Recently signed deals between Georgia and Azerbaijan are raising fresh questions about Tbilisi’s strategic direction and energy security. The deals flowed out of a May 18 meeting in Baku between Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Those talks occurred just weeks after Aliyev’s visit to Tbilisi, where he also met Georgia’s de facto ruler, Bidzina Ivanishvili. Despite their political significance, the full texts of the agreements signed while Kobakhidze was in Baku remain undisclosed,…

Brent crude is heading for its biggest weekly drop in two months as markets bet on a 60-day ceasefire extension and partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. ICE Brent is set to post its largest weekly loss in two months, dropping by almost 10%, as media reports present a 60-day extension of the current ceasefire and a temporary Hormuz navigation deal as close to being a done deal. Whether US President Trump and Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei agree to the deal or not, Brent at $92 per barrel suddenly feels much more comfortable for oil importers.…

The Philippines has received its first cargo of Iranian crude, Reuters reported on Friday, citing tanker-tracking data from Kpler and Vortexa. A Suezmax vessel capable of carrying up to 1 million barrels of crude that departed from Iran's Kharg Island in late March made a ship-to-ship transfer offshore Singapore onto another tanker, which delivered the oil to the Bataan refinery in the Philippines in the middle of May, according to the data. The delivery was the first Iranian cargo to the Philippines, which is one of the Asian countries worst hit…

India's economy remains resilient to the external shocks, but the oil price surge amid the global supply disruption poses near-term downside risks to economic growth and upside risks to inflation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its Annual Report for 2025-26 published on Friday. "Against the backdrop of a moderate global growth, the outlook for the Indian economy in 2026-27 remains positive, supported by strong macroeconomic fundamentals, although a prolonged West Asia conflict may pose downside risk," economists at India's central bank…

Just about two months ago, JPMorgan did the math on "How Long Before The World Hits Crude Oil Operational Minimum." The punchline was that while the market can hold hundreds of millions of barrels, it would still become fragile once working stocks fell too low. Like blood pressure in the human body, the issue is circulation. Then, approximately 4 weeks later, the bank followed up this analysis with some more math, explaining "Why Hormuz Will Reopen By September... One Way Or Another." The bank calculated that of the 8.4 billion barrels in global…

Early on Friday, oil prices were on track to plunge by 19% in May as traders and speculators bet on an extended ceasefire and an eventual U.S.-Iran deal despite the biggest physical supply disruption in history. Brent Crude prices were poised to drop by 19% in May by the end of the trade day on Friday, which would be the steepest monthly decline in prices since 2020. Early on Friday, Brent Crude front-month futures traded flat at $93.84 per barrel, while the U.S. benchmark, WTI Crude, was down by 0.12% at $88.94 a barrel. The slump in prices in…

July WTI crude oil suffered its largest weekly decline in months as traders aggressively removed geopolitical risk premium from the market on growing hopes that diplomacy between Washington and Tehran could eventually succeed. Through Thursday, May 28, July WTI crude oil traded between a high of $94.70 and a low of $87.11 before settling at $88.60, down $8.40, or 8.66%, for the week. The selloff was notable because it occurred while many of the bullish supply factors that drove crude sharply higher earlier this year remained in place. Traffic through…

Politics, Geopolitics & Conflict Austerity measures in Bolivia have gone too far, too fast, putting the president’s political longevity in question. Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz, who came into office six months ago, backed by Washington and promising market-oriented reforms during a severe economic crisis, is now facing nationwide unrest after scrapping fuel subsidies, pursuing austerity measures, and attempting land reforms that triggered fears of consolidation by larger agricultural interests. What began as protests from small farmers…

Energy is usually seen as quite a conservative sector for investors. Constant demand for the product and relatively high dividend payouts create investments that, while not immune from risk, are often seen as a safe play, as somewhere to hide in troubled times. That, though, is an oversimplification. While there will always be a growing demand for energy as long as we continue to automate and electrify our lives, energy demand is still sensitive to economic conditions. In addition, the ways in which we generate power are constantly changing. The…

Trump is now openly using normalization with Israel as leverage in Iran negotiations, putting the 2020 Abraham Accords back in the spotlight. But today, the region doesn’t look the same as it did six years ago. And Gulf leaders no longer view Washington, or Israel, in the same light.  The UAE has doubled down on security coordination with Israel, including reported joint defense cooperation during the war itself. Saudi Arabia is moving further away from Israel and instead deepening security coordination with Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt.  …

