In the furore of the U.S./Israel- Iran conflict, the key question of who will finally be chosen as Iraq’s new prime minister remains unanswered. In the immediate aftermath of the country’s 11 November parliamentary elections, the broadly pro-West sitting Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al?Sudani looked the more likely of the candidates to emerge the victor. His Reconstruction and Development Coalition was the largest faction in the vote, winning 1.3 million votes out of nearly 11 million cast, beating the pro-Iran State…

Traders have poured a record $977 million into the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), a leveraged bet that oil prices will collapse from their war-driven highs. Despite the high-volume, double-leveraged bet, the ETF still dropped 41% in March, its worst month in nearly six years, highlighting the ETF’s high risk in volatile markets. Oil prices have pulled back from recent highs after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he is looking to wind up the Iran war soon. The ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF is a…

Traders have poured a record $977 million into the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), a leveraged bet that oil prices will collapse from their war-driven highs. Despite the high-volume, double-leveraged bet, the ETF still dropped 41% in March, its worst month in nearly six years, highlighting the ETF’s high risk in volatile markets. Oil prices have pulled back from recent highs after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he is looking to wind up the Iran war soon. The ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF is a…

Traders have poured a record $977 million into the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), a leveraged bet that oil prices will collapse from their war-driven highs. Despite the high-volume, double-leveraged bet, the ETF still dropped 41% in March, its worst month in nearly six years, highlighting the ETF’s high risk in volatile markets. Oil prices have pulled back from recent highs after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he is looking to wind up the Iran war soon. The ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF is a…

The Iran war and effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has stranded the majority of Middle East oil exports, putting the region’s key oil benchmark under a lot of pressure. The Dubai crude benchmark--a vital marker for Middle Eastern oil flowing to Asia--used to price ~18 million barrels per day primarily based on crude oil grades from the United Arab Emirates (specifically Upper Zakum and Murban), Oman and Qatar.  According to Reuters, three of the five crude grades that normally underpin the benchmark are now effectively sidelined…

Oil prices on Wednesday morning dipped some 2% as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that the United States may wind down its military operations in Iran soon, while threatening to quit NATO for its lack of support in the Middle East operation. Iran announced on Tuesday it was ready to reach a resolution or intensify attacks on U.S. assets and its allies, without offering more details how this would be achieved considering the conflicting demands between the two sides. Two Pakistan sources told Reuters that neither side had responded to Islamabad's…

Oil prices on Wednesday morning dipped some 2% as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that the United States may wind down its military operations in Iran soon, while threatening to quit NATO for its lack of support in the Middle East operation. Iran announced on Tuesday it was ready to reach a resolution or intensify attacks on U.S. assets and its allies, without offering more details how this would be achieved considering the conflicting demands between the two sides. Two Pakistan sources told Reuters that neither side had responded to Islamabad's…

Oil prices on Wednesday morning dipped some 2% as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that the United States may wind down its military operations in Iran soon, while threatening to quit NATO for its lack of support in the Middle East operation. Iran announced on Tuesday it was ready to reach a resolution or intensify attacks on U.S. assets and its allies, without offering more details how this would be achieved considering the conflicting demands between the two sides. Two Pakistan sources told Reuters that neither side had responded to Islamabad's…

Oil prices on Wednesday morning dipped some 2% as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that the United States may wind down its military operations in Iran soon, while threatening to quit NATO for its lack of support in the Middle East operation. Iran announced on Tuesday it was ready to reach a resolution or intensify attacks on U.S. assets and its allies, without offering more details how this would be achieved considering the conflicting demands between the two sides. Two Pakistan sources told Reuters that neither side had responded to Islamabad's…

For years, the Caspian Sea was the safe zone of the alliance between Russia and Iran -- a landlocked black hole invisible to Western eyes. While the inland waterway has served as a sanctuary for Iranian drones bound for the battlefields of Ukraine in Moscow's ongoing full-scale invasion, Israel recently launched air strikes on Bandar Anzali, an Iranian naval outpost on the Caspian. Growing media reports based on intelligence say the corridor is now being used to transfer Russian-produced weaponry back to the Middle East, bringing Israeli air strikes…

