Crude oil prices are retreating after Brent hit $100 again last week as the United States and Iran took a break from hostilities over the weekend. Yet with the outcome of the war still highly uncertain, the outlook for stock markets has dimmed. Add to that Big Tech’s AI spending binge and fresh warnings about energy commodity shortages, and we are looking at extended market turbulence ahead. Last week saw a rare pile-up of adverse market developments that must have shaken the confidence of many a market bull. Besides the oil price spike,…

The fresh spike in jet fuel prices in July upended the profit guidance of U.S. airlines, whose management teams had to readjust earnings estimates for the year just days ahead of reporting second-quarter results. The re-escalation in the Middle East earlier this month resulted in a 20% spike in jet fuel prices during the two weeks in which air carriers were reporting their April-June earnings and attempting to guide earnings for the third quarter and the rest of the year.   The extreme volatility in crude oil and consequently, jet fuel prices,…

“I feel like a jackass caught in a Texas hailstorm -- I can’t run, I can’t hide and I can’t make it stop.” U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s desperate comment to aide, Bill Moyers, came after a massive and sustained aerial bombing campaign in North Vietnam -- codenamed ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ -- had failed in its aim of pressuring the North Vietnamese leadership into peace talks to end the spiralling conflict that became the 19-year Vietnam War. Shortly after, on 8 March 1965, following advice…

Rapid depreciation in China's electric vehicle market is often portrayed as evidence that EVs are becoming disposable consumer electronics. Yet the opposite may prove true. While the vehicle loses value, the battery increasingly becomes a long-lived energy asset with multiple commercial lives ahead of it. For decades, critics of electric vehicles have warned about one inevitable problem. What happens when millions of batteries reach the end of their lives? Images of mountains of discarded battery packs have become a familiar feature of debates…

The future of relations between Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) and Iran under a government now dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is likely to feature pragmatic economic and transit cooperation amid heightened caution, with short-term disruptions from the 2026 conflict and longer-term continuity driven by mutual interests in connectivity and multipolarity. Iran's Shift to IRGC Leadership (as of mid-2026) Following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and…

Our tech overlords tell us that artificial intelligence will soon create a world of abundance while solving our major problems such as climate change. Just so you know who I'm talking about, I have previously defined our tech overlords as "a grab bag of technology companies, technology scientists and inventors, and technology investors and journalists who have bewitched the modern world through inventions that speed up our daily lives without necessarily making them better." In a recent interview with The Economist magazine,…

Kazakhstan resumed crude exports through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) on Monday after the operator reopened its Black Sea marine terminal and resumed accepting crude from producers following a week-long suspension triggered by drone attacks, Kazakhstan’s Astana Times reported.  Two tankers were loading crude from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project at the Novorossiysk terminal, while producers resumed delivering oil into the CPC pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said. The ministry added that export operations…

Kazakhstan resumed crude exports through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) on Monday after the operator reopened its Black Sea marine terminal and resumed accepting crude from producers following a week-long suspension triggered by drone attacks, Kazakhstan’s Astana Times reported.  Two tankers were loading crude from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project at the Novorossiysk terminal, while producers resumed delivering oil into the CPC pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said. The ministry added that export operations…

Kazakhstan resumed crude exports through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) on Monday after the operator reopened its Black Sea marine terminal and resumed accepting crude from producers following a week-long suspension triggered by drone attacks, Kazakhstan’s Astana Times reported.  Two tankers were loading crude from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project at the Novorossiysk terminal, while producers resumed delivering oil into the CPC pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said. The ministry added that export operations…

Nvidia is in early talks to provide up to $250 billion in financing guarantees to help OpenAI lease computing capacity from a planned $500 billion, 10-gigawatt data center facility in Ohio, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. The proposed deal highlights investor concerns that the AI bubble has been fueled by circular financing. The SoftBank-led project is located in southern Ohio and, when fully built, would support 10 gigawatts of computing capacity, or roughly equivalent to the output of 10 large nuclear reactors.…

