Oil prices were mixed in Thursday's trading session, with prospects of the United States easing restrictions on Russia's crude helping ease the international benchmark while attacks on vessels in the Middle East provided support. Brent crude for December delivery was down 0.2% to trade at $106 per barrel at 2.49 pm ET, while WTI crude for November delivery jumped 3.6% to trade at $98 per barrel. However, commodity analysts at Standard Chartered have predicted that crude prices will remain elevated despite heightened volatility, with risks still…

The recent rise in crude oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz isn’t solving the world’s most pressing fuel problem—the diesel crunch and record diesel prices that start to feed into the wider economy. While Middle East crude oil flows are nearing pre-war levels, global diesel supply is much lower due to refinery constraints in the Middle East and Russia that the rest of the world cannot offset. The diesel squeeze hiked wholesale and retail prices to record highs in the middle of September as the market realized that crude oil…

Guyana has turned into something of an oil celebrity with billions of barrels discovered by Exxon off the coast of the tiny South American country. With the oil riches came gas, too, and there were plans to add LNG to Guyana’s export goods. Yet now the government is considering keeping the gas for the domestic market. Guyana’s crude oil exports are about to end the year on a high note and a daily rate of over 1 million barrels, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. It only took the country 10 years to go from no oil production…

The only commercial-scale uranium enrichment plant in the United States is now three-quarters of the way through its latest expansion, a milestone for the country's push to build out a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. Urenco USA said Oct. 8 that the sixth of eight new centrifuge cascades at its National Enrichment Facility in New Mexico has started production, with the seventh due later this year and the last in spring 2027. As the Trump administration works to reestablish the country as the global leader in nuclear energy, cutting reliance…

Six states participating in an initiative to improve a Eurasia-to-Europe trade corridor have agreed on measures to reduce transit times at intermodal nodes along the route.  Meeting in Tashkent on October 11, railway officials from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan signed a protocol to enhance the cost competitiveness of the CASCA+ corridor. The six states pledged to work on achieving efficiencies in transferring cargo from one mode of transport to another at Caspian and Black Sea ports. The protocol also…

It took Ukraine just hours to turn President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “we’re done” into a refinery fire. Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Ryazan refinery on Thursday, ending Kyiv’s brief pause in attacks on Russian energy infrastructure after Zelenskyy said Moscow had ignored the ceasefire promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump. The Rosneft-owned refinery sits about 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow and accounts for nearly 5% of Russia’s refinery throughput. Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov confirmed a fire…

It took Ukraine just hours to turn President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “we’re done” into a refinery fire. Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Ryazan refinery on Thursday, ending Kyiv’s brief pause in attacks on Russian energy infrastructure after Zelenskyy said Moscow had ignored the ceasefire promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump. The Rosneft-owned refinery sits about 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow and accounts for nearly 5% of Russia’s refinery throughput. Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov confirmed a fire…

The International Energy Agency will release more than 20 million barrels of diesel as soon as possible and accelerate the rest of its emergency oil draw, Total releases are now set to exceed the 400 million barrels pledged in March. About 330 million barrels have already been released since the Strait of Hormuz crisis triggered the record coordinated stock draw. IEA members still have roughly 100 million barrels left to deliver under the March action, with some countries having released more than their original commitments and others still holding…

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet the foreign ministers of the Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan - in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on 19 October 2026. Rubio will be accompanied by a delegation of more than 100 U.S. companies. Washington has framed the agenda around economic connectivity, energy security, and shared regional priorities. The meeting should convert earlier political commitments into financed projects, while managing the region's balancing act between the U.S.,…

Britain’s biggest business lobby group has urged John Healey to cut employment taxes and energy bills in his first Budget, warning that further tax rises risk choking off investment and jobs. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) called on the Chancellor to give firms “breathing space” at the Budget on 28 October, as businesses grapple with rising costs and uncertainty over the government’s tax plans. In its Budget submission, published on Thursday, the group called for a £1,000 increase in the threshold at which…

