Oil flows via the Druzhba pipeline from Russia to Hungary have been halted, following a Ukrainian attack on a transformer station, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday. “Ukraine has attacked again the oil pipeline to Hungary, which has halted petroleum transportation to our country,” Szijjarto posted on Facebook. This is yet another attack against Hungary’s energy security and it is “outrageous and unacceptable,” the official added. The Druzhba pipeline carries Russian crude to Central Europe.…

U.S. LNG exports so far this year have smashed yet another record, prices are on the rise without sapping demand, and the outlook remains robust. But there’s a hitch: pipelines. Exports of liquefied natural gas from the United States between January and August this year went up by 22% from the first eight months of 2024, Reuters’ Gavin Maguire reported this week, citing data from Kpler as showing exports reached 69 million tons. This was 12.4 million tons more than U.S. LNG producers exported last year. The report also noted that domestic…

With U.S. markets trading close to record highs, many investors are now turning to dividend-paying stocks as they try to balance growth and income. Dividend investing provides a predictable and reliable source of cash flow that can complement other forms of income. Dividend stocks can also help protect your portfolio when the stock market loses steam, with predictions of a market crash growing. Studies have shown that dividend-paying stocks tend to hold up much better during market downturns, with an interesting study finding that they declined…

As China continues to grow its electric vehicle (EV) industry, it has expanded to several new markets in recent years, opening multiple production and assembly plants across Latin America. Chinese EV companies now offer a wide variety of EV models at competitive prices, making them well-suited to the Latin American market, with a growing uptake of Chinese EVs being seen in Brazil and Mexico. However, while its Latin America prospects might be good, developing successful nearshoring activities for the United States market is less certain due to…

Rystad Energy’s latest research shows the global amount of discovered, recoverable oil resources has increased by 5 billion barrels over the past year, even though 30 billion barrels were produced globally in 2024. This net increase was driven primarily by the delineation of upside potential in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta play and the Permian Delaware basin in Texas and New Mexico. Global recoverable oil resources, including estimates for undiscovered fields, stabilized at approximately 1.5 trillion barrels. The most significant revision…

Kenya has developed a strong renewable energy sector in recent years, as it aimed to diversify its energy mix beyond fossil fuels to boost its energy security. The launch of a national energy plan and the launch of a wide variety of renewable energy projects are expected to help achieve the country’s renewable energy aims, as the East African country also develops its oil production capacity. Kenya began exporting crude oil in small quantities in 2019 and hopes to start commercial crude exports in 2026, following several development delays.…

Angola is betting big on natural gas developments as a short-term increase in oil production is not expected to last despite the West African country leaving OPEC over capped production.   Companies operating in Angola have recently started up two oil projects, but they have also begun to target non-associated offshore gas plays, hoping that a massive gas resource could be waiting to be tapped.  Despite the recent oil project startups, Angola’s oil production is expected to drop to about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2027,…

Nuclear power has always been a paradox. It can produce massive amounts of low-carbon electricity, yet it must constantly battle the headwinds of politics and public perception.  The latest Statistical Review of World Energy shows that while nuclear generation is growing globally—setting a new record high in 2024—the trend is anything but uniform. Some countries are charging ahead, while others are stepping back. Global Output: Modest Growth, Unevenly Shared In 2024, global nuclear generation reached 2,817 terawatt-hours, a modest…

Since coming into office, United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on his “Drill, baby, drill” statement by opening federal land for licensing and encouraging oil and gas companies to increase production. One state Trump has set his sights on is Alaska, an area where oil operations have become increasingly more controversial in recent years due to concerns over environmental degradation. President Trump hopes to double the quantity of crude moving through Alaska’s pipelines, as well as construct a giant gas project,…

Despite a discouraging political climate and unprecedented uncertainty in the United States clean energy sector, low costs of wind and solar energy continue to drive growth of the domestic clean energy sector. However, while market forces continue to support the expansion of renewable energy capacity, the sector faces critical challenges extending beyond the antagonism of the Trump administration.  The continued growth of solar and wind power risks being hampered by several mitigating factors, including (but not limited to) intensifying competition…

