Russian forces struck several sites across Ukraine, including a medical facility in the northeastern city of Sumy, after Kyiv carried out a massive drone attack on Russia's Belgorod region, knocking out power to thousands of homes. Oleh Hryhorov, the head of the Sumy regional military administration, said on October 6 that 166 people, including 11 children, were in the medical facility at the time of the attack. According to preliminary reports, there were no casualties. Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's Presidential Office, gave further details,…

Argentina’s prized shale basin Vaca Muerta, once hailed as the key to transforming the country into a global energy exporter, is now facing a period of stagnation and uncertainty. Lower oil prices, rising costs, and policy constraints have slowed drilling and fracking, raising questions about whether the formation can deliver the government’s ambitious export goals. According to Reuters, drilling and fracking activity in Vaca Muerta — the world’s fourth-largest unconventional oil reserve — has begun to plateau, with…

Argentina’s prized shale basin Vaca Muerta, once hailed as the key to transforming the country into a global energy exporter, is now facing a period of stagnation and uncertainty. Lower oil prices, rising costs, and policy constraints have slowed drilling and fracking, raising questions about whether the formation can deliver the government’s ambitious export goals. According to Reuters, drilling and fracking activity in Vaca Muerta — the world’s fourth-largest unconventional oil reserve — has begun to plateau, with…

Chevron’s El Segundo refinery in California is producing fuels at reduced rates following last week’s massive fire, the supermajor said on Tuesday, adding it is working to restart units that were shut down after the incident. Following an explosion of a yet-to-be-determined nature, a large fire broke out on Thursday night at Chevron’s 280,000-bpd refinery in El Segundo in the Los Angeles area. The fire was later contained, the police in El Segundo said, adding there wasn’t a call for residents to evacuate. “The refinery…

A newly released report by ChargerHelp! shows that while 64% of Americans now live within two miles of an electric vehicle charging station, nearly one-third of charging attempts fail. Despite charging infrastructure showing 98.7% to 99% uptime rates, only 71% of charging attempts actually succeed, according to the 2025 EV Charging Reliability Report. The report analyzed more than 100,000 sessions across 2,400 chargers. The report argues that instead of focusing on site uptime statistics, the first-time charge success rate (FTCSR) provides…

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is negotiating with the federal government and Prime Minister Mark Carney on the newly proposed oil pipeline from the oil-producing province to the West Coast. Smith and Carney met in Ottawa on Monday as the Alberta Premier was arriving in the capital for meetings while the federal PM was departing for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington D.C. Smith and Carney discussed energy opportunities and Carney said that Alberta and the federal government have a lot to talk about how they could cooperate to…

Sub-$70 oil is squeezing margins, forcing Exxon, Chevron, and BP to rethink $100 billion in annual returns. Dividends to Dry Up as Sub-$70 Crude Squeezes Supermajors - Amidst fears of oversupply and tariff-impacted demand slowdown, global oil majors are widely expected to start cutting their shareholder payouts as sub-70 oil prices loom large over the horizon.- Most majors need oil prices above $80 per barrel to sustain current levels of dividends and share buybacks, with France’s TotalEnergies already flagging that it will reduce buybacks…

The EU plans to impose sanctions on three companies that have provided false flags to tankers of the Russian shadow fleet, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing documents it has reviewed.  The companies have provided false flags of Aruba, Curacao, and Sint-Maarten to at least eight tankers sanctioned by the EU, according to the documents.   The potential sanctions against the entities enabling the shadow fleet are part of the European Union’s 19th sanctions package, which the EU member states are currently discussing. …

The Armenian government is playing the field in search of the best deal to construct a new nuclear power plant to replace the aging Metsamor facility. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced during a question-and-answer session in parliament that negotiations are ongoing with several nations. He added that the government had already decided that Metsamor’s replacement will be a “small modular” reactor. “Now the next question is: with whom will we build, with whom will we cooperate?” he said. Pashinyan went…

Ukraine has discussed with G7 countries additional natural gas imports as it seeks to boost imports by 30% to offset the damage from Russian strikes on its gas infrastructure, Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk said on Tuesday.  In recent weeks, Russian strikes have caused “significant” damage to the gas production capacity of Ukraine, the minister told reporters during a briefing in Kyiv, without providing details.  On Monday, Grynchuk wrote on Facebook that Ukraine continues to communicate with partners on strengthening…

