Qatar Offers First Crude Loadings to Buyers Since War Began

Oil prices tumbled as markets bet Strait of Hormuz disruptions will ease, with Brent down 10% on the week and Middle East crude benchmarks slipping into contango. Friday, June 26, 2026 Whilst ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz remain a fraction of their previous norm (130-140 transits per day), plunging crude oil prices suggest the commodity markets anticipate that flows would start to recover sooner than later. The two Middle Eastern crude benchmarks, Dubai and Murban, have flipped...

European officials are expected to visit Baghdad in the coming weeks for high-level talks on energy cooperation, just hours after Iraq warned it could leave OPEC unless the producer group grants the country a higher production quota. According to Iraqi sources cited by Shafaq News, the discussions will focus on expanding cooperation across Iraq's oil, gas and electricity sectors. Planned talks include projects to capture associated gas, increase power generation, expand energy storage capacity...

Over the past 20 years, the story seemed straightforward. Big Oil would gradually become Big Energy. Over time, oil majors would use their balance sheets, engineering expertise, and global project-management skills to build wind farms, solar projects, hydrogen hubs, carbon capture networks, and renewable power businesses. Big Oil did make major investments in renewables. And that transition is still happening in parts of the energy sector. But among the oil majors, the strategy has become far...

Saudi Arabia is expected to slash the official selling prices of its crude loading for Asia in August, as Middle East’s crude benchmarks crashed amid the tentative reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the oil supply increase from the region. Saudi oil giant Aramco, the world’s single-biggest crude oil exporter, is expected to slash the OSP of its flagship Arab Light crude by between $6.50 and $8.00 per barrel, a of industry sources showed on Friday. Refiners polled by Reuters...

Kazakhstan has slashed by a quarter natural gas production at the huge Karachaganak oil and gas field after Ukraine earlier this week hit with drones a Russian plant processing part of the gas, Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said on Friday.  “Naturally, we have reduced the gas intake,” Reuters quoted the minister as telling reporters today.   Gas supply to Kazakhstan hasn’t been disrupted, Akkenzhenov added.  Oil production at Karachaganak, which is operated by international...

August WTI crude oil futures kept falling sharply during the week ending June 26. Traders continued to take out the extra price they had added earlier because they worried about possible supply problems in the Middle East. The contract moved between a high of $78.14 and a low of $68.90 before finishing at $71.53. That was down $3.99, or 5.28 percent, from the week before. The selling went on for most of the week. Traders stopped focusing as much on the chance of oil supplies getting cut off in...

Chinese crude oil imports this month are on course to book an even weaker month than May, according to Kpler data, which sees the daily average at just 6.4 million barrels, as cited by Bloomberg. Data from Vortexa suggests a similar daily import level, the publication added. This would be the weakest import rate since October 2016, Bloomberg noted, and an 8% decline on May volumes. Those averaged 7.82 million barrels, according to customs data, down by 29% on the year and 17% on April. The May...

Crude Oil prices edge lower on Friday, with the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) barrel changing hands at $69.65 at the time of writing. This is the lowest price since February 27, one day before the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to the EU’s headquarters in Brussels has yielded agreements and MoUs potentially valued at over 12 billion dollars. The key deal involves the purchase of 50 Airbus passenger jets for 7.1 billion euros. Tokayev’s visit, which concluded June 23, focused on developing Middle Corridor trade links within the context of the EU’s Global Gateway program. Prominent among Tokayev’s meetings in Brussels were discussions with European Commissioner for Trade...

Russia has emerged as one of the clearest commercial beneficiaries of the US-Israel war with Iran. Before March 2026, buying Russian crude was widely treated as a sanctions risk that only Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Indian private companies could comfortably absorb. The first US waiver for Russian barrels, announced on March 12, changed that calculation. It showed that, during a major Middle Eastern supply disruption, Asia could not balance its oil market without Russian crude, and even...

Saudi Arabia's biggest oil export terminal is finally stirring back to life, and that's a much bigger deal than another headline about the Strait of Hormuz reopening. After sitting largely idle since early March, Saudi Aramco is preparing to resume crude loadings at Ras Tanura, with multiple very large crude carriers owned by Bahri moving toward the Ju'aymah offshore loading area on Thursday vessel-tracking data. The past week has been filled with headlines about the...

The Tennessee Valley Authority released its preliminary 2026 integrated resource plan on Monday, saying load growth in its footprint is already outpacing the reference case forecast in its draft IRP, and that it has incremental capacity needs for between 7 GW and 26 GW of natural gas between now and 2040. “TVA’s actual and forecasted electricity demand has increased relative to the draft IRP’s Reference scenario and is approaching the Higher Growth Economy scenario primarily due to data center...