The Trump administration has revealed the details of its “economic D-Day” campaign against Iran, expanding secondary sanctions that threaten foreign companies with exclusion from the U.S. financial system for continuing to do business with Tehran and targeting nearly 60 individuals, entities and vessels in the first round of new measures. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday formally launched “Operation Economic Outcast,” giving countries a defined, but unspecified, timeline to shut down Iran-related activity identified…

Norway is producing oil and gas faster than the industry is finding new resources, increasing the risk of a steep decline after 2030, according to a new report from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate. The warning comes despite strong current activity. Norwegian oil production reached its highest level since 2009 last year, while petroleum investment in 2026 is estimated at approximately $25 billion. Much of today’s spending supports projects and discoveries made years ago. Maintaining production beyond this decade will require more exploration,…

TotalEnergies will invest in two major oil pipelines designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, backing Abu Dhabi’s expansion of its Fujairah export route and a planned pipeline carrying Iraqi crude through Syria to the Mediterranean. CEO Patrick Pouyanné announced the commitments Monday at the ONS energy conference in Norway, two months after saying investment in alternative Gulf export routes had become an “absolute priority” for TotalEnergies following the paralysis of Hormuz during the Iran war. The company has not disclosed…

The United States has fingered over 40 countries, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as alleged accomplices in helping China engage in tariff evasion schemes designed to maintain the country’s US-bound exports, according to a Trump Administration white paper. Titled the Great Transshipment Scam, the White House document assails China for engaging in mercantilist practices that run counter to World Trade Organization principles. It identifies countries that are aiding China’s efforts to evade US trade restrictions,…

17 August marked the 240th anniversary of American folk hero Davy Crockett -- ‘King of the Wild Frontier’, as the old song goes. It also marked the official end of the 60-day period for negotiations to end the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Whether U.S. President Donald Trump sees himself as King of his own Wild Frontier is anyone’s guess. And whether he will have an affectionate song written about him in the year to come remains to be seen. But, judging from the current situation in and around Iran, and its ongoing global…

An attack on an energy facility which was shut down for four days last month was carried out by hackers linked to the Iranian regime. The cyberattack, which is believed to be the first time Iranian-affiliated hackers have successfully infiltrated a UK energy facility, shutting it down. A government spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said the energy facility was a “small scale energy generator.” The spokesperson added that “at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system” or the…

Natural gas prices in Europe need to jump by December for European storage to fill up with enough inventory for the coming winter if the Strait of Hormuz crisis persists and keeps spot LNG prices in Asia elevated, according to Goldman Sachs. Since the Middle East crisis began, Europe has started losing the competition with Asia for spot LNG supply amid spiking prices in the absence of most Qatari LNG term volumes. The Iran war and the intensified competition from Asia came just as Europe is trying to build in the spring and summer natural gas inventories…

Natural gas prices in Europe need to jump by December for European storage to fill up with enough inventory for the coming winter if the Strait of Hormuz crisis persists and keeps spot LNG prices in Asia elevated, according to Goldman Sachs. Since the Middle East crisis began, Europe has started losing the competition with Asia for spot LNG supply amid spiking prices in the absence of most Qatari LNG term volumes. The Iran war and the intensified competition from Asia came just as Europe is trying to build in the spring and summer natural gas inventories…

Natural gas prices in Europe need to jump by December for European storage to fill up with enough inventory for the coming winter if the Strait of Hormuz crisis persists and keeps spot LNG prices in Asia elevated, according to Goldman Sachs. Since the Middle East crisis began, Europe has started losing the competition with Asia for spot LNG supply amid spiking prices in the absence of most Qatari LNG term volumes. The Iran war and the intensified competition from Asia came just as Europe is trying to build in the spring and summer natural gas inventories…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's push to bolster international support and receive additional air defenses continues on August 24 as the so-called Coalition of the Willing meets to discuss ways to pressure Russia to halt its invasion months ahead of another likely brutal winter. The summit -- with some leaders attending in person in Kyiv and others joining by video conference -- will be held on the day Ukraine is celebrating the 35th anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union, and comes a day after a grouping of Baltic and Nordic…

