The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 2.188 million barrels in the week ending May 8. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by 8.1 million barrels. Analysts had expected a 1.65 million-barrel draw for the current reporting period. US crude inventories are up 35 million barrels so far this year, according to API data. Inventories in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) continue to draw down in an attempt to alleviate the pressure on prices. For week ending May 8, 8.6…

After more than five months of political cajolery, threats, and infighting since Iraq’s 11 November parliamentary elections – the seventh since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003 – an erstwhile obscure businessman, Ali al-Zaidi, has been selected as the Prime Minister-designate of the governing Iran-aligned Shia Coordination Framework bloc. Regarded as a compromise candidate between more pro-West sitting Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, and one of his predecessors, the pro-Iran Nouri al-Maliki, al-Zaidi now has…

The Trump administration is considering a temporary removal of the federal gas tax in response to soaring retail fuel prices that have dampened consumer sentiment, sending it to its lowest since the early 1950s. “I think it's a great idea,” the President told CBS News in an interview Monday. “Yup, we're going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we'll let it phase back in.” The remarks of the President echo a suggestion by Energy Secretary Chris Wright made on Sunday, about the administration…

Iraq may soon have a new prime minister as the Coordination Framework, Iraq’s largest parliamentary bloc and a coalition of Shia Arab political forces,  nominated businessman Ali al-Zaidi for the post, hoping to break a deadlock between caretaker prime minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani and former prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who was previously nominated for the post. U.S. president Donald Trump spoke to Zaidi and pronounced himself satisfied: “With our help, he won, and we want him to do very well.” Trump may have felt…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Tuesday as Kyiv pushes deeper into artificial intelligence to fight Russia, building on a months-old partnership that is already reshaping how Ukraine targets incoming drones and plans strikes inside Russian territory. The meeting came as Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took the role in January, said more than 100 companies are now training over 80 AI models to detect and intercept aerial targets through the Brave1 Dataroom, a secure platform Kyiv launched…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is about to hand oil traders another thing to obsessively refresh between API inventory data drops and Strait of Hormuz headlines. Starting Wednesday, the EIA will publish a new quarterly report that tracks global strategic petroleum reserves and energy flows through major shipping choke points, including through the world’s most nerve-wracking stretch of water right now: the Strait of Hormuz. The additional data will add to the hyperfixation that currently exists in the oil market on the fallout…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is about to hand oil traders another thing to obsessively refresh between API inventory data drops and Strait of Hormuz headlines. Starting Wednesday, the EIA will publish a new quarterly report that tracks global strategic petroleum reserves and energy flows through major shipping choke points, including through the world’s most nerve-wracking stretch of water right now: the Strait of Hormuz. The additional data will add to the hyperfixation that currently exists in the oil market on the fallout…

Copper is defying the 'war discount' usually applied to industrial metals, nearing an all-time high on Monday as a brutal supply crunch proves more powerful than the threat of a global recession The three-month contract on the London Metal Exchange climbed as much as 0.5% to $13,643 a ton, its strongest intraday print since the January 29 spike that briefly carried prices above $14,500, according to Bloomberg. The rally extended across the LME complex. Aluminum jumped more than 2%, nickel added 1.9%, and the exchange's all-in price gauge closed…

Eni is looking to squeeze more cash out of LNG without giving up control of the business. Reuters reported Tuesday that the Italian energy major has hired Morgan Stanley to explore a potential deal involving its floating LNG assets, with infrastructure giants including Apollo, KKR, and Stonepeak reportedly approached in early-stage discussions. The structure under consideration would allow outside investors to inject capital into a vehicle tied to cash flows from Eni’s floating LNG operations. The deal could raise at least €1 billion…

Brent crude nears $110 as Trump warns the Iran ceasefire is on “life support,” while Gulf producers signal oil infrastructure repairs may stretch into 2027. China’s Oil Machine Hits the Brakes: Imports Sink, Margins Tank, Pressure Rises - With Gulf supply still stranded, China’s crude imports posted a hefty 2.4 million b/d month-over-month decline in April, averaging only 9.25 million b/d and marking the lowest pace of inflows since July 2022. - Apart from the obvious sourcing problems all Asian refiners face nowadays, Chinese…

