Last month, Saudi Arabia and India agreed to boost energy cooperation, including by potential Saudi investment in two refineries in the world’s third-largest crude oil importer. However, initial talks have already hit a snag as the world’s top crude exporter, Saudi Arabia, is at odds with India over the pricing and volumes of crude it will supply for the refineries, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Monday. At the end of April, Saudi Arabia and India agreed to enhance cooperation in the energy sector, including…

Last month, Saudi Arabia and India agreed to boost energy cooperation, including by potential Saudi investment in two refineries in the world’s third-largest crude oil importer. However, initial talks have already hit a snag as the world’s top crude exporter, Saudi Arabia, is at odds with India over the pricing and volumes of crude it will supply for the refineries, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Monday. At the end of April, Saudi Arabia and India agreed to enhance cooperation in the energy sector, including…

Last month, Saudi Arabia and India agreed to boost energy cooperation, including by potential Saudi investment in two refineries in the world’s third-largest crude oil importer. However, initial talks have already hit a snag as the world’s top crude exporter, Saudi Arabia, is at odds with India over the pricing and volumes of crude it will supply for the refineries, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Monday. At the end of April, Saudi Arabia and India agreed to enhance cooperation in the energy sector, including…

US President Donald Trump says the goal of the negotiations with Iran is to ensure the “total dismantlement” of Tehran’s nuclear program, but would consider allowing Iran to maintain a civilian nuclear energy program. In an interview with NBC on May 4, Trump said tearing down Iran’s nuclear program would be “all I’d accept.” The comment marks the first time Trump has explicitly said what he wants to do with Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran maintains is peaceful. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested last…

Morgan Stanley joined other major investment banks in slashing oil price forecasts amid expectations of a larger market surplus later this year as OPEC+ plans to raise output much more than previously expected. Morgan Stanley cut its oil price forecasts for the remainder of the year, anticipating a bigger glut. The bank revised down its projection of Brent Crude prices to $62.50 per barrel in the third and fourth quarters of this year, down by $5 per barrel from the previous forecast. The market glut could reach 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd)…

U.S. crude oil supply will rise more slowly than expected for the rest of 2025 and in 2026 and peak as early as this year, as WTI benchmark prices below $60 per barrel are testing the breakeven point of shale production, energy flows intelligence firm Kpler said on Monday. Oil prices have slipped by more than 15% since the beginning of April as the market fears recessions from the U.S. tariffs and oversupply from the aggressive production hikes from OPEC+. Prices dipped early on Monday after the OPEC+ group decided on Saturday to raise collective…

Saudi Arabia has raised the price of its flagship crude grade loading for Asia in June, just as the Saudi-led OPEC+ group decided to continue easing the production cuts by adding a larger-than-expected volume to the market next month. In a sign that the world’s top crude oil exporter expects solid demand in Asia next month, the Kingdom lifted the price of the Arab Light crude grade for June by $0.20 per barrel over May prices to a premium of $1.40 a barrel over the Oman/Dubai average, the benchmark off which Middle Eastern producers price…

Goldman Sachs has slashed its oil price forecast for a third time in one month after OPEC+ decided this weekend to hike production in June with a similar 410,000-bpd increase it is implementing in May. In an online meeting on Saturday, key OPEC+ producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to raise collective output by 411,000 barrels per day (bpd), nearly triple the volume originally scheduled. The move follows a similar surge announced for May and signals a sharp reversal from OPEC+ efforts to defend oil prices. Following the announcement…

Goldman Sachs has slashed its oil price forecast for a third time in one month after OPEC+ decided this weekend to hike production in June with a similar 410,000-bpd increase it is implementing in May. In an online meeting on Saturday, key OPEC+ producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to raise collective output by 411,000 barrels per day (bpd), nearly triple the volume originally scheduled. The move follows a similar surge announced for May and signals a sharp reversal from OPEC+ efforts to defend oil prices. Following the announcement…

Previously, we reported that commodity analysts at Standard Chartered were bullish on oil prices in the current year, thanks to strong oil fundamentals, including declining U.S. supply growth and OPEC+ supply discipline. StanChart reported that non-OPEC+ supply growth fell sharply from 2.46 mb/d in 2023 to 0.79 mb/d in 2024, in large part due to a reduction in U.S. total liquids growth, which fell from 1.605 mb/d in 2023 to 734 kb/d in 2024. StanChart predicted this trend will continue over the next two years, with U.S. liquids growth clocking…