Iran has blacklisted 45 oil, LNG, LPG and product tankers using the Strait of Hormuz, threatening fines, detention and cargo confiscation as Tehran retaliates against Washington’s looming “economic D-Day.” The list includes vessels owned by shipping companies tied to two of the Gulf’s biggest oil producers, including Saudi Arabia’s Bahri and ADNOC Logistics & Services and its Navig8 Tankers subsidiary, according to Reuters. Iran’s newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority said the 45 vessels had violated…

Norwegian oil and gas firms Equinor and Aker BP have made a gas and condensate discovery close to the operating Balder field in the North Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the regulator of the industry in Norway, said on Monday. Equinor and Aker BP had an exploration well drilled in a production license 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of the Balder field and 205 kilometers (127 miles) west of Stavanger, a major oil services hub in Norway. Preliminary estimates indicate the size of the discovery is between 0.1 and 2.1 million standard…

Norwegian oil and gas firms Equinor and Aker BP have made a gas and condensate discovery close to the operating Balder field in the North Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the regulator of the industry in Norway, said on Monday. Equinor and Aker BP had an exploration well drilled in a production license 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of the Balder field and 205 kilometers (127 miles) west of Stavanger, a major oil services hub in Norway. Preliminary estimates indicate the size of the discovery is between 0.1 and 2.1 million standard…

Norwegian oil and gas firms Equinor and Aker BP have made a gas and condensate discovery close to the operating Balder field in the North Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the regulator of the industry in Norway, said on Monday. Equinor and Aker BP had an exploration well drilled in a production license 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of the Balder field and 205 kilometers (127 miles) west of Stavanger, a major oil services hub in Norway. Preliminary estimates indicate the size of the discovery is between 0.1 and 2.1 million standard…

The Norwegian government is asking the country’s Supreme Court to overturn lower-court rulings that invalidated the development permits of three new oilfields in Norway’s North Sea. The case was brought to court three years ago by environmental organizations Greenpeace Nordic and Nature og Ungdom (Nature & Youth). In 2023, the campaigners challenged three administrative decisions of the Norwegian Energy Ministry, which had approved the plan for the development and operation of the oil and gas fields of Breidablikk, Yggdrasil, and…

The outlook for the Middle East war remains grim, the U.S. just threatened Iran with the “toughest sanctions in history,” and the world is running out of stored fuels. To make matters worse, refining capacity is down considerably, and even if the outlook for the war suddenly changed and the U.S. and Iran made peace, the fuel squeeze will last for months—and so will its adverse effects on the global economy. Watching crude oil prices, one would think everything is under control. Both Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate are…

Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex and Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras are joining efforts and expertise to drill prospects in Mexican waters in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to unlock huge oil resources from source rock formations that are miles deeper and eight times older than the currently producing formations in the U.S. Gulf. Exploration in the Jurassic formations deep under the Mexican Gulf seabed in the Campeche Bay carries high risks, but the reward in case of a discovery could be enormous, geologists and analysts tell Bloomberg.…

The world is set to experience an extremely intense El Niño weather event this year, with warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. This could disrupt typical weather patterns and lead to heavy rainfall in some regions and severe drought in others. While it is unclear whether the more frequent occurrence of El Niño is directly linked to human-caused climate change, it is certainly exacerbating extreme weather patterns in some parts of the world.  El Niño occurs every few years, but this year…

While it seems that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on much of anything these days, there’s at least one common enemy that’s bringing both sides of the aisle together: data centers. Representatives on both sides of the aisle are increasingly pushing back against hyperscalers who are developing massive data center campuses on local energy grids, driving up energy demand and therefore causing electricity prices to skyrocket for everyone, whether they benefit from the artificial intelligence boom or not. The Trump administration…

A Seattle startup is seeking to revolutionize geothermal energy by tapping into undersea volcanoes. In September, a 100-kilowatt geothermal generator will be deployed to the seafloor off Oregon’s coast, where a hydrothermal vent emits temperatures of up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit. The pilot project – the fifth of its kind – will continue to test the viability of turning that heat into commercially competitive, round-the-clock, and totally emissions-free electricity.  The team behind the project at Endurance Energy believes…