The once peaceful South American nation of Ecuador is being rocked by cocaine related violence. Since the 2020 pandemic, the tiny country’s murder rate has spiraled higher, hitting an all-time high of nearly 51 murders per 100,000 people during 2025. The tiny impoverished country of less than 20 million is regularly affected by extreme bloodshed, conflict, and lawlessness despite frequent security crackdowns. The rapid rise of cocaine trafficking and related brutality is sharply impacting government finances and Ecuador’s broken oil…

Shortly before the war with Iran began, I wrote that the seeming complacency among government officials and financial market participants was based on two assumptions which I argued were unlikely to turn out to be true: 1) President Donald Trump would make a last-minute deal with the Iranians and declare victory and 2) even if Trump didn't make such a deal, the Iranians would not do all the things which they threatened to do if attacked. Here we are, three weeks into the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran. There was, of course,…

The United States is the world’s biggest crude oil producer—it has been for years, and it has been pumping more than 13.6 million barrels per day of oil for the past few months. Then why, some would ask, are U.S. gasoline prices surging because of a conflict half a world away? First and foremost, the price of crude oil carries the biggest weight in the formation of gasoline prices in America. And the price of crude oil has soared in the past three weeks since the war in the Middle East began. Second, the U.S. – even with the highest…

Richard Walker has urged the government to consider imposing a temporary cap on energy company profits, warning that households risk bearing the brunt of another price shock linked to the Middle East conflict. The Iceland boss, recently appointed as a Labour peer and cost-of-living adviser, said ministers should examine limiting earnings for producers and retailers during periods of extreme volatility. “I have asked the government to consider a temporary profit cap … to stop producers and retailers exploiting the crisis to make windfall…

Chinese state oil giant Sinopec, Asia’s biggest refiner by capacity, will not buy Iranian oil even after the U.S. waiver on purchases of crude from Iran loaded on tankers as of March 20, a senior Sinopec executive said on Monday.      Sinopec, officially known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, is weighing the potential risks of Iranian oil trade and “basically won't buy” Iranian crude, the company’s president Zhao Dong said, as carried by Reuters.   The U.S. Treasury Department’s…

Chinese state oil giant Sinopec, Asia’s biggest refiner by capacity, will not buy Iranian oil even after the U.S. waiver on purchases of crude from Iran loaded on tankers as of March 20, a senior Sinopec executive said on Monday.      Sinopec, officially known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, is weighing the potential risks of Iranian oil trade and “basically won't buy” Iranian crude, the company’s president Zhao Dong said, as carried by Reuters.   The U.S. Treasury Department’s…

With events in the Middle East once again disrupting global energy markets, we need to revisit one of our favorite energy policy concepts, the energy trilemma, a simple variant of the trolley problem with an added variable. The three variables are 1) affordability, 2) security of energy supply (can a hostile government cut off your supply?), and sustainability (are your energy sources heavy polluters or consumers of finite resources?).  The trilemma says that policymakers can only enjoy two out of three of these variables, with the third one…

Europe’s gasoline exports have started to increasingly shift to Asia in recent weeks as the crude supply shock in the Middle East is tightening Asian fuel supply.  Europe usually ships most of its exported gasoline to the United States, West Africa, and South America. But in these unusual times of the biggest disruption in the oil market ever, more European gasoline cargoes are bound for Asia.   Over the past week, at least 1.6 million barrels of gasoline, carried by three tankers, have loaded from Europe and are en route to…

Europe’s gasoline exports have started to increasingly shift to Asia in recent weeks as the crude supply shock in the Middle East is tightening Asian fuel supply.  Europe usually ships most of its exported gasoline to the United States, West Africa, and South America. But in these unusual times of the biggest disruption in the oil market ever, more European gasoline cargoes are bound for Asia.   Over the past week, at least 1.6 million barrels of gasoline, carried by three tankers, have loaded from Europe and are en route to…

Whilst most people will have seen the virtue of stopping Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons, many may now regard U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to achieve this as being in the same vein as the famous business plan of the South Park gnomes to ‘make profit by stealing underpants’. This ran as follows -- ‘Phase 1: Collect underpants, Phase 2: ?, Phase 3: Profit’. Trump’s variation seems to have been -- ‘Phase 1: Kill Supreme Leader, Phase 2: ?, Phase 3: Iran never develops nuclear weapons’.…

