Crude oil prices, which dipped on Tuesday, reversed their direction, with Brent ticking above $100 again earlier today following reports of fresh Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure. At the time of writing, Brent crude was trading at $101.49 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate was changing hands for $90.14 per barrel, despite a statement from Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who said Tuesday the kingdom’s oil flows via the Rast-West pipeline had rebounded to 5.8 million barrels daily. The statement…
Tajikistan announced that it is now receiving oil and petroleum products from Iran, opening a potential new energy source for a country whose fuel supplies have long been dominated by Russia. The deliveries began in late August, Tajikistan's Energy and Water Resources Ministry told the Asia-Plus news agency, following talks between the two countries on expanding cooperation in the oil and gas sector. The ministry has not disclosed the volume of the shipments, their commercial terms, or how the oil and petroleum products were transported to Tajikistan.…
Iranian oil is disappearing from the market just as its biggest buyer returns for more. China’s recovering crude demand is colliding with the loss of a supplier that sustained its independent refiners through the crisis, forcing them to compete for increasingly expensive alternatives. The consequences reach beyond China: every replacement barrel tightens supplies for other buyers, while Tehran faces a growing incentive to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, which is now carrying an unexpectedly strong 13 million barrels a day (just 5 million below…
The Chinese market remains the largest one in terms of seaborne crude oil imports, after the first eight months of 2026. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Banchero Costa said that “after a marginal decline in 2024, when global crude oil loadings decreased by -0.2% y-o-y, things picked up in 2025, with full-year volumes increasing ...
Bloomberg reports the Iran war's jet fuel shortage is spreading from Asia to Europe as Hormuz stays blocked, with record prices and cancelled flights. Alkagesta, a Bloomberg-cited supplier into Europe's NATO CEPS pipeline, is exposed to the same tightening barrels.
China’s diesel fuel and gasoline inventories are declining, which may eventually lead to the imposition of export curbs, Bloomberg has reported, citing recent fuel inventory data. Gasoline inventories at state-owned energy majors were down by 2.9% last week to their lowest level since 2022, according to Chinese commodity market research firm JLC International. Diesel inventories are sitting at the lowest in 15 months, booking a 2.4% dip last week, the publication noted. “With the domestic market tightening, we see an increasing risk…
Alkagesta chief executive Orkhan Rustamov tells Bloomberg that extra military-grade barrels injected at Rotterdam pushed civilian jet fuel out of the NATO Central Europe Pipeline System.
For the first four months of the war between the United States and Israel and Iran, oil traders remained largely bearish. The overwhelming expectation was that the war would end soon—even as July rolled around—and oil flows out of Hormuz would recover. Instead, the world is slipping into a fuel shortage, and traders have gone bullish. They are especially bullish on fuels in the United States, it seems. The world’s biggest crude oil consumer and the biggest exporter of crude and fuels has not managed to avoid a supply squeeze at…
Washington’s takeover of more than a fifth of Venezuela’s oil reserves in a deal officially signed by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on 2 September was as unexpected as it was dramatic, with President Donald Trump’s comment a few days earlier that it is “the biggest oil deal in world history” looking justified from several perspectives. From a pure volume standpoint, the deal covers 65 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves (out of Venezuela’s total 303 billion barrels) across 17 fields. To put that…
Citadel is shopping for U.S. oil production assets, including a previous bid for WildFire Energy before Magnolia Oil & Gas agreed to buy the Eagle Ford producer for $4.06 billion. Reuters reported Friday that the hedge fund and commodities trader has held talks with several private-equity owners of oil-weighted exploration and production companies in recent weeks. WildFire would have given Citadel roughly 53,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of production, about 70% of it oil, plus 810,000 net acres in South Texas. Magnolia ultimately won…
Ukraine’s top sanctions official says he remains optimistic about prospects for a sweeping Russia sanctions bill in the US Congress despite growing uncertainty over when the House of Representatives will take it up, as lawmakers face a sharply shortened legislative calendar ahead of the November elections. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sanctions commissioner, spent this week in Washington meeting lawmakers and congressional staff as Kyiv presses Congress to advance the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia…
