Pakistan has played a key role as a mediator in the U.S./Israel war on Iran. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, have raised Pakistan’s profile so much that Foreign Affairs gushed “Pakistan Won the War in Iran.” Pakistan’s leaders are practical men with working relations with Washington and Tehran and are not performing good works to save their immortal souls, but because Pakistan and Iran are “neighbors forever” and they are looking to…

Oil prices tumbled Tuesday as traders once again priced in a U.S.-Iran agreement before anyone had actually signed one. West Texas Intermediate was trading at $75.64 per barrel shortly before 2 p.m. ET, down $4.70, or 5.85%, while Brent had fallen $4.61 to $79.16. Both benchmarks touched three-week lows as hopes rose that an agreement could reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal could come Tuesday or Wednesday, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks involving Iran and Oman had made progress. Qatar also…

Oil prices tumbled Tuesday as traders once again priced in a U.S.-Iran agreement before anyone had actually signed one. West Texas Intermediate was trading at $75.64 per barrel shortly before 2 p.m. ET, down $4.70, or 5.85%, while Brent had fallen $4.61 to $79.16. Both benchmarks touched three-week lows as hopes rose that an agreement could reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal could come Tuesday or Wednesday, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks involving Iran and Oman had made progress. Qatar also…

Oil prices tumbled Tuesday as traders once again priced in a U.S.-Iran agreement before anyone had actually signed one. West Texas Intermediate was trading at $75.64 per barrel shortly before 2 p.m. ET, down $4.70, or 5.85%, while Brent had fallen $4.61 to $79.16. Both benchmarks touched three-week lows as hopes rose that an agreement could reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal could come Tuesday or Wednesday, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks involving Iran and Oman had made progress. Qatar also…

The leaders of the five Central Asian states and Azerbaijan, meeting on the shores of Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan on July 31, signaled an intent to deepen trans-Caspian connections. The meeting’s final document, known as the Cholpon-Ata Declaration, was perhaps more symbolic than substantive, reaffirming participants’ desire to expand trade and maintain regional security. The document “reflects the high level of trust among Central Asian states and the Republic of Azerbaijan, their commitment to the principles…

The emergence of bloodthirsty right-wing paramilitary death squads in Colombia is often attributed to the rise of powerful vertically integrated cocaine cartels during the early 1980s. That interpretation, however, overlooks the deeper forces behind their emergence in a country shaped by decades of conflict and the world's longest-running multi-party low-intensity asymmetric war. Colombia's right-wing death squads, responsible for the majority of the modern conflict’s victims, predate Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel and the cocaine boom.…

India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation more than doubled its quarterly profit as higher crude and natural gas prices—and a weaker rupee—more than made up for another drop in production. ONGC reported net income of 170.34 billion rupees, or about $1.8 billion, for the quarter ended June, beating the 152.67 billion-rupee average estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue jumped 45% from a year earlier to 464.60 billion rupees. The numbers put ONGC alongside the global oil majors that spent the second quarter cashing in on the biggest…

India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation more than doubled its quarterly profit as higher crude and natural gas prices—and a weaker rupee—more than made up for another drop in production. ONGC reported net income of 170.34 billion rupees, or about $1.8 billion, for the quarter ended June, beating the 152.67 billion-rupee average estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue jumped 45% from a year earlier to 464.60 billion rupees. The numbers put ONGC alongside the global oil majors that spent the second quarter cashing in on the biggest…

Iron ore futures in Singapore fell to their lowest intraday level in one year as deteriorating fundamentals continued to weigh on the market. Steel demand in China remains soft amid an ongoing construction slump and weakening mill margins, while supply continues to increase, reinforcing expectations of a growing surplus. Bloomberg noted earlier that the latest concerns surrounding major physical trader Radiant World added another layer of uncertainty, but the bigger bearish narrative remains centered on lackluster demand failing to absorb…

Brent crude fell back to around $80 per barrel after renewed optimism over a potential US-Iran draft agreement eased geopolitical fears, even as President Trump criticized US refiners for high fuel profits. Trump Takes Aim at Big Oil’s War Profits - Runaway Q2 earnings of US oil majors have brought bumper profits of energy companies back into the political limelight, with US President Trump ordering retailers to ‘get retail prices down’ as soon as possible.    - Donald Trump accused ExxonMobil and Chevron of making too…

