global scale. Despite a pivot away from clean energy in some policy spheres, renewables have simply become too cheap to fail, and installations are expected to more than double by 2030. A huge amount of the world’s installed solar pv growth has been…

Rural electric cooperatives may be next in line for meaningful disruption from lower-cost, renewable power generation technologies such as wind and solar.  The co-operative movement, a creation of FDR's New Deal, has survived the past ninety six years with a simple mandate: provide low-cost, reliable electricity in under-served rural areas. From a business perspective rural electrification always seemed like a terrible idea. The electric utility has to spend prodigiously on poles and wires for a sparsely populated area with a few customers…