Half-Open, Half-Closed Strait of Hormuz Baffles Oil Markets 

Qatar will be back to normal production of liquefied natural gas in a few weeks, the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, told the Financial Times today. “Within a few weeks, production will come back to normal, except the damaged facility,” he said. “Our teams have been mobilised already for a few weeks. QatarEnergy is preparing for operations to come back to normal as soon as the situation in the strait normalises.” Al-Thani also told the FT that it was...

Malaysia’s state energy firm Petronas has made a natural gas discovery offshore Suriname, the country’s president said this week, as quoted by Reuters, expecting the Malaysian major to make the final investment decision on the development of Block 52 by the end of the year. “To date, we have made eight successful exploration discoveries, unlocking over more than one billion barrels of oil equivalent, while continuing advancing lower-carbon solutions, safe operations and investment in people,...

President Trump has ordered an investigation into possible price gouging at fuel stations, an investigation he announced in a social media post. “The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil. Those prices are dropping ‌like a rock! In other words, customers are being "gouged",” Trump wrote. “I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster...

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the stranding of more than 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in the Persian Gulf was a wake-up call for import-dependent countries to expand their capacity to hold strategic and commercial reserves. Many countries, especially in the Asia Pacific, are looking to build new reserve capacity to boost their energy security and never again be caught off-guard by a massive supply disruption like the one triggered by the closure of the most important...

The U.S. federal government will reduce costs for oil and gas drillers by slashing red tape for the industry, aiming to tempt drillers to expand on federal lands. In a news release this week, the Interior Department said it would revise the Bureau of Land Management’s rule for federal land leasing for oil and gas drilling as well as the BLM’s waste prevention rule, by essentially loosening both to reduce the cost burden on energy companies. Under the revised rules, the cleanup cost of an...

The United States is still the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world – but probably not for long. Decades of political ambivalence have left the domestic nuclear sector in a state of neglect. Far more reactors are aging out than being constructed, and the country’s few attempts at building new nuclear fission reactors have been controversial, expensive, and slow to get off the ground. After Georgia’s Plant Vogtle finally came online years late and billions over budget in 2024, zero...

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 765,000 barrels in the week ending June 19. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by 8.33 million barrels. Although commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR have been falling rapidly for the last 2+ months, shedding 53 million barrels over the last ten weeks, US crude inventories are only down 2.1 million barrels so far this year, according to API data, kept in check by...

When you're drowning in debt, plagued by declining production, and running a refining business that seems chronically allergic to profits, buddying up with a more successful partner starts looking like a sound strategy. That's essentially what just happened between Mexico's Pemex and Brazil's Petrobras. The two state-controlled oil giants signed a memorandum of understanding this week to collaborate on exploration, production, refining, natural gas, petrochemicals, and more. But the headline...

Rory Green, TS Lombard's chief China economist, is the latest Wall Street strategist to warn of the mounting macro and food inflation risks that a super El Niño could release on certain regions of the world. In a note titled "Super El Niño: Famine Follows War?" Green warns that war-related disruptions to energy and fertilizer markets, compounded by adverse weather conditions, could create a perfect storm for global food prices. Green said, "In general, El Niño raises temperatures and...

Since the replacement of Russia by China as the primary would-be superpower rival to the U.S., Saudi Arabia has sought to balance its relationships with Beijing and Washington -- sometimes leaning more one way, and sometimes the other. Until the 2014-2016 Oil Price War, the U.S. was the core relationship; after the war had finished, it was China and Russia; and then, from the start of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in office, it was the U.S. again. However, in the aftermath of...

Italian gas distributor Italgas plans to invest nearly $15 billion by 2032 as it accelerates the use of AI in increasingly smarter and flexible networks, Europe’s largest natural gas distributor said on Tuesday. Total planned investments under the company’s Strategic Plan 2026-2032 unveiled today will be 13 billion euros, or $14.8 billion, through 2032. This would be a 14.6% increase compared to the previous strategic plan. A total of $9.5 billion (8.3 billion euros) is earmarked for the...

US-Iran talks and a 60-day sanctions waiver have eased supply fears, but traders remain cautious on the outlook for Iranian oil exports. From War Shock to Weather Shock: Super El Niño Threatens Fresh Commodity Chaos - Record high sea temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are paving the way for an unprecedentedly severe ‘Super’ El Niño, with equatorial temperatures currently 1.7C above the 30-year average. - This summer would witness the largest temperature deviation from the historical average for...