Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA has started reducing oil production and has asked its joint ventures, including those with Chevron, to also cut output, as storage space is running out amid the U.S. naval blockade and oil export embargo.   PDVSA has asked Petrolera Sinovensa, its joint venture with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), as well as its joint ventures with Chevron – Petropiar and Petroboscan, to reduce production via shutting off some wells and clusters, sources with knowledge of the operations have told…

Shares in supermajor Chevron and the biggest U.S. refiners soared in pre-market trade on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump opened the door to American investment in Venezuela’s oil industry following the capture of Nicolas Maduro.  Chevron, which is currently the only U.S. and Western oil firm authorized by the United States to operate in Venezuela, saw its shares jump by 6% in pre-market trade.   Chevron, as well as other integrated U.S. oil companies, are set to benefit from the touted opening of Venezuela’s…

Venezuela has shipped out about a dozen oil tankers carrying crude and petroleum products in recent days, with vessels departing in dark mode, TankerTrackers.com said on Monday.  All these tankers that have stealthily left Venezuela have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, according to TankerTrackers.com data cited by Reuters. The dozen or so departures have taken place despite the U.S. blockade off Venezuela, which is aimed at preventing sanctioned tankers from going to and from the South American country.  It was not immediately clear…

Venezuela has shipped out about a dozen oil tankers carrying crude and petroleum products in recent days, with vessels departing in dark mode, TankerTrackers.com said on Monday.  All these tankers that have stealthily left Venezuela have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, according to TankerTrackers.com data cited by Reuters. The dozen or so departures have taken place despite the U.S. blockade off Venezuela, which is aimed at preventing sanctioned tankers from going to and from the South American country.  It was not immediately clear…

With deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a US jail, President Donald Trump warned the South American country's authoritarian rulers they will "pay a very big price” if they don't “cooperate” with Washington, even amid global concerns over the US military strike. Trump, in an interview published on January 4 in The Atlantic, warned acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” The leftist Rodriguez,…

Billions of barrels of Venezuela’s oil claimed by major state-owned Chinese and Russian companies under current deals are now in doubt following the U.S. capture of Nicolas Maduro, according to investment bank Morgan Stanley.   Oil giant and top Asian refiner China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec, is entitled to as many as 2.8 billion of barrels under current agreements with Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA, per a note by Morgan Stanley Research cited by Bloomberg. That’s the single biggest clam by a…

Throughout history, the United States has frequently intervened militarily to secure and protect its oil interests. What makes Saturday morning’s capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro different is that, this time, the stated motive was clear.  In 1953, after Iran’s Prime Minister, Mosaddegh, nationalized Anglo-Iranian oil interests, the U.S. and UK initiated Operation Ajax in order to oust him from power and regain control of the oil. It wasn’t until August 2013 that the CIA officially admitted to its role…

The United States will keep what it calls an oil quarantine on Venezuela even after U.S. forces bombed Caracas and captured President Nicolas Maduro. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, this quarantine is as far as the U.S. “running Venezuela” would go. “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking,” the top official said, clarifying earlier statements by…

Singapore is a 277-square-mile thermodynamic miracle, or perhaps a financial one, depending on which ledger you prefer to read. I’ve spent enough time looking at industrial clusters to know that space is the ultimate friction point. In Singapore, that friction is becoming heat. Data from the IEA and regional market trackers reveals a country that has built an empire on "transformation"...taking raw inputs it doesn't own and turning them into high-value outputs the rest of the world craves.  It refined 1.7 million terajoules of oil products…

On Thursday, January 1st, the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism entered into effect with the goal of improving the competitiveness of European goods manufacturers against non-EU companies operating in laxer emissions reduction frameworks. China was the first to threaten retaliation. It won’t be the last. The carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM for short, was devised to remedy the unintended effects of the world’s most stringent emission-reduction standards for the industrial sphere, namely, sky-high costs that make the end…

