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…

Romania on Thursday began shutting down its only remaining operating nuclear reactor as record-low water levels on the Danube have forced nuclear power shutdowns in central and eastern Europe in recent weeks. Nuclearelectrica has launched the process to disconnect the one operating reactor at Romania’s only nuclear plant at Cernavoda on the Danube, the Romanian state-owned nuclear power plant operator said on Thursday. Nuclearelectrica had shut down another reactor at Cernavoda at the end of July as scorching temperatures and drought in Europe…

Romania on Thursday began shutting down its only remaining operating nuclear reactor as record-low water levels on the Danube have forced nuclear power shutdowns in central and eastern Europe in recent weeks. Nuclearelectrica has launched the process to disconnect the one operating reactor at Romania’s only nuclear plant at Cernavoda on the Danube, the Romanian state-owned nuclear power plant operator said on Thursday. Nuclearelectrica had shut down another reactor at Cernavoda at the end of July as scorching temperatures and drought in Europe…

Romania on Thursday began shutting down its only remaining operating nuclear reactor as record-low water levels on the Danube have forced nuclear power shutdowns in central and eastern Europe in recent weeks. Nuclearelectrica has launched the process to disconnect the one operating reactor at Romania’s only nuclear plant at Cernavoda on the Danube, the Romanian state-owned nuclear power plant operator said on Thursday. Nuclearelectrica had shut down another reactor at Cernavoda at the end of July as scorching temperatures and drought in Europe…

The world's leading autocracies -- China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea -- are increasingly drawing on one another's resources, military capabilities, and geopolitical leverage to withstand Western pressure. For Washington, the strategic dilemma is no longer simply whether the four countries are cooperating, but the extent to which their alignment alters the balance of power across multiple theaters simultaneously. The urgency of that question has been laid bare on the battlefront in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used North…

Decommissioning remained a major activity across the UK North Sea in 2025, with industry spending hitting a record-high of £2.6 billion, or $3.5 billion, the North Sea industry regulator said in a report on Thursday. Well decommissioning remains the single largest component of forecast decommissioning expenditure on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), accounting for around half of expected costs to 2032, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) noted in its annual decommissioning cost and performance update. The UK North Sea has a backlog of…

Bosnia is next on U.S. President Donald Trump’s disruption agenda, and an opaque energy deal riddled with conflicts of interest is at the heart of yet another of Washington’s transactional gambles based on insufficient knowledge.  Since the second half of 2025, the Trump administration has been dismantling key elements of long-running U.S. policy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina, all because it wants a pipeline from Croatia to supply U.S. LNG, with deals brokered by an unknown company run by Trump loyalists collecting on owed favors. …

Did President Zelensky and the Ukrainian armed forces not listen to US Vice President JD Vance's warnings and request after all? On Wednesday a "massive" Ukrainian drone and missile strike was unleashed on Russia's port city of Novorossiysk, which badly damaged grain export terminals at what also constitutes the last major Russian naval base on the Black Sea. Three were killed, including an eight-year-old child, and also 24 people were injured in the Wednesday nighttime attack. Zelensky acknowledged the rocket and underwater…

The longer-than-expected closure of the Strait of Hormuz means that some part of the oil production in the Middle East will remain shut in through the end of next year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) this week. The renewed tensions in the Middle East that began in late July and have been simmering so far in August will keep traffic at Hormuz severely constrained through this month, which has prompted the EIA to hike its third-quarter oil price forecasts as lower supply would…

For decades, the joke was that nuclear fusion was and would always be 30 years away. But a rapid string of breakthroughs over the last five years, catalyzed by privatization and the pressure as well as the support of the AI boom, has changed the calculus and suddenly brought the technology onto a real and achievable timeline. Nuclear fusion is treated as a ‘holy grail’ of clean energy because, if harnessed in a commercially viable and scalable way, it could provide limitless energy production with zero greenhouse gas emissions and negligible…

Diesel prices surged earlier this week on news about yet another Ukrainian attack on a Russian refinery and a Houthi attack on a Saudi refining facility. Global fuel supply is already out of balance, and the continued refinery disruption will only aggravate the situation, right before peak demand season. Reuters reported Monday that refining margins in Europe had surged by 10%, and that surge was from an already elevated starting point as refiners around the world see their margins rise to all-time highs on the supply tightening caused by the war…

The war between the US and Iran has driven up natural gas prices, particularly in Europe and Asia. Asia accounts for nearly 90% of liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments from key Middle East producers like Qatar and the UAE, while Europe imports 7-11% of its LNG from the region. During spring 2026 missile and drone attacks, Iranian strikes hit Ras Laffan LNG Trains 4 & 6, and Pearl GTL Train 2. Ras Laffan owner QatarEnergy estimates repairs to the two units will sideline about 12.8 million tonnes per year of LNG capacity for three to five years.…

Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Wednesday to seize European ships in retaliation for EU action against Russia’s shadow oil fleet, opening the possibility of direct Russian interference with commercial shipping as Europe steps up efforts to disrupt Moscow’s crude exports, RFE/RL reported.  President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would “respond in kind” if European countries begin confiscating Russian ships or selling cargo taken from detained vessels, and warned that Russian retaliation would…

Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Wednesday to seize European ships in retaliation for EU action against Russia’s shadow oil fleet, opening the possibility of direct Russian interference with commercial shipping as Europe steps up efforts to disrupt Moscow’s crude exports, RFE/RL reported.  President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would “respond in kind” if European countries begin confiscating Russian ships or selling cargo taken from detained vessels, and warned that Russian retaliation would…

Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Wednesday to seize European ships in retaliation for EU action against Russia’s shadow oil fleet, opening the possibility of direct Russian interference with commercial shipping as Europe steps up efforts to disrupt Moscow’s crude exports, RFE/RL reported.  President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would “respond in kind” if European countries begin confiscating Russian ships or selling cargo taken from detained vessels, and warned that Russian retaliation would…