Since coming into power, U.S. President Donald Trump has been fighting to increase oil and gas production while reining in the renewable energy sector. Trump aims to expand the country’s fossil fuel output and encourage more countries worldwide to import U.S. LNG, which he has done by introducing strict tariffs on countries unwilling to increase trade with the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. President has doubled down on his electoral pledges to slow green transition progress and halt programmes and funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),…

Hydrogen was supposed to be at the heart of the global decarbonization movement. Lofty goals were set to implement green hydrogen into the transport, shipping, manufacturing, and energy storage industries, with the promise that hydrogen’s versatility would allow for the decarbonization of even the most hard-to-abate sectors. But the hydrogen hype has fizzled over the years as the gap between ambition and implementation has grown ever wider. In 2023, less than a tenth of planned green hydrogen projects were actually carried out. “Tracking…

Signs have emerged that the U.S.-China trade war is already hitting oil demand in the shipping and aviation sectors, and this weakness could soon move into the U.S. trucking business and reduce diesel demand. Container traffic from China to the United States is plummeting, while U.S. airlines warn of a hit to consumer spending amid weakened consumer sentiment with the tariffs and expectations of higher inflation. Shipping and aviation account for a combined 10% of global oil consumption, and the decline in container shipping traffic is set to hurt…

Since June 2022, the European Union has granted Ukraine full trade liberalization to help support the war-torn country’s economy. These measures -- suspending import duties and quotas -- are known as Autonomous Trade Measures (ATMs), and they appear to have benefited Kyiv. In 2024, Ukrainian exports to the EU reached nearly 60 percent of total exports, up from 39.1 percent in 2021. However, the ATMs, which have been renewed annually by a majority vote of EU member states, are set to end definitively on June 5. They were always intended to…

As the clean energy transition picks up pace around the world, more and more land is needed to accommodate utility-scale solar and wind farms. Solar and wind farms need land that is both well-suited to their climatic and geographic needs and large enough to make the project worthwhile. Unfortunately, these types of land are also frequently among those most suitable for agriculture, creating policy and economic tensions between food security and energy security.  Utility-scale solar and wind farms require a whopping 10 times as much land as…

As companies worldwide race to increase their green hydrogen production capacity to power heavy industry and transport in support of a green transition, others are looking to naturally occurring hydrogen, also known as white, gold or geologic hydrogen, as the solution. Since the energy source was discovered in Mali in 2012, interest in its development has been slow due to the lack of knowledge about how much white hydrogen there is around the globe and exactly where to find it. However, the development of several new projects, in Europe, Africa,…

Crude oil markets took a fresh hit this weekend after OPEC+ stunned traders by announcing a larger-than-expected output increase for June. In a virtual meeting on Saturday, key producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to raise collective output by 411,000 barrels per day (bpd), nearly triple the volume originally scheduled. The move follows a similar surge announced for May and signals a sharp reversal from OPEC+ efforts to defend oil prices. Instead, Riyadh appears to be embracing a low-price strategy, aiming to discipline overproducing…

Blackouts across the Iberian Peninsula have exposed the fragility of our highly-connected infrastructure – and Britain is uniquely ill-equipped for a similar incident, says James Price In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, society comes crashing down because the most talented people are not respected or rewarded for their endeavours, so they go on strike. Quickly, things fall apart. “He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.”…

Forever chemicals seem to be coming up in weekly news articles around the world, as people become increasingly concerned about just how many PFAS we come into contact with on a daily basis. They are in our cooking equipment, the food we eat and, according to recent reports, even our drinking water. Until recently, little attention was given to PFAS but, under former President Biden, the U.S. imposed harsher restrictions on the use of PFAS, and, under President Trump, there has been more conversation about these forever chemicals.  PFAS (Per-…

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers were shunned by foreign governments after seizing power in 2021, but recently the hard-line militants have notched up some big wins in their diplomatic efforts to forge international ties. This week, Indian special envoy Anand Prakash was in Kabul for talks with senior Taliban leaders on boosting political and trade links. That came after Uzbek Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov hosted a Taliban delegation in Tashkent to talk about a proposed trans-Afghan rail link. And last week, in the biggest win of all, Russia removed…