London-listed energy giant Centrica shares plunged nine per cent on Thursday morning after the group paused its share buyback programme in the face of a major earnings hit. The owners of British Gas reported lower 2025 earnings than in the previous year, but the group says it was resilient in a challenging market. The group’s adjusted operating profit fell some 50 per cent, from £1.6bn in 2024 to £800m, while adjusted pre-tax profits landed at £1.4bn as energy prices stabilised following the previous year’s spikes.…

Georgia’s Black Sea port of Kulevi, a hub for Black Sea oil shipments, may soon face European Union sanctions over allegations that the Georgian government has used it to help Russia move crude needed to finance its war in Ukraine. The potential sanctions place Azerbaijan, whose state-controlled energy entity SOCAR owns an oil terminal in Kulevi, in a tough spot. According to RFE/RL, which obtained a draft of the EU’s upcoming 20th sanctions package, the bloc is considering banning transactions with four ports allegedly used…

Global oil demand fell by 614,000 barrels per day (bpd) in December compared to November 2025, and plunged by 536,000 bpd from December 2024, driven by lower U.S. demand, the monthly report by the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) showed on Thursday.  At the same time, oil production surged by 2 million bpd in December 2025 compared to the same month of 2024, according to the most recent data self-reported by 48 countries to JODI and shared by the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum (IEF).    The surge…

Iranians are marking the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period for those killed during the height of the deadly state crackdown on mass protests last month with renewed public shows of dissent. During memorial ceremonies held across Iran in recent days, mourners have staged small demonstrations and chanted slogans against Iran’s clerical rulers. Security forces have tried to curb the protests and, in some cases, used gunfire to disperse crowds. At least 7,000 people were killed during the nationwide protests that erupted in late December…

Repsol has nearly $5.4 billion in receivables to collect from Venezuela, the Spanish group said in its annual 2025 report on Thursday.  Venezuela owes Repsol 4.55 billion euros, or $5.36 billion, and this includes debt for oil and gas supplies, arrears in payment of interests, and financing for its Petroquiriquire joint venture with Venezuela’s state-held oil firm PDVSA, according to the report.   Repsol also disclosed in a separate statement on the Q4 earnings that the U.S. administration last Friday issued new licenses enabling…

Following a 4% surge on Wednesday, oil prices advanced by another 1.6% in European trade early on Thursday to send Brent to above $71.50, the highest level in six months, as concerns about a U.S. military campaign in Iran intensified. The international benchmark, Brent Crude, was up by 1.71% at $71.55 in morning trade in Europe, as the U.S.-Iran talks appear to make no headway, while the U.S. is amassing military forces near the Persian Gulf. The U.S. benchmark oil prices, WTI Crude, also jumped to trade at $66.37 per barrel, up by 1.83% on the…

India should increase the amount of crude oil and coking coal it imports from the United States as a way to diversify its supply under the interim trade deal between New Delhi and Washington, according to the country’s commerce and industry minister. India is especially keen on importing more high-quality coking coal, used in metallurgy, said Piyush Goyal, as quoted by India’s Telegraph. The top official added India could use more U.S.-made technology components, as well, including graphics processing units for AI, data center equipment,…

A dozen states, led by California, are suing the federal government for the cancellation of billions in funding for alternative energy projects approved by Congress. The suit was filed with a District Court in California, with the plaintiffs—a total of 13 states—alleging that “the termination and abandonment of funding violate the constitutional separation of powers, as the funding was approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress,” per a statement from the California Attorney General’s office. “The President…

After years of prioritizing returning cash to shareholders, oil supermajors are about to do something few expected: turning to growth as a top priority. The reason: contrary to dominant expectations, oil and gas will continue to be needed for decades. For years, analysts from some of the most reputable organizations have been predicting a pending decline in oil demand specifically, but also gas demand. The predictions, notably from the International Energy Agency, were based on projections about a widespread adoption of electric vehicles that would…

One of the biggest winners from the new oil order in Venezuela is its neighbor to the east, Guyana, the country that turned into the newest oil producer in the world thanks to ExxonMobil’s massive oil discoveries.  Since Exxon first found oil in Guyana’s offshore Stabroek block a decade ago, one of the poorest South American countries with fewer than 1 million citizens has turned into an economic powerhouse with double-digit growth since 2019, driven by the oil exports and royalties.   Yet, a century-old territorial dispute…

