War in the Middle East has reshaped near-term energy market expectations, with direct implications for hydrocarbon supply affecting power sectors across liquified natural gas (LNG) imports, oil imports, and spot gas-dependent economies, mainly in Europe and Asia. While Middle Eastern countries retain access to abundant domestic fossil fuels, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the crisis extends disruption beyond hydrocarbons. The combination of conflict proximity, supply chain vulnerability, capital diversion, and institutional resilience…

Electric company annual reports describe technological risk in the vaguest of terms, asserting that firms face numerous, generalized risks— boiler plate to provide legal cover just in case something happens, such as an ET invasion. What specific risks do the companies face? You’ll never know from reading their reports. Anyway, it often takes years for something to happen in the utility industry, so why bother worrying now? Brokerage reports, generally optimistic, focus on a utility’s rate base growth (mostly their assets), AI…

Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco expects to raise at least $10 billion from a potential sale and leaseback deal for its real estate assets, including its Dhahran Camp residential community in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources with knowledge of the plans. Through a potential deal with real estate and infrastructure funds, Aramco, the world's top crude exporter and biggest international oil company, continues to look to capitalize on its assets and raise billions of U.S. dollars despite the ongoing…

The war with Iran is not going well. It is difficult to supply US troops with adequate food and other necessities. With summer arriving soon, the region will soon be an even more inhospitable place for ground troops to fight. An underlying problem is that the world economy was reaching resource limits even before the Iran War began, adding to the difficulties. The most pressing resource limit is distillate fuel oil–an industry term for what we think of as diesel and jet fuel. This fuel is heavily used in transportation. It is also used extensively…

Crude oil inventories in the United States decreased by 4.3 million barrels during the week ending May 8, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The decrease brings commercial stockpiles to 452.9 million barrels, according to government data, which is 0.3% below the five-year average for this time of year. According to weekly EIA data, crude oil inventories in the United States have decreased by a total 3.3 million barrels over the last 7 weeks. The EIA’s data release follows API’s…

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed a 50% reduction in the size of his official motorcade in a bid to conserve fuel amid mounting economic pressures from the ongoing global energy crisis. The cuts to Modi's security convoy, which typically spans 15 to 25 vehicles, will be coordinated through the Special Protection Group (SPG) to ensure that essential security components remain fully uncompromised. Modi has also instructed the SPG to integrate Electric Vehicles (EVs) into his official motorcade wherever feasible as part of ongoing…

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed a 50% reduction in the size of his official motorcade in a bid to conserve fuel amid mounting economic pressures from the ongoing global energy crisis. The cuts to Modi's security convoy, which typically spans 15 to 25 vehicles, will be coordinated through the Special Protection Group (SPG) to ensure that essential security components remain fully uncompromised. Modi has also instructed the SPG to integrate Electric Vehicles (EVs) into his official motorcade wherever feasible as part of ongoing…

US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are set to open a closely watched summit in Beijing as Washington and Beijing seek a fragile economic truce while maneuvering over Iran, Taiwan, and control of critical supply chains. Trump, who last visited China in 2017, will arrive on the evening of May 13 and engage in two days of talks and public appearances with Xi on May 14-15. The trip marks the two leaders' first face-to-face talks in more than six months as they try to stabilize ties strained by tariffs, mineral export controls,…

Global oil demand is set to exceed supply in the current year amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, reversing previous projections of a surplus. According to the May 2026 Oil Market Report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global oil supply is projected to fall by 3.9 million bpd across 2026, with ~10.5 million bpd of Gulf oil production currently offline. Global demand is forecast to contract by 420,000 bpd due to surging prices, slow economic growth and widespread flight cancellations, with oil demand still set to outpace supply…

Global oil demand is set to exceed supply in the current year amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, reversing previous projections of a surplus. According to the May 2026 Oil Market Report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global oil supply is projected to fall by 3.9 million bpd across 2026, with ~10.5 million bpd of Gulf oil production currently offline. Global demand is forecast to contract by 420,000 bpd due to surging prices, slow economic growth and widespread flight cancellations, with oil demand still set to outpace supply…