OPEC+ yesterday agreed to yet another monthly boost in production, this time for a modest 137,000 barrels daily. Oil prices inched up, yet they remain tightly range-bound, with Brent at just over $65 per barrel following the news. On the one hand, this is good news for consumer countries—including the U.S. On the other hand, it’s bad news for producer countries—including, again, the U.S. The Wall Street Journal called Saudi Arabia’s strategy of leading the production cut unwinding a gift to President Trump. It would keep…

Back in January, a massive fire ripped through Vistra Corp’s (NYSE:VST) giant battery storage facility in Moss Landing in Northern California, leading to the evacuation of hundreds of people after toxic fumes polluted the air. While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, a key factor that has so far been identified is the failure of the fire suppression system, which allowed the fire to spread rapidly. The building that housed 300 megawatts of battery capacity was completed five years ago, around the time the U.S. utility scale…

The foundation stone for the re-entry of several major Western energy firms into Iraq was the US$27-billion four-pronged mega-project finally ratified by France’s TotalEnergies in 2023. The project was particularly aimed at addressing two critical issues that had dogged Iraq’s development for decades and whose resolution had been stymied by bureaucracy and corruption at senior levels across several governments in Baghdad, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. One of these crucial issues was dramatically…

Markets carried their momentum into the third quarter of 2025, even as political uncertainty and softer labor data kept investors cautious.  The S&P 500 advanced 7.8% in Q3, a solid showing that reflected both moderating inflation and rising expectations for Federal Reserve rate cuts. For income and defensive investors, the period was constructive: dividend-paying sectors once again demonstrated resilience, while more cyclical industries delivered some of the strongest gains. Across sectors, the rotation toward cyclical and commodity-linked…

Oil markets are struggling to reconcile geopolitics with fundamentals as headlines push prices one way while physical signals pull in the other direction. The result is a market where Brent spreads and gasoil cracks appear strong on paper, even as North Sea grades compete for premiums and US crude arrives at a discount in Europe. Markets are operating on a split screen, with futures signalling at least some tightness still, while the physical market has been weakening markedly. The paper structure has solidified, still in backwardation.  Traders…

Bloomberg’s Javier Blas warned on Monday that the next oil glut will be harder and costlier to finance than any in recent memory, describing a “cartoonish” surplus forming as new barrels from Guyana, Brazil, the United States and the Middle East converge with slower demand growth and sharply higher borrowing costs. In a column for EnergyNow, Blas argues that the most dangerous element of the coming oversupply is not the scale of production but the price of money.  In previous downturns, cheap credit allowed traders to hold…

Bloomberg’s Javier Blas warned on Monday that the next oil glut will be harder and costlier to finance than any in recent memory, describing a “cartoonish” surplus forming as new barrels from Guyana, Brazil, the United States and the Middle East converge with slower demand growth and sharply higher borrowing costs. In a column for EnergyNow, Blas argues that the most dangerous element of the coming oversupply is not the scale of production but the price of money.  In previous downturns, cheap credit allowed traders to hold…

Sam Altman is the CEO of the most visible artificial intelligence (AI) organization on the planet, OpenAI, the purveyors of the popular ChatGPT AI interface. His job is to keep the investment dollars flowing into OpenAI, tens of billions of them. So, it's pretty important for Altman to keep investors interested and to promise them breakthroughs...and also, apparently, to reschedule those breakthroughs when they don't occur. Now, something that most people don't understand about OpenAI is that despite being recently valued at $500 billion, OpenAI…

In a new operational blow to Russia’s refining capacity, the Kirishi complex has reportedly shut down its CDU-6 crude distillation unit, the largest processing block at the plant, following damage from a Ukrainian drone strike.  According to Reuters, the refinery’s core capacity is now offline, though this has not been confirmed officially by Moscow.   The CDU-6 unit historically accounts for most of Kirishi’s processing output, and its halt means a significant drop in daily refined product volumes. Two industry…

The global copper market has had quite the year. On September 8, approximately 800,000 tons of wet material flooded multiple levels of the Grasberg Block Cave mine in Papua, Indonesia, leading to the suspension of all underground operations. It was just one more event to add to the list of copper mining and supply disruptions for 2025. According to reports, the wet material flood reached the level of the mine where a team of workers was conducting development activities, leading to two confirmed fatalities. Meanwhile, Freeport-McMoRan Inc. has…