Copper prices rallied to a record high of over $13,000 per ton last month, but retreated to about $12,700 this week as expectations of long-term demand strength collided with massive stockpiling at the key exchange hubs in the U.S. and China. Despite an unchanged outlook of soaring copper demand in the long term due to electrification and surging power consumption, near-term prospects in the copper market appear more fragile than the gold rally. “While we expect long-term gold prices to rise further, we see more differentiated returns across…

Strife-torn Colombia is facing an energy crisis of gargantuan proportions. Decades of mismanagement and insecurity, coupled with radical changes to energy policy by Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first-ever leftist president, are wreaking havoc with the country’s natural gas reserves and production. This is making the Andean country increasingly reliant upon costly natural gas imports while threatening the stability of Colombia’s energy grid and risking critical energy shortages. There are no signs of an easy solution for a country…

United States President Trump has been pushing for a return to fossil fuels, after the Biden administration spent several years increasing the country’s renewable energy capacity. Trump has signed several executive orders since his inauguration last January aimed at reversing the country’s most far-reaching climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act, while making it easier for fossil fuel companies to increase the production of oil and gas. However, as Trump encourages coal firms to delay closures and continue producing coal, experts…

Around the world, competition for land and finite resources is leading to a new era of manifest destiny as political and industrial leaders look to the stars as the final frontier for resource extraction. From the Trump administration to the bigwigs of Silicon Valley, a new space race is on. Billionaire-backed ventures like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are making a far more diverse, competitive, and innovative playing field. At the end of last year, Trump issued an Executive Order entitled “Ensuring American…

Automakers have been gradually improving autonomous driving technology in vehicles, working closely with tech companies to enhance features to get them on the roads. Several cities have rolled out autonomous taxi and bus pilot schemes in recent years, demonstrating just how far the technology has come. However, there are still significant limits to how and where autonomous vehicles can drive. Now, as Nvidia has big plans to deploy more high-tech self-driving cars, some other automakers, such as Mercedes, are putting their projects on pause. When…

A geothermal revolution is unfolding around the United States in ways both flashy and quiet. As Big Tech becomes increasingly involved in developing alternative energy sources to meet skyrocketing energy demand driven by the AI boom, innovative and advanced geothermal technologies have been taking off – but so too have more simple and surface-level solutions like heat pumps. Together, these approaches could reshape the domestic energy industry by providing baseload clean energy solutions and shoring up energy security in urban and rural populations…

Denmark detained a container vessel previously blacklisted by Washington under last year's sweeping Iran sanctions on Thursday, amid suspicions it was operating under a false flag. The Nora was seized after authorities determined it was allegedly sailing under the flag of Comoros without authorization. The ship is now anchored in Danish waters pending further investigation, according to reports. It actually appears to be a box ship transporting containers at the time it was intercepted. It raised the Iranian flag under deeply suspicious circumstances,…

The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States stayed the same this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, keeping the total rig count in the US  at 551 this week, down 41 from this same time last year. The number of active oil rigs stayed at 409 during the latest reporting period, according to the data. This is 79 below this same time last year. The number of gas also held steady at 133, which is 34 more than this time last year. The miscellaneous rig count stayed the same at 9. The…

If there was any lingering doubt about what’s keeping Big Oil executives up at night, the fourth-quarter results cleared it up. It’s not slogans. It’s not transition optics. It’s whether they have enough high-quality barrels to avoid production decline in the 2030s. The majors are refocusing hard on upstream portfolio renewal for the next decade, according to WoodMac, who analyzed Q4 data. The near-term commodity backdrop isn’t exactly inspiring, and Brent looks soft. Refining margins are decent, petrochemicals less…

In late 2025, during his visit to Kyrgyzstan, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin declared Russia’s readiness to build a small modular nuclear power reactor (SMR) in Kyrgyzstan, thereby signaling Moscow’s intention to move beyond traditional trade relations toward projects in long-term strategic infrastructure. Russia’s proposal may be justified by the need to address Kyrgyzstan’s persistent problem of frequent energy shortages, caused by rising consumption, aging energy infrastructure, and overreliance on hydropower…

