If anyone is still wondering whether the Trump Administration’s goal of $50 per barrel oil price would hurt American drillers, the answer came this week from oil tycoon and wildcatter Harold Hamm, who is ceasing drilling operations in North Dakota for the first time in decades. “This will be the first time in over 30 years that Harold Hamm has not had an operation with drilling rigs in North Dakota,” Hamm, who founded Continental Resources, told Bloomberg in a telephone interview published on Friday.  “There’s…

If anyone is still wondering whether the Trump Administration’s goal of $50 per barrel oil price would hurt American drillers, the answer came this week from oil tycoon and wildcatter Harold Hamm, who is ceasing drilling operations in North Dakota for the first time in decades. “This will be the first time in over 30 years that Harold Hamm has not had an operation with drilling rigs in North Dakota,” Hamm, who founded Continental Resources, told Bloomberg in a telephone interview published on Friday.  “There’s…

Two years after abruptly ending the EV subsidies due to budget constraints, Germany is returning the incentives for buying electric vehicles with federal funds of $3.5 billion (3 billion euros) by 2029.   With the return of the incentives, Germany plans to prop up its ailing automotive sector, which has suffered a lot in recent years from surging costs, supply chain issues, and Chinese competition in EV sales.  The end of the previous EV subsidy scheme in Germany at the end of 2023 under the previous government resulted in a plunge…

Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR has started delivering Azeri natural gas to Germany and Austria, in another milestone for Europe that looks to ditch Russian gas by 2027.  SOCAR has started selling significant volumes of gas via the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the European segment of the Southern Gas Corridor, to the markets of Southern and Central Europe.  Starting January 2026, Azerbaijan’s gas is being supplied to buyers in Austria and Germany, too, SOCAR said in a statement on Friday. The gas supply to Austria and…

U.S. President Donald Trump is taking action to protect American consumers from soaring electricity bills with plans to direct the biggest U.S. grid operator, PJM, hold an emergency power auction in which Big Tech would bid for power supply for their new data centers and effectively pay for new power plants.  President Trump and governors of several U.S. states, including the data-center hotpots Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, are expected to announce the plan later on Friday, Bloomberg reports. Under the plan, PJM Interconnection will be…

Chevron has announced the final investment decision regarding production expansion at the giant Leviathan gas field offshore Israel. “Our decision to invest in the expansion of Leviathan’s production capacity reflects our confidence in the future of energy in the region,” said the president of Chevron Upstream, Clay Neff. “Pragmatic U.S. and regional energy policies are helping to strengthen energy security across the Eastern Mediterranean and foster an environment that encourages investment in the Middle East and globally.”…

The U.S. stock market finished strongly in the green in 2025, with the broad market benchmark, S&P 500, returning 16.4%, marking its third straight year of double-digit gains. Interestingly, all 11 market sectors finished in the green, underscoring the broad market momentum. Not surprisingly, the tech sector topped the performance tables once again with a 24.6% gain thanks to the ongoing AI data center buildout and semiconductor upcycle. Industrials delivered an impressive 19.3% return, thanks to infrastructure investment, reshoring activity…

Despite a 20% slump in oil prices in 2025, the world’s biggest international oil firms saw their stocks rise by 4% to 18%, breaking the correlation between crude prices and oil stocks. Last year, investors appreciated the returns that were kept despite the oil price slide. They also cheered the strategic pivot of European majors to focus back on boosting their upstream production, Exxon and Chevron’s record-breaking Permian output, the synergies the U.S. supermajors began reporting from recent multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, and…

This week, BP announced it would take a $4–$5 billion hit to its Q4 earnings from winding down its energy transition business. The announcement followed a similar one from Ford, which said in December it would incur $19.5 billion in losses due to a substantial curtailment of its EV plans. These two are far from the only ones losing money on what was, a few years ago, considered a sure-return investment. And that’s bad news for net-zero plans. BP did not go into detail about the specific nature of the impairments it would book for the…

The United States is rushing to sell off millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil after the Trump administration ousted and detained leader Nicholas Maduro on January 3. Trump has been extremely vocal of his plans to capitalize on Venezuela’s oil reserves – the largest in the world – and build his “very own oil empire” capable of going toe-to-toe with OPEC.  Already, the United States Department of Energy is organizing the sale of about 50 million barrels of oil that the United States seized from Venezuelan tankers…