China’s oil consumption fell 9% year over year in the second quarter as expensive crude accelerated the use of electric cars, trucks, rail and industrial equipment. The decline helped cut China’s carbon dioxide emissions by 1% during the quarter, according to an analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. It was the first quarterly emissions decline in China driven primarily by lower oil consumption. Power-sector emissions rose 3% during the same period as coal-fired generation increased. Electric vehicles displaced…
It was a relatively subdued Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He departed the host city Bishkek having made few attention-grabbing headlines. There were no big announcements or viral moments, unlike at 2025’s SCO summit on Xi’s home turf in the Chinese city of Tianjin. In Bishkek, there were no photos of Xi, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cutting up together sans interpreters, nor Putin and Xi caught on hot mics discussing how to live for 150 years, nor…
Shop price inflation has hit a two-year high and is set to climb through the autumn as a surge in energy and commodity costs filters through to consumers, a top business group has found. The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents major supermarkets and high street shops across the UK, warned that shop price inflation increased to 1.5 per cent in the year to August. The higher rate of price rises compares to a rise of 0.9 per cent in the year to July and a three-month average of 1.2 per cent. Shop price inflation was at the…
Iran on Monday dismissed as “laughable” a Truth Social AI-generated post by U.S. President Donald Trump that the key Iranian oil export hub of Kharg Island is “being blown to smithereens”, as tensions in the Middle East boiled up again with U.S. attacks and Iranian claims of retaliatory strikes. President Trump late on Sunday posted an AI-generated video on his Truth Social platform, with the caption “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT”. In response to the post, Iran on Monday said, via…
There is always a winner in any major global oil crisis. In 1973/74, it was Saudi Arabia and its OPEC brothers who shifted the balance of power in the market away from the previous arrangement dominated by the West’s ‘Seven Sisters’ to the oil producers of the Middle East. After the 2014-2016 Oil Price War, it was the U.S. whose earlier nascent shale oil sector resisted the threat to its very existence from Saudi Arabia and OPEC, reorganising into a meaner, leaner, lower-cost oil production machine. The U.S. was the winner again…
Pakistan’s five oil refineries are expected to sign agreements in early September for upgrades that are expected to unlock as much as $6 billion in investment in the country’s refining sector. Representatives of the five refineries, Pak Arab Refinery Limited (PARCO), Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL), National Refinery Limited (NRL), Cnergyico, and Attock Refinery Limited (ARL), have met with Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Petroleum, Ali Pervaiz Malik, to discuss the so-called Refinery Upgradation Policy, local daily Business Recorder…
Crude oil is “very quietly” moving through the Strait of Hormuz at a premium of about $10/b, but products are not, leading to a “very strange” market dynamic with bearish crude and bullish fuel, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said Aug. 24, while restating the company’s commitment to the Middle East. Speaking at the ONS oil ...
Asian refiners are on course to nearly double their purchases of U.S. crude for September from a month earlier, a move that stands to squeeze domestic fuel makers at a time when Americans are already facing record high pump prices.
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Membership Required: Standard Free You need to be a Standard member to access this content. Our standard membership includes: Free access to all ship.energy news stories on the website Free access to all ship.energy podcasts The ship.energy daily news report, delivered to your inbox A listing of global industry events, moves, seminars, workshops and conferences Daily bunker prices from 6 key ports A premium membership (£295 per year) is also available which includes access to Bunkerspot magazine, the Bunkerspot news archive (10 years), exclusive ship.energy Industry insights, and delegate disc
Norway’s energy major Equinor hopes to make a “pretty big” oil discovery offshore Namibia, the global exploration hotspot it has just entered, a senior company official said on Tuesday. Equinor hopes that the Petroleum Exploration License 90 (PEL 90) offshore Namibia could hold a big discovery similar to those TotalEnergies and Galp have made in recent years in the same Orange basin, Philippe Mathieu, Executive Vice President, Exploration & Production International, at Equinor, told reporters on the sidelines of an energy…
Ukraine continues to pound Russian refineries in nearly daily drone attacks that damage refining infrastructure, deepen the fuel crisis in Russia, and tighten global fuel markets. In the latest attack on Monday night, Ukrainian forces hit the 180,000-barrels-per-day Afipsky refinery in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar. A fire broke out at the refinery as a result of the strike, the governor of the Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratiev, wrote in a post on Telegram on Tuesday. At least 10 homes were damaged in the Afipsky village and…