Eleven new 550-horsepower workover rigs will work in Venezuela’s oil fields this month. According to North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), which announced the deployment on 13 October, they are the first new mobile repair-and-maintenance units to enter the country’s fields in more than 15 years. Two 1,500-horsepower drilling rigs arrived on 7 October, with more equipment to follow. The company says it has now bought 60 rigs, 30 steam boilers and 70 pieces of heavy machinery, which it describes as the country's largest heavy-equipment…

Crude oil inventories in the United States saw a decrease of 8.6 million barrels during the week ending October 9, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Thursday. The decrease brings commercial stockpiles to 415.6 million barrels, according to government data, which is now 3% 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 had fallen by 11.12 million barrels in…

US President Donald Trump said Washington continues to share intelligence with Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had received no advance warning from its international partners before a new wave of Russian attacks on the capital and battlefield reports of a throttling of Starlink satellite access. Trump told reporters on October 14, "No, we haven't," when asked whether the United States had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. "We are helping them, and we are sharing intel. We want the war to end," he said, adding Washington…

Pakistan faces challenging winter months with potential natural gas shortages as the Qatari and UAE LNG flows from the Strait of Hormuz remain severely disrupted, the head of the Pakistani state-owned LNG importer said on Thursday. Masood Nabi, chief executive officer of Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL), told the WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh that winter for Pakistan will be challenging, Upstream reports. The main bottleneck for Pakistan is not the availability of gas but the heavily disrupted LNG transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the executive noted,…

Pakistan faces challenging winter months with potential natural gas shortages as the Qatari and UAE LNG flows from the Strait of Hormuz remain severely disrupted, the head of the Pakistani state-owned LNG importer said on Thursday. Masood Nabi, chief executive officer of Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL), told the WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh that winter for Pakistan will be challenging, Upstream reports. The main bottleneck for Pakistan is not the availability of gas but the heavily disrupted LNG transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the executive noted,…

Bulgaria has just broken ranks amid widespread European criticism over the Trump-Putin diesel deal announced last week, with the NATO country's Prime Minister Rumen Radev stunning Brussels in fresh remarks. "You know what is our problem right now in Europe? High fuel prices," Radev said in English as he attended a two-day summit of leaders. via The Associated Press Reuters described the top-level meeting in Brussels, "the European Union began a packed summit on Thursday that quickly underscored wrangles over how to tame soaring energy prices, design…

Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices remain close to their highest levels since the end of 2022 as the lack of LNG supply from Qatar compounds the EU problem of filling depleted storage sites ahead of the winter. The front-month price at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), the benchmark for Europe’s gas trading, fell by 1% as of 9 a.m. Amsterdam time on Thursday, amid a slide in crude oil futures. But at $96.56 (86.03 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh), the price is now at its highest levels since December 2022, when Europe faced…

Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices remain close to their highest levels since the end of 2022 as the lack of LNG supply from Qatar compounds the EU problem of filling depleted storage sites ahead of the winter. The front-month price at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), the benchmark for Europe’s gas trading, fell by 1% as of 9 a.m. Amsterdam time on Thursday, amid a slide in crude oil futures. But at $96.56 (86.03 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh), the price is now at its highest levels since December 2022, when Europe faced…

Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices remain close to their highest levels since the end of 2022 as the lack of LNG supply from Qatar compounds the EU problem of filling depleted storage sites ahead of the winter. The front-month price at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), the benchmark for Europe’s gas trading, fell by 1% as of 9 a.m. Amsterdam time on Thursday, amid a slide in crude oil futures. But at $96.56 (86.03 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh), the price is now at its highest levels since December 2022, when Europe faced…

A surge in Iranian drone attacks on commercial ships appears to be weighing on Middle Eastern energy exports through the Strait of Hormuz, with 24 attacks reported so far this month. The latest reports from Wednesday morning indicate that two Emirati container ships were struck and sank in the narrow waterway. UBS energy expert Henri Patricot told clients on Wednesday that crude and petroleum-product flows exiting the Gulf of Oman dropped to 9.1 million barrels a day over the past couple of days. The weekly average slipped to 13.5 million, compared…