The U.S. Energy Information Administration is about to hand oil traders another thing to obsessively refresh between API inventory data drops and Strait of Hormuz headlines. Starting Wednesday, the EIA will publish a new quarterly report that tracks global strategic petroleum reserves and energy flows through major shipping choke points, including through the world’s most nerve-wracking stretch of water right now: the Strait of Hormuz. The additional data will add to the hyperfixation that currently exists in the oil market on the fallout…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is about to hand oil traders another thing to obsessively refresh between API inventory data drops and Strait of Hormuz headlines. Starting Wednesday, the EIA will publish a new quarterly report that tracks global strategic petroleum reserves and energy flows through major shipping choke points, including through the world’s most nerve-wracking stretch of water right now: the Strait of Hormuz. The additional data will add to the hyperfixation that currently exists in the oil market on the fallout…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is about to hand oil traders another thing to obsessively refresh between API inventory data drops and Strait of Hormuz headlines. Starting Wednesday, the EIA will publish a new quarterly report that tracks global strategic petroleum reserves and energy flows through major shipping choke points, including through the world’s most nerve-wracking stretch of water right now: the Strait of Hormuz. The additional data will add to the hyperfixation that currently exists in the oil market on the fallout…

Copper is defying the 'war discount' usually applied to industrial metals, nearing an all-time high on Monday as a brutal supply crunch proves more powerful than the threat of a global recession The three-month contract on the London Metal Exchange climbed as much as 0.5% to $13,643 a ton, its strongest intraday print since the January 29 spike that briefly carried prices above $14,500, according to Bloomberg. The rally extended across the LME complex. Aluminum jumped more than 2%, nickel added 1.9%, and the exchange's all-in price gauge closed…

Eni is looking to squeeze more cash out of LNG without giving up control of the business. Reuters reported Tuesday that the Italian energy major has hired Morgan Stanley to explore a potential deal involving its floating LNG assets, with infrastructure giants including Apollo, KKR, and Stonepeak reportedly approached in early-stage discussions. The structure under consideration would allow outside investors to inject capital into a vehicle tied to cash flows from Eni’s floating LNG operations. The deal could raise at least €1 billion…

Brent crude nears $110 as Trump warns the Iran ceasefire is on “life support,” while Gulf producers signal oil infrastructure repairs may stretch into 2027. China’s Oil Machine Hits the Brakes: Imports Sink, Margins Tank, Pressure Rises - With Gulf supply still stranded, China’s crude imports posted a hefty 2.4 million b/d month-over-month decline in April, averaging only 9.25 million b/d and marking the lowest pace of inflows since July 2022. - Apart from the obvious sourcing problems all Asian refiners face nowadays, Chinese…

The tiny impoverished South American country of Suriname has been battling for six years to launch a petroleum boom, which pundits believe will replicate neighboring Guyana’s oil rush. A combination of poor drilling results, high gas-to-oil ratio, and mismatched seismic data delayed the emergence of what could be South America’s last great offshore oil boom. Suriname’s favorable regulatory environment and low break-even prices, coupled with the recent price shock following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, will drive greater investment…

Spiking LNG prices and reduced supply from the Middle East have prompted Japan and South Korea to raise coal power generation and coal imports in recent weeks. Gas-fired power generation in Japan and South Korea, the world’s second- and third-largest LNG importers after China, slumped to multi-month lows in April and early May. That’s because supply from the Middle East crashed with no Qatari shipment passing through the Strait of Hormuz between February 28 and this past weekend, when the first cargo cleared the chokepoint bound for…

As the world grapples with the most serious oil and gas supply crunch in history, energy security has come front and center for every government on the planet. Some have touted electrification as a way of weathering the crisis and avoiding future ones. Realists, both in politics and industry, however, are focusing on what the oil and gas industry has been warning about for years: the need for more investment in exploration.  “Production and recovery represent the most immediate path to incremental barrels, and as customers continue to…

Qatar has requested LNG vessels near its Ras Laffan LNG port to switch off their transponders as part of safety measures at the key export port of the world’s second-largest LNG exporter before the war, anonymous sources with knowledge of the plan told Bloomberg on Tuesday.   The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped about 20% of daily global LNG flows, mostly those previously shipping out of Qatar and part of the UAE’s LNG flows.  In addition, Iranian drone and missile strikes on energy infrastructure…