Crude oil inventories in the United States increased by 5.5 million barrels during the week ending March 27, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The increase brings commercial stockpiles to 461.6 million barrels according to government data, which is 0.1% above 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 saw a build of 10.263 million barrels in the period.…

Since the start of the Middle East war, China has been reselling record volumes of LNG to other Asian buyers as its own demand has been tepid and stocks and gas supplies sufficient. In March alone, China resold up to 10 cargoes of LNG—a record-high for any month ever, according to data from energy analytics firms Vortexa, Kpler, and ICIS cited by Reuters. Year to date, China has also resold record volumes of LNG, an estimated 1.31 million tons, shipped to South Korea, Thailand, Japan, India, and the Philippines, per data from Kpler. This…

Iran FM Clarifies Not Negotiating with US, But Messages Sent Iran's Foreign Minister Aragchi has clarified some things to AI Jazeera regarding diplomatic engagement with the US on potentially ending the war. The main takeaway is his explanation that what is happening now does not constitute negotiations in Tehran's view, but an exchange of messages directly or through our friends in the region (namely Pakistan). He said that all communication concerning diplomacy and the war is routed through the Foreign Ministry and overseen by the National Security…

BP's new chief executive officer Meg O'Neill has pledged consistency and clear direction in her first message to staff as she takes over the top job at the UK-based supermajor effective April 1, amid very turbulent times for both the company and the energy industry. “I’m committed to providing clear direction and consistency so we can move forward together with confidence,” O’Neill told staff in her first message as CEO, the Financial Times reports. O’Neill, former CEO of Australia’s Woodside Energy, was picked…

Oil and gas prices will not return to pre-war levels soon even if the conflict in the Middle East were to end today, Dan Jørgensen, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, has warned. In the month since the beginning of the war in Iran, prices in the EU have jumped by about 70% for natural gas and by 60% for oil, Jørgensen said at an informal meeting of EU energy ministers. In financial terms, 30 days of conflict have already added $16.2 billion (14 billion euros) to the EU’s fossil fuels import bill, the commissioner…

REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) has appointed former U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Chief of Staff Joe Kasper as chair of its advisory board, placing a senior defense supply chain official at the center of its push to build a U.S.-aligned rare earth metals platform as the country faces limited domestic supply and a hard 2027 deadline requiring U.S. defense systems to eliminate Chinese-sourced inputs. Kasper has been working inside the Pentagon on the exact supply chain breakdown REalloys is now trying to fix: the absence of U.S. capacity to produce…

Last December, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (NYSE:DJT) entered the nuclear fusion race after it agreed to buy California-based fusion startup TAE Technologies in a $6-billion merger, creating one of the world's first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies. The merger is structured as an all-stock transaction whereby shareholders of both companies will each own roughly 50% of the new entity with the deal expected to close in mid-2026. TMTG agreed to provide TAE Technologies with up to $200 million in cash upon signing and an additional…

After years of upstream underinvestment and a short-lived foray into clean energy, the world’s biggest oil and gas firms are accelerating exploration efforts as they look to replenish their upstream portfolios. Executives at Big Oil have been signaling for nearly a year that they seek to boost upstream portfolios in a world where oil and gas demand is growing and will continue to grow for years to come. During the 2025 earnings calls and at last week’s CERAWeek event in Houston, the top brass of the largest oil and gas majors reiterated…

As Saudi Arabia redirects more and more crude from the east to the west, where it can export it safely, oil seems to be all that everyone is watching. But not Saudi Arabia itself. In fact, the world’s second-largest oil producer and top exporter has big plans in another area: battery storage. Battery storage has been dubbed the Holy Grail of the energy transition because it helps make wind and solar installations less dependent on the weather. However, while costs have fallen significantly, battery storage remains a financial drag. An even…

The infamous Texas Arctic freeze of five years ago exposed a key vulnerability of electric vehicles: Many drivers were forced to abandon their vehicles after being left stranded with dead batteries and no charging station in sight. While cold weather can lower driving range by ~10%, unusually low temperatures can cut it by up to 40% while increasing charging time by 300%. Thankfully, this could soon become a thing of the past: Chinese researchers have developed an all-weather battery electrolyte that is not only capable of maintaining high energy…