A recent Bank of Canada Market Participants Survey has flagged geopolitical and trade tensions as the biggest risks facing the Canadian economy. Leading the downside are geopolitical risks led by the Middle East war, with 82% of respondents identifying it as the biggest risk, while 79% and 57% of respondents picked growing trade tensions and tightening global financial conditions, respectively. The shift from trade tensions dominating headline risks to Canada’s economy amid Trump tariffs is largely attributed to the Iran war, which has disrupted…

The price of physical crude has collapsed in recent weeks from premiums of over $30 per barrel above the Brent benchmark in early April, to near-parity or even at small discounts in the May buying cycle window. That’s not because the worst-ever disruption in oil markets has eased and supply has suddenly become plentiful from sources other than the Middle East. It’s because refiners are adjusting their buying behavior and backing out of nearly $150 per barrel physical cargo prices in hopes of a resolution to the conflict and an eventual…

When U.S. and Israeli forces launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran at the end of February, the energy market’s first question was how long the Strait of Hormuz would stay closed. Ten weeks later, that question is still open.  Brent is hovering near $107, Trump called Iran’s latest counterproposal “totally unacceptable” on Monday, and Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has been warning the market that it is hemorrhaging roughly 100 million barrels of supply every week the blockade holds.  For oilfield services, the…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 2.188 million barrels in the week ending May 8. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by 8.1 million barrels. Analysts had expected a 1.65 million-barrel draw for the current reporting period. US crude inventories are up 35 million barrels so far this year, according to API data. Inventories in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) continue to draw down in an attempt to alleviate the pressure on prices. For week ending May 8, 8.6…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 2.188 million barrels in the week ending May 8. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by 8.1 million barrels. Analysts had expected a 1.65 million-barrel draw for the current reporting period. US crude inventories are up 35 million barrels so far this year, according to API data. Inventories in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) continue to draw down in an attempt to alleviate the pressure on prices. For week ending May 8, 8.6…

After more than five months of political cajolery, threats, and infighting since Iraq’s 11 November parliamentary elections – the seventh since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003 – an erstwhile obscure businessman, Ali al-Zaidi, has been selected as the Prime Minister-designate of the governing Iran-aligned Shia Coordination Framework bloc. Regarded as a compromise candidate between more pro-West sitting Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, and one of his predecessors, the pro-Iran Nouri al-Maliki, al-Zaidi now has…

The Trump administration is considering a temporary removal of the federal gas tax in response to soaring retail fuel prices that have dampened consumer sentiment, sending it to its lowest since the early 1950s. “I think it's a great idea,” the President told CBS News in an interview Monday. “Yup, we're going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we'll let it phase back in.” The remarks of the President echo a suggestion by Energy Secretary Chris Wright made on Sunday, about the administration…

Iraq may soon have a new prime minister as the Coordination Framework, Iraq’s largest parliamentary bloc and a coalition of Shia Arab political forces,  nominated businessman Ali al-Zaidi for the post, hoping to break a deadlock between caretaker prime minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani and former prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who was previously nominated for the post. U.S. president Donald Trump spoke to Zaidi and pronounced himself satisfied: “With our help, he won, and we want him to do very well.” Trump may have felt…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Tuesday as Kyiv pushes deeper into artificial intelligence to fight Russia, building on a months-old partnership that is already reshaping how Ukraine targets incoming drones and plans strikes inside Russian territory. The meeting came as Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took the role in January, said more than 100 companies are now training over 80 AI models to detect and intercept aerial targets through the Brave1 Dataroom, a secure platform Kyiv launched…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is about to hand oil traders another thing to obsessively refresh between API inventory data drops and Strait of Hormuz headlines. Starting Wednesday, the EIA will publish a new quarterly report that tracks global strategic petroleum reserves and energy flows through major shipping choke points, including through the world’s most nerve-wracking stretch of water right now: the Strait of Hormuz. The additional data will add to the hyperfixation that currently exists in the oil market on the fallout…