Colombia’s economically vital oil industry is caught in a death spiral. Production recently collapsed to multi-year lows as foreign energy investment dries up. Once South America’s third-largest oil producer, Colombia slipped to fifth place after being overtaken by Argentina and Guyana. The reforms implemented by Colombia’s first leftist President, Gustavo Petro, including tax hikes, a ban on hydraulic fracturing, and the cessation of issuing exploration contracts, are deterring foreign investors. This is sharply impacting the…

Worldwide LNG exports have plunged in the past week to a six-month low as Middle Eastern supply collapsed with the de facto closed Strait of Hormuz and the outage at the world’s biggest LNG complex in Qatar.  Global LNG shipments have plunged to about 1.1 million tons over the 10-day moving average, down by 20% since the war began, a Bloomberg analysis of Kpler vessel-tracking data showed.  Qatar is the primary driver of the lost LNG supply following the halt of production and exports. Supply is also lost from the United Arab Emirates…

Long before trade wars and tariffs, China secured manufacturing dominance by controlling rare earths - a reality so consequential that the United States and its allies are now pledging more than $8.5 billion just to claw back some control of the supply chain. As global manufacturing expanded over the past two decades, rare earth processing was steadily pushed out of Western supply chains. It was capital-intensive, technically demanding, and difficult to defend on short-term economics.  China made the opposite choice, keeping those capabilities…

The oil-driven inflation shock rippling through global markets is now forcing a sharp rethink of U.S. monetary policy, with traders rapidly shifting from rate-cut expectations to pricing in potential hikes as crude continues to surge on Middle East supply disruptions. According to Bloomberg, markets are reassessing the Federal Reserve’s path as energy-driven inflation risks intensify. Fed funds futures now indicate a 50% probability that benchmark rates will be higher by at least 25 basis points after the September FOMC meeting, marking a…

The oil-driven inflation shock rippling through global markets is now forcing a sharp rethink of U.S. monetary policy, with traders rapidly shifting from rate-cut expectations to pricing in potential hikes as crude continues to surge on Middle East supply disruptions. According to Bloomberg, markets are reassessing the Federal Reserve’s path as energy-driven inflation risks intensify. Fed funds futures now indicate a 50% probability that benchmark rates will be higher by at least 25 basis points after the September FOMC meeting, marking a…

The Strait of Hormuz, a 33-kilometer-wide chokepoint through which roughly a third of the world's seaborne oil passes, is effectively closed to normal commercial traffic. Iran has not blockaded the strait with a chain or a fleet. Instead, it has made the waterway ungovernable through a combination of kinetic strikes, mines, electronic warfare, and market fear -- creating a closure that is arguably harder to reverse than a conventional blockade. "I can think of no way to reopen and keep open Hormuz militarily and easily," Richard Allen Williams,…

Vessels posing as tankers that were sent for scrap years ago have appeared to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in recent days, in another example of how the Middle East war and the heavy signal interference in the region are affecting global shipping and energy flows.  The vessel Nabiin, which was in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, has now moved to the Gulf of Oman, meaning that it has passed the Strait of Hormuz outbound to the Gulf of Oman.  Yet, the Nabiin is a tanker that was sent to a scrapyard in Bangladesh five years ago, Bloomberg…

Indian retail fuel prices are stable despite a surge in the oil basket price to over $155 per barrel, the Hindustan Times reported today, citing energy industry executives. The Indian oil basket settled at $156.29 per barrel on March 19, overtaking Brent crude in a rare occurrence resulting from the supply disruption in the Middle East. That’s despite Iran’s statement that it would allow Indian tankers carrying oil for the subcontinent to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. As a result of the disruption, the Indian oil basket has surged…

Oil prices opened the week elevated but stable in early Asian trading on Monday, holding near multi-year highs after another weekend of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. At the time of writing, WTI crude was trading at $98.61, up 0.39%, while Brent crude had inched down 0.24% to trade at $111.90. These muted price moves mask an increasingly uncertain environment, with markets bracing for a very volatile session. Late on Saturday, President Trump issued a stark ultimatum, warning that the United States would strike Iran’s…

Trump faces a simple but difficult choice: Iran’s enriched uranium still needs to be secured, and airstrikes haven’t accomplished that. The only clear way to control it would likely require U.S. troops on the ground—an option that risks widening the conflict and raising the stakes significantly. That uncertainty has been pouring over into global energy markets. Oil prices have pulled back from recent highs but remain elevated as the Middle East conflict shows no signs of abating. Europe remains largely non-committal towards using…