U.S. natural gas prices on Monday extended their remarkable 70% rally from last week as the big freeze pushes heating and power demand to winter records. Early on Monday, the front-month U.S. natural gas benchmark price had jumped by 14% to above the threshold of $6 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) as gas demand surged to very high levels. This was the first time since 2022 that the price of U.S. natural gas has soared above $6 per MMBtu, and nearly double the price at the start of last week. The major storm also led to shut-ins of about…

Ukraine, Russia, and the United States are set to resume negotiations in Abu Dhabi next week after two days of what officials described as “constructive” peace talks, even as the war shows no signs of easing. On January 23-24, "the United States coordinated a trilateral meeting alongside Ukraine and Russia, graciously hosted by the United Arab Emirates," White House envoy Steve Witkoff wrote on X. "Talks were very constructive, and plans were made to continue conversations next week in Abu Dhabi. President [Donald] Trump and his entire…

Almost 100% of oil market analysts see the market as oversupplied this year, just as it was oversupplied last year. The size of the supply overhang, however, matters. Led by the International Energy Agency, a lot of analysts predicted that the overhang at millions of barrels. Then the IEA had to revise its prediction—again. Because demand turned out to be stronger than expected. In its latest Oil Market Report, released earlier this week, the International Energy Agency forecast global oil demand would expand by 930,000 barrels daily in 2026.…

Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the UK has 500 years of oil reserves left in the North Sea, and blamed the country’s high energy prices on the government’s unwillingness to drill. However, the unfortunate fact is that the North Sea oil and gas sector has been in a significant and prolonged decline due to the basin's aging oil fields, with production falling sharply since its peak in the early 2000s. According to the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the UK's energy regulator, the North Sea had ~2.9 billion barrels…

As several countries invest in expanding their liquid natural gas (LNG) production and export capacity, and significant quantities of the gas are expected to come online in 2026 after a record 2025, supply could soon outpace demand. This begs the question: just how much LNG is needed to “fill the gap” as the world develops its renewable energy capacity?  Last year was a record year for LNG trade, as exports exceeded the quantities predicted in several industry forecasts. The expansion of the world’s LNG trade has been led…

The global clean energy transition has passed a tipping point as renewable energies have simply become too cheap to fail. Worldwide, nations both rich and poor are rushing to install more and more wind and solar capacity to keep up with rising energy demand rates driven by global economic development and the age of AI. But while countries have been investing heavily into increased production capacity, investments in critical grid infrastructure have not kept pace, leading to a major energy transition bottleneck and a potential threat to energy…

The Trump Administration continues to revise, restructure, and cancel billions of U.S. dollars of Biden-era loans and funding commitments to clean energy projects as the United States shifted its policy to supporting fossil fuels and nuclear power as part of its energy dominance agenda. In the latest instalment of canceled or revised funding, the Department of Energy this week announced that the Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF), previously known as the Loan Programs Office (LPO), is restructuring, revising, or eliminating more than $83…

Despite President Trump’s big promises of driving down consumer energy bills, the cost of energy actually rose for consumers in 2025. Throughout his electoral campaign and during his first year in office, Trump pledged to slash Americans’ energy bills. However, his new approach to energy seems to have done the opposite, with higher prices expected for 2026 and beyond.  Upon entering office for his second term, President Trump announced a state of energy emergency, quickly passing executive orders to curb the rollout of former-President…

Alongside plans to establish a strong renewable energy sector, Japan aims to redevelop its nuclear energy capacity to boost its power and support its climate goals. However, with memories of the Fukushima nuclear disaster still fresh, many in Japan are worried about the risks involved with developing the country’s nuclear capacity. Nevertheless, the government has big plans for a new nuclear era, commencing with the restarting of the world’s biggest nuclear facility.  The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident is viewed as the second-worst…

The global electric vehicle transition is currently being sold as a triumph of mineral procurement and gigafactory scaling... a narrative where lithium mines and nickel refineries are the only hurdles between us and a decarbonized fleet.  But while the industry fixates on the battery, it is ignoring the passive electronic components that must handle the violent throughput of high-voltage energy. The market for EV capacitors has ballooned to $5.32 billion. This growth is a symptom of a technical crisis.  The shift to 800V architectures…