Norway, Western Europe's top oil and gas producer, has intensified lobbying at the European Union to persuade the bloc to remove or tweak its moratorium on Arctic oil and gas drilling. Norway, which is not a member of the EU but is the biggest gas supplier to European markets, has sent nearly a dozen of its ministers to Brussels so far this year to discuss energy and trade and the state of the Arctic drilling. The Iran war and the biggest oil and gas supply disruption in history have added to Norway's arguments that Europe needs reliable supply…

Saudi Arabia is expected to slash again the official selling prices of the crude it will load for Asia in July amid weakening demand and narrowing spot Middle East crude premiums, a Reuters survey of industry sources showed on Friday.   Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude exporter, is set to cut the official selling price (OSP) for its flagship Arab Light crude loading for Asia in July by $3 to $8 per barrel from June, to a premium of between $7.50 and $12.50 a barrel over the average Oman/Dubai prices, the benchmark for Middle East’s…

China’s export prices saw their biggest gain in three years in April as the oil price surge filtered through the goods manufactured in the world’s biggest exporter of goods. Chinese export prices jumped by 5% in April from a year earlier, the largest increase since April 2023, data by China’s General Administration of Customs showed. The increase, largely due to the oil price shock impacting manufacturing inputs and prices, comes after years of low export prices out of China. For years, Beijing has relied on cheaper goods to maintain…

China’s export prices saw their biggest gain in three years in April as the oil price surge filtered through the goods manufactured in the world’s biggest exporter of goods. Chinese export prices jumped by 5% in April from a year earlier, the largest increase since April 2023, data by China’s General Administration of Customs showed. The increase, largely due to the oil price shock impacting manufacturing inputs and prices, comes after years of low export prices out of China. For years, Beijing has relied on cheaper goods to maintain…

Oil prices have pulled back sharply from recent highs, suggesting that the market was optimistically pricing in at least a partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an eventual normalization, following positive statements from the US. According to commodity analysts at Standard Chartered, these statements were met with heavy algo-selling despite contradictory messaging from the U.S. and Iran, with Washington maintaining its aggressive rhetoric, tightening balances and accumulating lost barrels. Brent crude for July delivery fell 0.6% to trade…

The federal U.S. government has turned to plutonium from the Cold War era as an alternative to uranium in nuclear power generation, as supply of the default nuclear fuel runs short of demand. Washington has already selected five companies to supply the fuel to, as nuclear returns to the energy spotlight. The Energy Department said this month it would discuss the use of plutonium as nuclear fuel with five nuclear energy companies seeking to build new generation capacity in the country. The reason that the DoE is considering plutonium is the tight…

The global gas market, which has been reeling from the sudden loss of 20% of daily LNG supply, is poised to tighten even further in the coming months as higher-than-expected summer temperatures and the El Niño weather pattern are expected to raise gas demand in Asia.  Asian and European gas prices could rally even higher if the Strait of Hormuz remains inaccessible to most LNG tankers this summer, while Asia struggles to meet cooling demand and Europe looks to refill gas storage sites that have depleted to multi-year lows at the end…

next-gen battery systems that form the future of energy storage and break lithium’s chokehold on global clean energy tech supply chains. The batteries show particular promise for energy storage applications, and could soon be a promising solution for long-term energy storage as energy grids become increasingly reliant on variable energy sources like wind and solar power. VRFBs function by storing energy in liquid electrolytes. These liquid electrolytes contain vanadium ions in four different states of oxidation, kept in two separate tanks.…

Solar stocks are showing a clear technical shift, breaking above a well-defined downtrend after more than five years of sustained pressure. UBS analyst Catherine Gordon is attributing the surge in solar stocks to falling yields and renewed policy momentum. A potential Section 232 tariff announcement in mid-to-late June is adding fuel to the rally, with First Solar leading the charge. The UBS Solar basket (UBXXSOL) is now up 40% year-to-date. Gordon provided more context on what's powering UBXXSOL higher: Clean tech names…

For 88 days, millions of Iranians lived in digital darkness after the authorities imposed a nationwide Internet shutdown following the outbreak of war with the United States and Israel. But the end of one of the world’s longest-ever Internet blackouts offered scant consolation for many Iranians who reconnected to the same heavily filtered and state-controlled network after nearly three months. Still, some Iranians were relieved to escape the near-complete isolation forced on the Middle Eastern country of some 90 million people. “The…