Russia’s oil-and-gas budget suffered a painful blow in 2025. Revenues from the sector fell 24% to 8.48 trillion roubles, the weakest showing since 2020. That matters because oil and gas still bankroll roughly a quarter of the federal budget, and that budget is being chewed up by defense and security spending at a pace hard to ignore. This is not because Russia pumped less crude. Oil prices fell more than 18% last year. That is the sharpest annual drop since the pandemic crash. On top of that, the rouble strengthened—bad timing. When…

Russia’s oil-and-gas budget suffered a painful blow in 2025. Revenues from the sector fell 24% to 8.48 trillion roubles, the weakest showing since 2020. That matters because oil and gas still bankroll roughly a quarter of the federal budget, and that budget is being chewed up by defense and security spending at a pace hard to ignore. This is not because Russia pumped less crude. Oil prices fell more than 18% last year. That is the sharpest annual drop since the pandemic crash. On top of that, the rouble strengthened—bad timing. When…

The UK economy grew more than expected in November last year, official data has shown, reflecting businesses’ nerves about Rachel Reeves’ Budget measures.  New Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed growth in the UK economy inching up Business analysts warned over several months that pre-Budget speculation had dampened spending and investment levels.  The figures will also pile pressure on Reeves and the rest of the Labour government, with economic growth being the party’s central mission. …

Ed Miliband has reaffirmed the UK’s ambitious 2030 clean power goal with the biggest ever expansion of offshore wind farms that could add as much as £1.8bn a year onto households’ energy bills. The government unveiled an auction of offshore energy sites with a total capacity of 8.4 gigawatts, far outstripping analyst estimates and enough to power roughly 12m homes. Miliband, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, hailed the new wind farms as a “monumental step towards clean power by 2030” that will…

Coterra Energy is kicking the tires on what would be one of the biggest U.S. shale mergers in years, holding talks about a possible combination with Devon Energy, according to people familiar with the matter. Nothing is signed, nothing is guaranteed, but the market liked the idea enough to send shares of Coterra Energy sharply higher on the day. The deal would be a classic all-stock shale mashup: two midsize operators with large footprints in the Permian Basin trying to bulk up as oil prices sit stubbornly around $60 a barrel. Coterra carries a…

As Iran’s clerical rulers face one of the biggest threats to their grip on power in years and the United States threatens potential military action in support of Iranian protesters, China has few options -- and growing hesitancy -- to help its partner in Tehran. Beijing’s inaction reflects the pragmatic nature of their alignment, which is based more on convenience rather than goodwill or trust, experts say. Those limits have been on display as the Iranian authorities wage an unprecedented and bloody crackdown on mass antiestablishment…

Oilfield services company Haliburton (NYSE:HAL) says it expects to make a quick return to Venezuela, with company CEO Jeff Miller saying the company could be active in the South American country in a matter of months. Halliburton aims to help rebuild the nation’s dilapidated oil and gas infrastructure, and has downplayed the risk of responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for $100 billion in investments. Jeff Miller told Energy Source that Haliburton’s business model means that it does not face the same kind of risk as…

Oilfield services company Haliburton (NYSE:HAL) says it expects to make a quick return to Venezuela, with company CEO Jeff Miller saying the company could be active in the South American country in a matter of months. Halliburton aims to help rebuild the nation’s dilapidated oil and gas infrastructure, and has downplayed the risk of responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for $100 billion in investments. Jeff Miller told Energy Source that Haliburton’s business model means that it does not face the same kind of risk as…

The United States and Armenia have agreed on an implementation framework to develop a trade corridor that is the centerpiece of the provisional Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal signed last summer in Washington. According to the document, the United States will have a majority stake in developing infrastructure for what is known as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, announced the memorandum of understanding following a January 13 meeting…

Following improved stability in the Red Sea, shipping giant Maersk is returning to the trans-Suez route connecting the Middle East and India with the U.S. East Coast, the Denmark-based company said on Thursday.  After the successful trans-Suez transits of two vessels in the past weeks, A.P. Moller - Maersk has decided to implement the first structural change of a service back to the trans-Suez route, the shipping giant said.  The return to the Red Sea and Suez Canal route applies to the MECL service, which is solely operated by Maersk…