Qatar has requested LNG vessels near its Ras Laffan LNG port to switch off their transponders as part of safety measures at the key export port of the world’s second-largest LNG exporter before the war, anonymous sources with knowledge of the plan told Bloomberg on Tuesday.   The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped about 20% of daily global LNG flows, mostly those previously shipping out of Qatar and part of the UAE’s LNG flows.  In addition, Iranian drone and missile strikes on energy infrastructure…

The latest exchange between Washington and Tehran over a proposed path toward de-escalation has raised new questions about what comes next in the growing crisis around the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump described Iran’s latest response to a US-backed proposal as “totally unacceptable,” even as both sides continue to signal interest in negotiations over sanctions relief, nuclear restrictions, and the future of shipping through the strategic waterway. Analysts in Washington say the standoff is increasingly testing assumptions…

Brazil more than doubled the volume of its oil exports to China, with export values also nearly doubling, in the first quarter of 2026 from a year earlier, as the Middle East conflict and the closed Strait of Hormuz are re-arranging global commodity flows.  The value of Brazil’s crude oil exports to China surged by 94.6% to $7.2 billion in the first quarter, per Brazilian government data compiled by the Brazil-China Business Council. The volume of oil exports, 16 million metric tons, was 122% higher compared to the first quarter of 2025,…

India may have to eventually reckon with how long its major state-owned fuel retailers could sustain losses amid soaring international prices and artificially lowered prices at home, according to Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. India’s oil marketing companies (OMCs) are selling gasoline and diesel below market prices, as the world’s third-largest crude importer looks to shield consumers in the world’s most populous country from soaring prices at the pump. Eventually, the authorities may have to assess how long these fuel retailers…

Roughly 40 years ago, the United States made a decision that seemed perfectly rational at the time: it stopped processing rare earths. The economics didn’t make sense when China could do it cheaper, so U.S. facilities closed…the expertise scattered…and an entire layer of industrial capability mostly disappeared from North American soil. REalloys (Nasdaq: ALOY) is the company now working to undo the four decades of neglect that have followed…and the reason it matters is that the expertise it holds may be the single hardest…

After a series of failed and costly attempts to revamp its aging refineries, Nigeria’s national oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), has signed a new agreement with Chinese firms to revive its moribund facilities. The NNPC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xinganchen (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd for the completion, operation and maintenance of the Port Harcourt (210,000 bpd) and Warri (125,000 bpd) refineries under a Technical…

The oil market will take months to normalize even if flows through the Strait of Hormuz resumed today, as 1 billion barrels of oil have been wiped off the supply balance over the past two and a half months. That’s the verdict on the global oil markets of Amin Nasser, chief executive officer of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant and the world’s single largest crude oil exporter, Saudi Aramco. “Reopening routes is not the same as normalizing a market that has been deprived of about one billion barrels of oil,” Nasser told…

As in all poker games, the player with the deepest pockets will ultimately win if he is prepared to stay at the table, and so with the high-stakes game of the U.S.-Iran War. The contents of a confidential CIA report relayed last week assessed that Iran can endure the current U.S. naval blockade in and around the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf for at least 90 to 120 days, but after that it would face economic collapse. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to benefit from dramatically increased oil production and prices on the higher historical side,…

Small Modular Reactors still won’t shift the Energy Transition, but for a different reason Last year, I argued that small modular reactors will not save the energy transition. The core reasoning was simple: timelines were too long, costs too uncertain, and grid issues too persistent for SMRs to meaningfully scale in the critical decade ahead. Today, as the UK’s flagship SMR programme unfolds and European policymakers cast fresh doubt on offshore wind targets by pointing to Rolls-Royce’s design, one thing is clear: SMRs remain…

Portugal just got a thorough energy policy review from the IEA, and the short version is this: the power sector has done its job. Everything else needs to get moving. The Portugal 2026 Energy Policy Review, released in Lisbon this week, covers the full picture, electricity, gas, transport, buildings, industry, and grid infrastructure, and lays out 10 recommendations for what the country needs to do next. It is more candid than these reports usually are. The Part That Worked Solar PV, hydropower, and wind have transformed Portugal's electricity…