Chinese buyers that received the first U.S. LNG cargo in over a year plan to resell it on another market to profit from higher prices elsewhere and avoid paying a 25% tariff, sources familiar with the plans told Bloomberg on Monday. The Yangpu port in south China earlier this month received a cargo of U.S. LNG from the Plaquemines LNG export terminal operated by Venture Global in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. This was the first U.S. shipment of gas to China in more than a year. But the gas was offloaded into bonded storage, without being…

Chinese buyers that received the first U.S. LNG cargo in over a year plan to resell it on another market to profit from higher prices elsewhere and avoid paying a 25% tariff, sources familiar with the plans told Bloomberg on Monday. The Yangpu port in south China earlier this month received a cargo of U.S. LNG from the Plaquemines LNG export terminal operated by Venture Global in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. This was the first U.S. shipment of gas to China in more than a year. But the gas was offloaded into bonded storage, without being…

The UK’s net zero push risks leaving the country with higher electricity bills and more susceptible to blackouts, according to a leaked report commissioned by the national grid system. The report, produced by energy consultancy firm Cornwall Insight for the National Energy System Operator (Neso) and shared with The Times by a whistleblower, revealed that Neso cannot accurately map the modern power system amid the government’s green energy push. The whistleblower warned that Neso, which is owned by the government, was “flying blind,…

TotalEnergies will appeal a landmark decision of the Paris Judicial Court from last month, which ordered the French supermajor to align its business to climate change goals as it held it responsible for climate change. In a statement on Monday, TotalEnergies said that it had decided to appeal the ruling, rendered under the French duty of vigilance law, arguing that “climate change, as a global phenomenon, does not fall within the scope of the duty of vigilance law.” The French supermajor also considers that “Imposing companies…

TotalEnergies will appeal a landmark decision of the Paris Judicial Court from last month, which ordered the French supermajor to align its business to climate change goals as it held it responsible for climate change. In a statement on Monday, TotalEnergies said that it had decided to appeal the ruling, rendered under the French duty of vigilance law, arguing that “climate change, as a global phenomenon, does not fall within the scope of the duty of vigilance law.” The French supermajor also considers that “Imposing companies…

TotalEnergies will appeal a landmark decision of the Paris Judicial Court from last month, which ordered the French supermajor to align its business to climate change goals as it held it responsible for climate change. In a statement on Monday, TotalEnergies said that it had decided to appeal the ruling, rendered under the French duty of vigilance law, arguing that “climate change, as a global phenomenon, does not fall within the scope of the duty of vigilance law.” The French supermajor also considers that “Imposing companies…

The Trump administration is weighing whether to extend access to some Chinese rare earth materials beyond the January 1, 2027 cutoff after U.S. producers acknowledged they cannot build sufficient domestic processing and magnet capacity before the deadline, Reuters reported on Monday. Industry executives and Pentagon suppliers told Reuters that U.S. processing and magnet manufacturing capacity remains insufficient to meet despite billions of dollars in federal support for new mines, separation facilities and downstream manufacturing. The gap threatens…

India’s Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL) has become the first Indian refinery to tell crude suppliers to avoid both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, inserting the restriction into a spot tender for up to 1 million barrels of crude. The tender seeks cargoes for delivery between August 25 and September 6 and specifies that crude loading or transit through either the Red Sea or the Strait of Hormuz is to be avoided. Business Standard reported that no previous Indian refiner has included the requirement in a spot crude import…

Tehran said it had halted retaliatory attacks against US allies in the Middle East as Washington refrained from attacking Iran for the second night in a row. A top military official in Tehran, meanwhile, threatened to widen Iran’s attacks across the region, suggesting that Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen could step up attacks on Red Sea shipping traffic.The overnight lull in attacks on July 26 came two days ahead of a key meeting scheduled in Washington between President Donald Trump and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.That July 28 visit…

The fuel crisis in Russia has started to ease in recent days as some refineries have restarted operations, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Sunday. “The situation is gradually stabilizing, a number of oil refineries became operational again. The balance is better now, and the situation at fuel filling stations has considerably improved, including when it comes to supplying agricultural producers,” Russian news agency Interfax quoted the official as saying. “The situation remains quite tense in some…