The U.S. Departments of Energy (DOE) and Defense (DoD) have transported a small nuclear reactor from California to Utah on a cargo plane in a bid to demonstrate the potential to rapidly deploy small and micronuclear reactors (SMRs) for both military and civilian use. The Pentagon partnered with California-based Valar Atomics to transport one of its microreactors on a C-17 aircraft to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The SMR was, however, moved without nuclear fuel. “This gets us closer to deploying nuclear power when and where it is needed to…

The renewable energy revolution is running out of land. Building out utility-scale solar and wind farms requires massive tracts of land that are often in competition with other needs – like agricultural operations – and which frequently face major legal and political pushback from communities in the areas targeted for development. All of this is majorly slowing down clean energy buildout at a critical moment for energy security and climate action.  There are a lot of creative solutions under development for solving this issue,…

Central to Iraq’s medium-term target to raise its crude oil production capacity to over 6 million barrels per day (bpd), up from around 4.1 million bpd this year, is the supergiant Rumaila field. One of the very largest oil fields in the world, it began production in the 1950s and, together with the Kirkuk field, has produced around 80% of the country’s cumulative oil production since then. Over the years, it remained a microcosm of the positives and negatives that characterise Iraq’s oil industry: blessed with an early abundance…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 609,000 barrels in the week ending February 13, after increasing by 13.4 million barrels in the week prior. Inventories in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) keep climbing week after week. The Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories rose by 200,000 barrels to 415.4 million barrels in the week ending February 13. This is 310.1 million barrels shy of maximum capacity. US production stopped its fifth week in a row losing…

Some of you may remember devouring those paperbacks with lurid, futuristic covers, imagining the worlds conjured up by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury: the planetary entrepreneurs, the galactic empires, and the firemen who burned books. Back in 1941, Asimov wrote a story about solar power space stations that beamed the energy to Earth.  Arthur C. Clarke later (1951) laid out how to use satellites for communications in The Exploration of Space, but he also noted a German idea, from decades earlier, to put mirrors…

Europe’s carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) market is structurally fragmented. A small group of early movers has built full capture-to-storage systems, while most continental countries remain at the project stage, and France sits in this second tier. Despite its low-carbon power mix, France must cut emissions by about 3% per year, roughly three times its historical pace, to halve emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. According to Rystad Energy, this path requires rapid CCUS deployment and deep integration into…

When Winter Storm Fern swept across much of the United States in mid-January 2026—bringing snow, ice, and sustained sub-zero temperatures from Texas to New England—millions of Americans braced for power outages. In some areas, those fears were realized. Tennessee alone reported more than 245,000 customer outages at peak conditions. At the same time, natural gas prices spiked dramatically, exceeding $30 per MMBtu at certain constrained delivery points within the PJM Interconnection. Yet despite the severity and duration of the storm,…

Giant oil and commodity traders, including Vitol and Trafigura, alongside French Oil & Gas multinational TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE), have won tenders to supply Libya with diesel and gasoline in a clear effort to cut imports of Russian fuel, Reuters reported on Wednesday.  Libya is moving to reboot its oil sector, 15 years after the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi fractured the country’s energy infrastructure and investment climate. Authorities are targeting an increase in crude production from around 1.4 million barrels…

Giant oil and commodity traders, including Vitol and Trafigura, alongside French Oil & Gas multinational TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE), have won tenders to supply Libya with diesel and gasoline in a clear effort to cut imports of Russian fuel, Reuters reported on Wednesday.  Libya is moving to reboot its oil sector, 15 years after the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi fractured the country’s energy infrastructure and investment climate. Authorities are targeting an increase in crude production from around 1.4 million barrels…

Global investment in the energy transition hit a record $2.3 trillion in 2025, good for a 8% increase from 2024, driven by massive spending on electric transport, renewable energy, and grid infrastructure, BloombergNEF has reported. Clean energy spending exceeded total fossil fuel supply investment for the second consecutive year, highlighting accelerated efforts to decarbonize, despite slowing growth rates in some sectors like solar. Electrified Transport was the largest investment category after attracting $893 billion, up 21% from 2024, driven…