A federal judge has allowed antitrust lawsuits accusing some of the biggest U.S. shale producers of coordinating production cuts to keep oil and fuel prices higher to proceed. U.S. District Judge Matthew Garcia in New Mexico rejected efforts by Diamondback Energy, Occidental Petroleum and other producers to dismiss the consolidated litigation. The lawsuits, filed beginning in 2024, allege that producers restrained shale output and ultimately pushed up prices for crude oil, gasoline, diesel and heating oil. Garcia found the plaintiffs had plausibly…

A federal judge has allowed antitrust lawsuits accusing some of the biggest U.S. shale producers of coordinating production cuts to keep oil and fuel prices higher to proceed. U.S. District Judge Matthew Garcia in New Mexico rejected efforts by Diamondback Energy, Occidental Petroleum and other producers to dismiss the consolidated litigation. The lawsuits, filed beginning in 2024, allege that producers restrained shale output and ultimately pushed up prices for crude oil, gasoline, diesel and heating oil. Garcia found the plaintiffs had plausibly…

After years of volatile markets, lithium prices are soaring, and everyone wants a piece. As the battery storage sector goes gangbusters on a global scale, lithium spot prices are seeing a major windfall, with mining companies posting massive profits. As a result, lithium asset dealmaking is also on the rise, and could soon – at long last – put the United States on the map as a key supplier of the ‘white gold.’ The International Energy Agency (IEA) classifies lithium at the highest level of supply risk and price volatility.…

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Gulf oil producers could bypass the Strait of Hormuz within two years, putting a remarkably short timetable on a pipeline buildout that has accelerated since the Iran war disrupted one of the world’s busiest oil routes. “That will be bypassed in two years,” Bessent said Tuesday during a discussion with Larry Kudlow at the G20 financial meetings in Asheville, North Carolina. He went further, predicting that “the Strait of Hormuz will be like a worthless piece of water” within that…

After two weeks of darkness, power has been restored to all the citizens of Gary, Indiana, an old, low income, lakefront, industrial city within sight of Chicago. The outage did get some national publicity, TV stories showing the residents of Gary roaming around in the hot nights, showing empty refrigerators in dark apartments, complaining bitterly. But, you know, not a story as spectacular as when an electric company burned down an entire island or when another one managed to set fire to Pacific Coast towns with glamorous names. Just two weeks…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was briefed by US President Donald Trump’s special envoys following their latest trip to Moscow and said the two Americans were working on plans for a follow-up visit to Kyiv in the near future. Meanwhile, while Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Bishkek to attend a regional summit, Finance ‌Minister Anton Siluanov made a surprise visit to a G20 finance meeting in North Carolina, with some participants expressing anger over the appearance of the country’s representative while…

In 1967, a Maasai herder called Jumanne Mhero Ngoma stumbled across a clump of unusual violet crystals in the Mereli Hills near the Tanzanian city of Arusha. For his discovery, Ngoma was awarded 50,000 shillings – about $22 in today’s money. However, the rights to sell the mineral were awarded to Henry B. Platt, vice president of the American jeweller Tiffany and Co and the great-grandson of its founder, Louis Comfort Tiffany. Platt named the stone ‘Tanzanite’ and boasted in a marketing campaign that the jewel could only…

Shop price inflation has hit a two-year high and is set to climb through the autumn as a surge in energy and commodity costs filters through to consumers, a top business group has found. The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents major supermarkets and high street shops across the UK, warned that shop price inflation increased to 1.5 per cent in the year to August.  The higher rate of price rises compares to a rise of 0.9 per cent in the year to July and a three-month average of 1.2 per cent.  Shop price inflation was at the…

Spot LNG prices in Asia jumped on Tuesday to the highest level since the 2026 winter, as buyers compete for spot cargoes amid the still-stalled LNG traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Asia’s spot LNG price jumped to as high as $24.614 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) on Tuesday, traders told Bloomberg. This was higher than the $23.388 per MMBtu from Friday, and the highest spot price for LNG deliveries into Asia in five months. Prices in both Asia and Europe had jumped at the end of last week after Qatar’s state-owned firm…

U.S.-Iran strikes reignite fears of a prolonged Middle East conflict as Hormuz tensions push regional oil benchmarks above $100. Rising Bond Yields Turn Oil’s Rally Into a Demand Risk - Global bond yields have surged to their highest since 2008, as rising oil prices perpetuate fears of longer-than-assumed inflation, in turn creating a cycle of lower demand further down the road.   - The rally in bond yields started in earnest after new Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Walsh vowed to finally tame US inflation, currently at 3.4%, sending…

