Politics, Geopolitics & Conflict Yemen’s Houthis said they targeted Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery with two drones on Thursday, the second claimed attack on the Red Sea facility in less than a week and the third since July 25. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Aramco has confirmed the attack as of the time of writing. Bloomberg cited a person familiar with the incident as saying a storage tank sustained negligible damage. Last month, the Houthis threatened to blockade Saudi oil flows and have also attacked Saudi targets and shipping in the…

Syrian oil is clawing its way back, methodically. Onshore, the immediate issue is returning Syria’s existing oil production to Damascus. Most producing fields are concentrated in Deir ez-Zor and Hasakah in the northeast, territory Damascus lost during the civil war, eventually to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Courtesy of a January military offensive against the SDF, Damascus has recovered the most important Deir ez-Zor assets, including the largest (Omar), the Tanak oil field, and the Conoco gas field. The Syrian Petroleum…

Ust-Luga, the top Russian port for exports of oil and other commodities from the Baltic Sea, caught fire early on Friday following an overnight drone attack from Ukraine. A fire was detected at the port of Ust-Luga as a result of damage from drones, Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s Leningrad region, said in a post on Telegram on Friday. Firefighters are working to extinguish the fire, with operations ongoing, the official said. In a separate statement later, Drozdenko posted that “All consequences of the attack in the port…

For years, U.S. President Donald Trump has openly displayed his disdain for the clean energy and electric vehicle sectors. In the early days of his second term, Trump stalled funding for EV charging infrastructure while pushing fossil fuels. In July 2025, the GOP-sponsored One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) rolled back EV incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, terminating the $7,500 new and $4,000 used EV tax credits in September 2025, and cutting back infrastructure and manufacturing subsidies. Yet, this giant push to secure the domestic…

Mexico’s push for fuel self-sufficiency has run into a stubborn problem: Pemex has built and upgraded refining capacity faster than it has learned to operate it reliably. The state oil company is being asked to send more crude into domestic refineries and less onto the export market, a strategy that looks increasingly sensible when refined products’ cracks are strong. But the second quarter of 2026 showed the weakness of that model. Mexican refineries processed only around 1 million b/d (58% of installed capacity), while fuel imports…

U.S. demand for electricity is expected to hit an all-time high both this year and next, driven by the data center buildout of Big Tech. This is the latest in a series of record-demand projections by the Energy Information Administration. There is one problem, though. That problem is the grid. Electricity consumption in the United States has already had two record-breaking years: 2024 and 2025. The trend is seen extending and possibly accelerating because of the IT industry and its artificial intelligence race, hitting 4,268 billion kWh this year…

China has driven the world’s solar energy deployment, adding capacity at such a blistering rate that the nation’s existing and planned wind and solar generation nearly doubles the rest of the world put together. However, China’s deployment of supportive infrastructure for all that new solar has not kept pace, leading to curtailment during peak hours and increased quantities of wasted clean energy. But Beijing is working hard to fix that problem, and a brand new, state-of-the-art thermal solar farm may provide a critical solution.…

In 2007, nearly two decades ago, I wrote an article called “The Future Is Solar.” At the time, my argument was largely based on efficiency. I had been comparing biofuels with direct solar energy and noted how much more effectively solar panels could capture the sun’s energy than crops could convert it into liquid fuel. Solar was still expensive, storage was a major challenge, and the world’s energy infrastructure was built around fossil fuels. But the direction seemed clear. It has been a long time coming, but the numbers…

Washington is putting real money behind advanced nuclear. The US Department of Energy is gearing up to hand X-energy another $1 billion for its planned nuclear project with Dow in Texas, bringing total federal funding available for the project since 2021 to as much as $2.15 billion. That is no longer demonstration-project pocket change. CEO Clay Sell said Thursday that DOE had informed X-energy of the additional funding through the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is intended to move next-generation reactors toward commercial deployment.…

Washington is putting real money behind advanced nuclear. The US Department of Energy is gearing up to hand X-energy another $1 billion for its planned nuclear project with Dow in Texas, bringing total federal funding available for the project since 2021 to as much as $2.15 billion. That is no longer demonstration-project pocket change. CEO Clay Sell said Thursday that DOE had informed X-energy of the additional funding through the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is intended to move next-generation reactors toward commercial deployment.…