The U.S. Department of Defense has canceled a tender to buy up to $300 million worth of lithium carbonate for the national strategic stockpile in another blow to the Administration looking to secure critical minerals for the defense and other strategic industries. DoD’s Defense Logistics Agency, which manages the end-to-end defense supply chain from raw materials to end-user disposition, canceled the solicitation in its entirety, effective August 3, 2026. The deadline for bids was extended twice, first from July 17 to July 30, and then from…

Indian state-owned refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) has bought 2 million barrels of crude from Nigeria, trading sources told Reuters on Tuesday, as India looks to offset the loss of supply from the Middle East with deliveries from producers farther away. HPCL has acquired Okwuibome and Utapate crudes from Nigeria from commodity trader Glencore via a tender, the sources told Reuters. The Nigerian crude will go to feed HPCL’s refinery in the state of Rajasthan, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Limited (HRRL), which has a capacity…

Indian state-owned refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) has bought 2 million barrels of crude from Nigeria, trading sources told Reuters on Tuesday, as India looks to offset the loss of supply from the Middle East with deliveries from producers farther away. HPCL has acquired Okwuibome and Utapate crudes from Nigeria from commodity trader Glencore via a tender, the sources told Reuters. The Nigerian crude will go to feed HPCL’s refinery in the state of Rajasthan, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Limited (HRRL), which has a capacity…

BP has announced that it will offload its US biogas business just days after confirming its exit from the North Sea, as the firm looks to shift its focus back to core oil and gas products. The London-listed oil giant has previously told investors it planned to market assets across its operating regions as part of a restructuring overseen by new boss Meg O’Neill. BP acquired Archaea for $4.1bn in 2022, but the business has since faced financial underperformance and slower-than-expected growth, forcing the FTSE 100 giant to reassess the asset’s…

Traffic at the Strait of Hormuz remains at the lowest in more than two months as security concerns have intensified with recent attacks on ships and persistent threats to shipping in the region. After a brief respite between the middle of June and early July, when traffic at Hormuz rose with the tentative opening of the chokepoint as part of the now-dead U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, traffic of all vessels, including commodity carriers, plunged to a two-month low as of the end of July. And it hasn't recovered, despite U.S. attempts to…

Namibia is rapidly emerging as Africa’s next major oil producer while neighboring South Africa, which controls roughly two-thirds of the same Orange Basin petroleum province, remains years behind in developing essentially the same petroleum system. The Orange Basin, an offshore deepwater petroleum province spanning the Atlantic maritime border between the two countries, is estimated to contain more than 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Yet while Namibia has attracted a succession of world-class discoveries and moved rapidly toward commercial…

The world is running short on fuels—the warning was first issued by some analysts who were watching the physical market rather than futures charts. Now, Big Oil is joining the chorus of warnings, with Shell, Exxon and Chevron all saying that prices at the pump are set to stay higher, regardless of where crude oil prices go. “The constraint pain point in the energy system is refining," Exxon’s chief financial officer Neil Hansen told Bloomberg in an interview last week. This, according to him, is “something that perhaps the…

Continental Resources, the company founded by shale billionaire Harold Hamm, looks to expand in Vaca Muerta as international companies vie to develop Argentina’s proven prolific shale patch. Continental is set to bid in this year’s bid round for acreage in Vaca Muerta in the biggest auction in the basin in a decade, sources with knowledge of the plans have told Bloomberg. Bids will be opened on August 19. The province of Neuquén, where most of Vaca Muerta is located, has launched the biggest licensing round in the shale play…

China is winning the race for global clean energy dominance. Beijing has outspent every other country on Earth for years now, and controls critical global clean energy supply chains. Over the same time period, the United States has taken a major step back from clean energy objectives under the Trump administration, giving Beijing even more leverage. But while China’s ascension to global energy superpower status may seem like a foregone conclusion against this backdrop, the United States may have a unique opportunity to even the playing field…

Over 1,600 days into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 10-day special military operation and the situation for the Kremlin continues to deteriorate. Since Moscow ordered its troops illegally into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, more than 450,000 of them have been killed, with another 1 million wounded or missing. Ukraine’s extraordinary development of its own military -- including a stunning build-out of its drone capabilities -- now means Russian monthly casualties have reached the critical negative replacement rate -- meaning that there…