The Danish wind energy producer Ørsted has blamed United States President Donald Trump for its plummeting shares following Trump’s months of attack on wind energy, and it is not the only wind energy producer suffering from the new U.S. policies that make it more difficult to develop wind farms. For months, President Trump has threatened those in the wind and solar energy industries, as he stated plans to restrict new development. In July, Trump announced plans to tighten federal permitting to restrict solar and wind energy development,…

How much energy does the newest version of ChatGPT consume? No one knows for sure, but one thing is certain – it’s a whole lot. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, hasn’t released any official figures for the large language model’s energy footprints, but academics are working to quantify the energy use for query – and it’s considerably higher than for previous models.  There are no mandates forcing AI companies to disclose their energy use or environmental impact, so most do not offer up those kinds of statistics…

An insurance association has urged its members to assess their exposure to Russian oil as the UK and EU prepare to update their oil price cap regimes. The oil price cap, introduced by the G7, EU, and Australia, aims to restrict Russia’s oil revenues by preventing Russian companies from selling oil above a specified threshold. In July, the UK and EU announced plans to lower the price cap to further limit Russia’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine. The new measures take effect on 2 September in the UK and 3 September in the EU. However,…

Chevron has dispatched the first two Venezuelan crude cargoes to the U.S. since Washington restored its license to operate in the sanctioned nation last month. The Mediterranean Voyager and Canopus Voyager left Venezuelan waters on Friday loaded with Hamaca and Boscan heavy crudes, bound for the U.S. West Coast and Port Arthur, Texas, respectively. The move signals a tentative reopening of trade flows that had been abruptly halted earlier this year when the White House revoked Chevron’s license, triggering a 20% drop in Venezuela’s…

The asymmetrical trade agreement between the EU and the US will further worsen Germany’s recession. Yet neither politicians nor corporate leaders show any willingness to make the sweeping policy changes needed to reverse course. Germany’s economic data leaves no room for illusions. After contracting by 0.9% in 2023 and another 0.5% last year, the decline will continue this year. The Machine Room Has Been Blown Apart It is precisely the sectors that have sustained German prosperity for decades—automobiles, construction, machinery—that…

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. The total rig count in the US stayed at 539, according to Baker Hughes, down 47 from this same time last year. The rig count is still near four-year lows. The number of oil rigs, however, rose by 1 for the second week in a row to 412, although year over year this represents a 71-rig decline. The number of gas rigs fell by 1 this week, coming in at 122 for a gain of 24 active gas rigs…

Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian energy assets has taken out another major target—this time Lukoil’s Volgograd refinery, one of the ten largest in the country, forcing a halt to crude intake. According to regional officials, Thursday’s strike sent falling debris onto oil product storage, sparking a fire that burned for 19 hours before being contained. The 300,000 bpd facility, a key supplier to southern Russia with some exports, has been hit multiple times this year. Lukoil has yet to comment. The attack comes amid…

The UK government has decided against bailing out the country’s bioethanol plants, which have warned they would be forced to close without a rescue package as the U.S.-UK trade deal has made them unviable.  The trade deal from May removed a previous 19% tariff, which the UK imposed on imports of U.S. bioethanol. As a result, the UK-produced bioethanol has been unable to compete with the zero-tariff imported U.S. bioethanol.    Vivergo Fuels, the UK’s largest bioethanol plant, warned at the end of May that “if…

Oil markets have seen thin liquidity and rangebound prices this week, with ICE Brent hovering near $66 a barrel as traders focus almost entirely on the upcoming Trump–Putin meeting in Alaska. Friday, August 15, 2025Thin trading liquidity, rangebound price movements, and almost zero interest in any other topic than the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska have marked this week, with ICE Brent still trading around the $66 per barrel mark. LNG prices have already shed some $0.50/MMBtu this week as gas traders seem to expect some semblance of a deal…

As Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump prepare to meet in Alaska for a high-stakes summit to discuss ending the 43-month-old war in Ukraine, a deep feeling of unease is gripping European capitals, especially Kyiv. The August 15 meeting between the two leaders, their first since Trump returned to the presidency in January, could reshape not only Ukraine's future borders but also European security without either Kyiv or Brussels having a say. Trump has made ending the conflict -- Europe's largest since World War II -- a…