Latin America is catching the eyes of investors worldwide when it comes to mining, as the region has vast critical mineral reserves and low operating costs. The region is home to the “lithium triangle”, as well as vast copper, zinc, and other mineral reserves, making it highly attractive to investors looking to strengthen their supply chains as the global demand for these materials increases. In the first three quarters of 2025, global mining mergers achieved $30 billion, with 74 percent of this value going into Latin America, according…

Between 2000 and 2020, the European Union watched its share of global industrial output slide from 20.8% to 14.3%. This 6.5% gap represents the sound of capital fleeing the high energy costs of the Rhine for the subsidized certainty of the Yangtze and the American South. Now, the European Commission is attempting to legislate a reversal of this decline. The upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), now delayed until February 25, is a document of profound anxiety. It’s a pivot toward protectionism that would have been unthinkable in Brussels…

Mexico is weighing whether to halt or scale back oil shipments to Cuba as concerns grow within President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government that continuing the policy could trigger retaliation from the United States, according to sources familiar with internal discussions. The review comes at a sensitive moment. Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba have stopped following U.S. intervention in Venezuela and the removal of Nicolás Maduro, leaving Mexico as Cuba’s most important remaining oil supplier. That shift has pulled Mexico directly…

On a global level, solar energy has grown exponentially over the last few decades as costs have plummeted and demand has risen accordingly. It is estimated that the world added a third more solar power in 2025 than it did in 2024, marking a remarkable quantity of added capacity. But while renewables are proving too cheap to fail, there are some notable drawbacks to the rapid addition of these resources – most notably the insufficient co-addition of supportive grid and transmission infrastructure and the variability of solar and wind energy,…

In the first quarter of 2026, the global energy storage market is no longer a playground for visionaries... it is a graveyard for the undercapitalized. The data is rough. As of March 2025, QuantumScape (NYSE: QS) sat on $860 million in cash against a trailing twelve-month burn rate of $331 million. This 2.6-year window is the "valley of death" made manifest in a ledger.  While the early 2020s were fueled by the speculative highs of SPAC mergers and theoretical energy density, the 2026 market has pivoted to "Balance Sheet Engineering." Success…

US naphtha has begun arriving in Venezuelan waters, marking an early and telling step in efforts to restart the country’s long-crippled heavy oil production. Ship tracking data showed a tanker chartered by Vitol reaching Venezuelan waters with the first naphtha cargo tied to a new oil deal between Washington and Caracas. The shipment follows a flagship agreement struck earlier this month after the removal of Nicolás Maduro, allowing Venezuela to sell up to 50 million barrels of crude currently in storage under a $2 billion supply framework.…

The Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR has announced it is selling natural gas to Austria and Germany. But it remains an open question whether Baku can hit its promised target of delivering 20 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to the European Union in the near future. Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev, speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, said the new export arrangements bring to 16 the number of countries Azerbaijan supplies with gas, 10 of which are EU members. Yet the announcement sheds little…

Nine northwest European countries are set to commit to speeding up the deployment of offshore wind capacity on Monday, days after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized “money-losing windmills”, which, he said, were partly to blame for Europe’s economic decline. The UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway will pledge on Monday at the international North Sea Summit in Hamburg, Germany, to accelerate offshore wind power via large-scale cross-border projects, according to a draft declaration…

Nine northwest European countries are set to commit to speeding up the deployment of offshore wind capacity on Monday, days after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized “money-losing windmills”, which, he said, were partly to blame for Europe’s economic decline. The UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway will pledge on Monday at the international North Sea Summit in Hamburg, Germany, to accelerate offshore wind power via large-scale cross-border projects, according to a draft declaration…

The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States rose by 1 this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, bringing the total rig count in the US  to 544 this week, down 32 from this same time last year. The number of active oil rigs rose by 1 for the second week in a row during the latest reporting period, according to the data. Oil rigs are now at 411, which is 61 below this same time last year. The number of gas rigs stayed the same at 122, which is 23 more than this time last year. The…