The tiny impoverished South American country of Suriname has been battling for six years to launch a petroleum boom, which pundits believe will replicate neighboring Guyana’s oil rush. A combination of poor drilling results, high gas-to-oil ratio, and mismatched seismic data delayed the emergence of what could be South America’s last great offshore oil boom. Suriname’s favorable regulatory environment and low break-even prices, coupled with the recent price shock following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, will drive greater investment…

Spiking LNG prices and reduced supply from the Middle East have prompted Japan and South Korea to raise coal power generation and coal imports in recent weeks. Gas-fired power generation in Japan and South Korea, the world’s second- and third-largest LNG importers after China, slumped to multi-month lows in April and early May. That’s because supply from the Middle East crashed with no Qatari shipment passing through the Strait of Hormuz between February 28 and this past weekend, when the first cargo cleared the chokepoint bound for…

As the world grapples with the most serious oil and gas supply crunch in history, energy security has come front and center for every government on the planet. Some have touted electrification as a way of weathering the crisis and avoiding future ones. Realists, both in politics and industry, however, are focusing on what the oil and gas industry has been warning about for years: the need for more investment in exploration.  “Production and recovery represent the most immediate path to incremental barrels, and as customers continue to…

Qatar has requested LNG vessels near its Ras Laffan LNG port to switch off their transponders as part of safety measures at the key export port of the world’s second-largest LNG exporter before the war, anonymous sources with knowledge of the plan told Bloomberg on Tuesday.   The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped about 20% of daily global LNG flows, mostly those previously shipping out of Qatar and part of the UAE’s LNG flows.  In addition, Iranian drone and missile strikes on energy infrastructure…

Qatar has requested LNG vessels near its Ras Laffan LNG port to switch off their transponders as part of safety measures at the key export port of the world’s second-largest LNG exporter before the war, anonymous sources with knowledge of the plan told Bloomberg on Tuesday.   The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped about 20% of daily global LNG flows, mostly those previously shipping out of Qatar and part of the UAE’s LNG flows.  In addition, Iranian drone and missile strikes on energy infrastructure…

The latest exchange between Washington and Tehran over a proposed path toward de-escalation has raised new questions about what comes next in the growing crisis around the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump described Iran’s latest response to a US-backed proposal as “totally unacceptable,” even as both sides continue to signal interest in negotiations over sanctions relief, nuclear restrictions, and the future of shipping through the strategic waterway. Analysts in Washington say the standoff is increasingly testing assumptions…

Brazil more than doubled the volume of its oil exports to China, with export values also nearly doubling, in the first quarter of 2026 from a year earlier, as the Middle East conflict and the closed Strait of Hormuz are re-arranging global commodity flows.  The value of Brazil’s crude oil exports to China surged by 94.6% to $7.2 billion in the first quarter, per Brazilian government data compiled by the Brazil-China Business Council. The volume of oil exports, 16 million metric tons, was 122% higher compared to the first quarter of 2025,…

India may have to eventually reckon with how long its major state-owned fuel retailers could sustain losses amid soaring international prices and artificially lowered prices at home, according to Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. India’s oil marketing companies (OMCs) are selling gasoline and diesel below market prices, as the world’s third-largest crude importer looks to shield consumers in the world’s most populous country from soaring prices at the pump. Eventually, the authorities may have to assess how long these fuel retailers…

Roughly 40 years ago, the United States made a decision that seemed perfectly rational at the time: it stopped processing rare earths. The economics didn’t make sense when China could do it cheaper, so U.S. facilities closed…the expertise scattered…and an entire layer of industrial capability mostly disappeared from North American soil. REalloys (Nasdaq: ALOY) is the company now working to undo the four decades of neglect that have followed…and the reason it matters is that the expertise it holds may be the single hardest…

After a series of failed and costly attempts to revamp its aging refineries, Nigeria’s national oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), has signed a new agreement with Chinese firms to revive its moribund facilities. The NNPC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xinganchen (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd for the completion, operation and maintenance of the Port Harcourt (210,000 bpd) and Warri (125,000 bpd) refineries under a Technical…