Several countries in Southeast Asia continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, including coal, for their power supply. This is contributing heavily to an increase in emissions. However, multiple states in the region have now introduced green transition strategies aimed at decarbonising their economies by cutting emissions and gradually shifting reliance away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives. Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia are three of the Asian countries looking to ramp up their renewable energy capacities in the coming years…

The white hydrogen boom could be within sight based on recent finds in France, the United States, and other parts of the world. However, developers are still not sure of the costs involved with exploiting white hydrogen resources, as well as the technical challenges to accessing reserves, making the outlook uncertain. Unlike other low-carbon forms of hydrogen, such as blue and green hydrogen, white hydrogen is naturally occurring.  The geologic hydrogen, often referred to as natural or white hydrogen, is produced naturally when underground…

OPEC+ confirmed on Sunday that it will keep oil production steady through the first quarter of 2026, as eight key producers reaffirmed their commitment to market stability amid a steady global economic outlook and what they described as healthy oil market fundamentals. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman met virtually on January 4 to review global market conditions and outlook. The group reiterated its decision, first announced on November 2, 2025, to pause planned production increases in…

OPEC+ is expected to reaffirm its decision to keep oil production steady through the first quarter of 2026 when key members meet on Sunday, despite rising geopolitical tensions and fresh uncertainty surrounding Venezuela, according to multiple delegates and industry sources. The eight OPEC+ countries currently implementing voluntary production curbs — Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman — agreed in November to pause planned output increases for January through March, citing seasonal demand weakness.…

Over two days during the short 2025 summer beyond the Arctic Circle, a mining company moved a 113-year-old timber church building in its entirety nearly two miles away, in an engineering feat that made international headlines. The moving of the Kiruna Church from the Swedish town of the same name, created by the iron ore mining industry, wasn’t a solitary feat. The relocation of the church is part of a decades-long project by Sweden-based mining company LKAB, which is relocating the entire town of Kiruna to expand iron ore mining and tap…

For years, energy experts have predicted that natural gas will be the only fossil fuel that will see significant growth in its share in the global primary energy mix in the coming years, thanks to its role as a "bridge fuel" due to a lower emission profile compared with coal and oil as well as flexibility for grid stability, especially with increasing demand in Asia and as a backup for renewables. Natural gas is poised to reshape Africa’s future, offering transformative pathways for countries to earn export revenues and achieve domestic industrialization.…

From devastating wildfires to swirling cloud vortices, NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites captured remarkable views of our planet throughout 2025. As Visual Capitalist's Nick Routley shows below, these images reveal both the beauty and fragility of Earth’s systems, documenting natural phenomena, climate events, and human impacts visible from space. All images featured in this article come from NASA’s Earth Observatory, captured by instruments aboard a variety of satellites in orbit around Earth. Together, they tell the…

Suriname’s government, in the capital Paramaribo, has been hungrily eyeing neighboring Guyana’s massive world-class oil boom since before the 2020 pandemic. Both impoverished South American nations of less than one million share the Guyana Suriname Basin. The offshore basin is delivering an oil boom that is exceeding all expectations, making Guyana, based on GDP per capita, one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Suriname, which is one of South America’s poorest countries and is experiencing a deep, long-running economic crisis,…

The geopolitical landscape of the Western Hemisphere shifted violently Saturday morning. In a nighttime operation that mirrors the 1989 capture of Manuel Noriega, U.S. special operations forces—reportedly including the Army’s Delta Force—struck Caracas and seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. President Donald Trump confirmed the capture on social media, describing it as a "large-scale strike" conducted alongside law enforcement.  Maduro is currently being flown to the United States…

U.S. liquefied natural gas exports set new records in 2025 as new capacity came online and existing terminals ran at high utilization, pushing annual shipments past levels previously thought years away. Preliminary data from LSEG show the United States exported 111 million metric tons of LNG last year, making it the first country to surpass the 100-million-ton threshold in a single year. That volume puts U.S. exports nearly 20 million tons ahead of Qatar and about 23 million tons above 2024 levels, reinforcing the country’s position as the…