Are Markets Underestimating the Risk of a Prolonged Energy Crisis?

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 de

U.S. Energy Dominance Agenda Can't Shield Driver From Higher Gasoline Prices

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, th

UK Faces Calls for Temporary Cap on Energy Company Profits

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 min

China’s Sinopec not Buying Iranian Crude despite U.S. Waiver

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 Corporati

The Energy Trilemma Matters More Than Ever

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

Europe’s Gasoline Exports Shift to Asia as War Roils Fuel Markets

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 t

Who Really Benefits From the Iran Conflict? Follow the Oil

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

President Petro is Killing Colombia’s Oil Industry

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

LNG Exports Plunge to 6-Month Low as War Throttles Supply

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,

Could This Be China’s Strategy To Paralyze the Pentagon?

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 th

High Oil Prices Could Force Fed To Raise Rates

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

EUR/USD to dip to 1.14 before rising to 1.20 post-conflict: BofA

Why Military Force May Not Be Enough to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

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 o

Zombie Tankers Appear in Hormuz as War Fuels Traffic Chaos

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

Chinese Oil Giants Rethink Iranian Crude After US Waiver

The biggest state-controlled refiners in China are considering whether to buy Iranian crude after the U.S. on Friday issued a one-month waiver allowing imports of Iran-origin crude, sources with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg on Monday.  China has been the biggest and nearly the only buye

Oil Plummets 8% as Trump Postpones Hormuz Deadline Threat

Brent crude is down more than 8% in the minutes following a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump that “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN T

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