Nearly fifty seemingly separate companies have been involved in coordinating to mask the origin of Russian oil, moving crude worth at least $90 billion, an investigation of the Financial Times has found.  FT uncovered the network due to an IT blunder—the 48 identified entities all share a single private email server.  The oil smuggling network includes firms and persons linked to Russia’s top oil producer, state-controlled Rosneft, and these have been in coordination to mask the origin of Russian crude, especially of Rosneft. …

Nearly fifty seemingly separate companies have been involved in coordinating to mask the origin of Russian oil, moving crude worth at least $90 billion, an investigation of the Financial Times has found.  FT uncovered the network due to an IT blunder—the 48 identified entities all share a single private email server.  The oil smuggling network includes firms and persons linked to Russia’s top oil producer, state-controlled Rosneft, and these have been in coordination to mask the origin of Russian crude, especially of Rosneft. …

Nearly fifty seemingly separate companies have been involved in coordinating to mask the origin of Russian oil, moving crude worth at least $90 billion, an investigation of the Financial Times has found.  FT uncovered the network due to an IT blunder—the 48 identified entities all share a single private email server.  The oil smuggling network includes firms and persons linked to Russia’s top oil producer, state-controlled Rosneft, and these have been in coordination to mask the origin of Russian crude, especially of Rosneft. …

Nearly fifty seemingly separate companies have been involved in coordinating to mask the origin of Russian oil, moving crude worth at least $90 billion, an investigation of the Financial Times has found.  FT uncovered the network due to an IT blunder—the 48 identified entities all share a single private email server.  The oil smuggling network includes firms and persons linked to Russia’s top oil producer, state-controlled Rosneft, and these have been in coordination to mask the origin of Russian crude, especially of Rosneft. …

The U.S. Supreme Court just kneecapped one of the most aggressive trade levers Washington has pulled in decades, and energy markets are now left sorting out what sticks and what doesn’t. In a 6–3 ruling, the Court struck down most of President Trump’s across-the-board tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The majority opinion was this: the Constitution does not hand taxing authority to the executive branch. That wipes out the 10%-plus blanket tariffs rolled out since April 2025 and undercuts the…

The ratcheting up of tensions between the United States and Iran could push an already red-hot supertanker market even higher with rates soaring to the highest level since 2019, analysts say.  The daily rate for hiring a supertanker on the key Middle East-to-China route has surged threefold since the beginning of the year, to over $150,000.   That’s the highest since 2020, per data from the Baltic Exchange cited by Bloomberg.  The rally in freight rates for the very large crude carriers (VLCC) capable of carrying around…

The ratcheting up of tensions between the United States and Iran could push an already red-hot supertanker market even higher with rates soaring to the highest level since 2019, analysts say.  The daily rate for hiring a supertanker on the key Middle East-to-China route has surged threefold since the beginning of the year, to over $150,000.   That’s the highest since 2020, per data from the Baltic Exchange cited by Bloomberg.  The rally in freight rates for the very large crude carriers (VLCC) capable of carrying around…

After US-Iran nuclear talks concluded in Geneva under heavy American pressure on Tehran to curb its nuclear activities, leading Washington experts say the crisis now stands at a tipping point, with the chances of peace or war at "50-50." Negotiations ended on February 18 with no breakthrough. The White House said the sides remain "very far apart" despite what it described as limited progress. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Iran is expected to return with more details "in the next couple of weeks." Ahead of the Geneva meeting,…

Politics, Geopolitics & Conflict The next strategic territory emerging as a point of friction on the world stage is the Chagos Islands. The UK is preparing to transfer sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, while still preserving long-term U.S.-UK control over the military base on Diego Garcia. The structure would give legal sovereignty to Mauritius, with Diego Garcia leased back for continued military use. Diego Garcia is a core logistics and strike hub for U.S. operations stretching from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. The base hosts…

Iran is burying parts of its nuclear infrastructure because it is preparing for a U.S. strike, not an invasion. The U.S. has the ability to hit fixed targets inside Iran instantly, without moving ground forces, so the only plausible military scenario in view is a limited strike. Negotiations have continued through intermediaries. This week, Tehran said it was preparing a written proposal outlining terms for de-escalation. Washington, surprisingly, has kept public messaging tight (no cartoons on X). Talks are ongoing, but military options remain…