The U.S. installed a record-high energy storage capacity in the second quarter of the year as grid operators and utilities turned to storage to boost grid reliability and meet rising power demand, a new industry report showed on Tuesday. The industry installed 20.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of new capacity in the second quarter of the year, making it the largest quarter for installations on record and bringing total installations in the first half of 2026 to 30.8 GWh, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Market Outlook Q3 2026 (ESMO) by the Solar Energy…

The U.S. installed a record-high energy storage capacity in the second quarter of the year as grid operators and utilities turned to storage to boost grid reliability and meet rising power demand, a new industry report showed on Tuesday. The industry installed 20.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of new capacity in the second quarter of the year, making it the largest quarter for installations on record and bringing total installations in the first half of 2026 to 30.8 GWh, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Market Outlook Q3 2026 (ESMO) by the Solar Energy…

The U.S. installed a record-high energy storage capacity in the second quarter of the year as grid operators and utilities turned to storage to boost grid reliability and meet rising power demand, a new industry report showed on Tuesday. The industry installed 20.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of new capacity in the second quarter of the year, making it the largest quarter for installations on record and bringing total installations in the first half of 2026 to 30.8 GWh, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Market Outlook Q3 2026 (ESMO) by the Solar Energy…

The 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s annual gathering got underway August 31 in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, with discussions expected to focus on building trade and digital connections and fostering cultural exchanges. The agenda is seen as aimed at broadly countering US global influence, not so surprising given that the summit’s most prominent attendees include China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Perhaps the most significant discussions will occur…

In just nine months, Russia has doubled the number of opaque-owned vessels that it uses to ship liquefied natural gas from its sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 export project, a Bloomberg analysis of vessel-tracking data showed on Tuesday. As of December 2025, Russia was estimated to have 11 LNG carriers in its dark fleet. Now the number has jumped to at least 20, including the second ice-class vessel that is capable of moving through Arctic waters throughout the whole year, according to Bloomberg’s analysis. Since Arctic LNG 2 was sanctioned by the…

Two oil supertankers have been hit by unknown projectiles while transiting the Strait of Hormuz outbound from the Persian Gulf, maritime risk management firm Marisks said on Tuesday, as tensions in the Middle East flared up again this week and put the tentative oil flow recovery at risk. The Sidr very large crude carrier (VLCC), operated by Saudi Arabia’s state shipping giant Bahri, was hit by unknown projectiles northeast of Khasab, Oman, Marisks said, as carried by Bloomberg. The other supertanker that was hit was the Senegal Prosperity,…

Plastics remanufacturing is the industry everyone wishes they’d gotten into earlier, with McKinsey seeing as much as $75 billion in economic opportunity by 2035 for technologies capable of putting the world’s plastic waste back to work. And Denovia has just taken its biggest step toward capturing a piece of that market, signing a strategic framework with a major international polyester producer that could eventually take its technology into billions of pounds of annual processing capacity. The agreement starts with a planned commercial…

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its heavy crude is particularly well suited to the sophisticated refineries lining the U.S. Gulf Coast. More Venezuelan oil should help U.S. refiners, but that doesn’t translate directly into lower prices at the pump. Trump announced Friday that the U.S. had secured majority control over Venezuelan fields containing more than 65 billion barrels of oil, saying the agreement would greatly increase U.S. supply and substantially lower gasoline prices “long into the future.”…

The severe disruption of oil and gas flows out of the Persian Gulf resulting from the war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran, has saddled energy-importing nations with soaring bills, supply uncertainty, and a murky outlook. However, there has been a silver lining: a rush to build alternative conduits for bringing oil and gas out of the Middle East. The global total energy import bill swelled by $330 billion over the six months between March and August, Finnish climate outlet Centre for Energy Research and Clean Air reported earlier this month.…

The renewed trade war between the United States and Canada adds even more uncertainty to the complex steel and aluminum supply chains critical for heavy manufacturing and North America’s automotive industry. Last week’s breakdown in trade talks led to a quick escalation of tariffs and counter-tariffs, which the two close trading partners announced on each other’s imports. The trade war escalation will hit trade in key metals such as steel and aluminum and force producers and importers to seek longer-term solutions to the heightened…