Washington is putting real money behind advanced nuclear. The US Department of Energy is gearing up to hand X-energy another $1 billion for its planned nuclear project with Dow in Texas, bringing total federal funding available for the project since 2021 to as much as $2.15 billion. That is no longer demonstration-project pocket change. CEO Clay Sell said Thursday that DOE had informed X-energy of the additional funding through the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is intended to move next-generation reactors toward commercial deployment.…

Russia’s diesel and gasoil exports crashed in the first seven days of August to just 80,000 barrels per day (bpd), the lowest in many years, as Moscow extended restrictions on diesel exports amid a fuel crisis triggered by incessant Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. The multi-year low diesel exports between August 1 and 7, as estimated by data compiled by Bloomberg, are further squeezing the global market of middle distillates, which is much tighter than crude supply. To compare, Russia last year shipped as many as 1 million bpd of…

Oil supply disruptions, high fuel prices and faster battery innovation could give electric vehicle adoption a fresh push, with consequences for oil demand, power grids and metals markets, Wood Mackenzie said Thursday. Wars affecting oil-producing Russia and Iran have exposed governments and consumers to higher fuel prices and supply risks, creating another incentive to invest in EV manufacturing and supply chains, WoodMac said in a new report. Technology is moving quickly, too. China is making progress on five-minute charging as well as sodium-ion…

Oil supply disruptions, high fuel prices and faster battery innovation could give electric vehicle adoption a fresh push, with consequences for oil demand, power grids and metals markets, Wood Mackenzie said Thursday. Wars affecting oil-producing Russia and Iran have exposed governments and consumers to higher fuel prices and supply risks, creating another incentive to invest in EV manufacturing and supply chains, WoodMac said in a new report. Technology is moving quickly, too. China is making progress on five-minute charging as well as sodium-ion…

Amid a thicket of hopeful rhetoric surrounding the construction of a trans-Afghan pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to South Asia, tangible signs of progress are hard to find. The pipeline, known as TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India), has been on the drawing board for decades, and construction of the first leg of the route, a 153-kilometer stretch from the Turkmen border at Serhetabat to the western Afghan city of Herat, is by most accounts inching along. Turkmenistan’s paramount leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov,…

Brent crude futures held near recent highs of $90 a barrel before fading to around $87 early Thursday morning, as traders awaited progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Stalled US-Iran negotiations and tightening global fuel supplies continued to support prices and concern some top energy experts, who warn of a looming supply shock.  US-Iran talks remain deadlocked to end the week as the Trump administration maintains its blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran demands compensation for war-related damage. Pakistan,…

Porsche is reportedly preparing to phase out production of its flagship Taycan electric sports car by 2030, marking a major setback for the German automaker’s once-aggressive electrification strategy. Germany’s WirtschaftsWoche reported Thursday that Porsche management and its works council have agreed in principle to end Taycan production by 2030, citing company sources. Porsche did not confirm the report, instead referring to comments from CEO Michael Leiters in July that there were no immediate plans to discontinue the model. The…

The UK economy grew 0.4 per cent between April and June, official data has revealed, in a sign that businesses and consumers have so far weathered the worst shocks of the war in Iran. The growth figure from the Office for National Statistics was in line with analysts’ expectations but came alongside a surprise boost of 0.3 per cent in June, ahead of forecasts. Figures for May were revised down from 0.1 per cent growth to no growth. City economists polled by Bloomberg had predicted that growth in the second quarter would be 0.4 per cent while…

Ukraine struck another major Russian refinery Thursday, hitting Gazprom's Neftekhim Salavat complex in the Urals as Kyiv intensified attacks that have already forced Moscow to curb fuel exports and even import gasoline. The attack caused a fire at the 200,000-barrel-per-day facility in Russia's Bashkortostan region, about 750 miles east of Moscow, according to Ukraine's General Staff. Regional governor Radiy Khabirov said falling drone debris started a fire in Salavat's industrial area but did not identify the damaged facility. Neftekhim Salavat…

For months now, traders and market analysts have had to weigh two opposing scenarios for oil prices—the ongoing war and severely disrupted oil flows at the Strait of Hormuz and hopes that a U.S.-Iran deal would free up millions of barrels of oil and refined products trapped in the Persian Gulf. For five and a half months of negotiations, threats, Iranian attacks on tankers, U.S. blockades on Iran’s oil exports, and numerous pledges of “strong responses” from both sides, oil prices have spiked and crashed so many times that…