US sanctions experts say the Trump administration's new campaign to economically isolate Iran could be an effective escalation -- but only if Washington backs its threats with action. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled what he called “Operation Economic Outcast” on August 24, describing it as an unprecedented effort to force Iran's trading partners to choose between maintaining commercial ties with Tehran and access to the US financial system. Yet Bessent announced few immediate measures, leaving the central question unresolved:…
The world’s biggest oil refiner, China’s state-held Sinopec, is looking to transform its business as domestic fuel sales crumble amid the electric vehicle boom. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, as Sinopec is officially known, will be allocating more capital to new energy and chemicals by the end of the decade to grow revenues and profits amid the lowest domestic fuel sales in China in nearly a decade. “As the company grows in scale, its ability to respond to market changes becomes inadequate, and the 'big company syndrome'…
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The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges hit an important milestone this week: it is at its highest level since military action commenced against Iran in early March. The weekly Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration average weekly retail diesel price rose 19.8 cents/gallon to $5.652/g, effective Monday but published Tuesday. The previous high price was $5.643/g set April 6. That price is now up 39.5 cts/g in the last two weeks. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/FW-Responsive-Main
U.S. sanctions pressure on Iran intensifies, but Pakistani mediation hopes push Brent back to $89. US Blockade Leaves Iran’s Oil Trade on Borrowed Time - The announcement of the Trump administration’s ‘Economic D-Day’ sanctions on Iran coincides with an overall slump in Tehran’s crude exports, choked off by the US Navy’s maritime blockade in the Gulf of Oman. - Iran’s August crude exports have so far been minimal compared to the 2025 average of 1.7 million b/d, averaging only slightly around 0.3 million…
China on Tuesday signaled it would not end its ties and trade relations with Iran following the U.S. sanctions unveiled on Monday that target Chinese and Hong Kong entities for helping Iran do business. On Monday, the U.S. Administration announced a series of new sanctions against individuals and entities linked with Iranian trade and economy, including the shipping and oil industry. However, “Operation Economic Outcast,” launched by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, stopped short of sanctioning any Chinese banks. The oil trade remains…
The federal government is putting another 3,388 acres of public mineral estate on the auction block for oil and gas development in Montana and the Dakotas. The Bureau of Land Management said it will offer 20 parcels in an online oil and gas lease sale scheduled for October 27. The acreage has already worked its way through several stages of the federal review process. BLM completed scoping for the parcels in May and closed a public comment period on the acreage and related environmental analysis in July. There is still another opportunity to object.…
With Russian infrastructure being pummeled by Ukrainian drones, the Kremlin is hoping to sustain its war effort in Ukraine going by deepening defense cooperation with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is uncertain, however, whether Astana and Tashkent will go along with Moscow’s wishes. Russia appears to be primarily interested in outsourcing the manufacture of arms, establishing assembly lines and maintenance facilities in the Central Asian nations, thus putting them beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones, according to a report published…
Andy Burnham has suggested tax rises could be on the cards in the looming Autumn Budget, warning he “won’t be unrealistic” over the state of the public purse. The Prime Minister quickly pledged to give people “breathing space” and ease the cost of living after taking the keys to No.10 last month. But in fresh comments during his visit to Ukraine, Burnham acknowledged the fiscal pressures facing the UK and said his spending packages would be fully funded. When pressed on whether he would need to raise taxes to…
U.S. refineries have been running at full speed for months to make up for lost fuel supply from the Middle East. Fuel exports from the United States have been breaking records. This may be about to change, and not because of the war. It is oil sands maintenance season in Canada. In September, Canadian crude oil production may drop by 300,000 barrels daily due to maintenance activities in the oil sands, Rystad Energy said this week, as quoted by Bloomberg. Usually, whenever such a seasonal disruption occurs, it gets offset with crude from storage.…
Klaveness Combination Carriers ASA (“KCC”) reported EBITDA of USD 38.5 million and Profit after tax of USD 20.8 million for the second quarter of 2026, representing a strong improvement from the first quarter. Fleet average TCE earnings [1] increased by $4,350/day to $37,782/day from Q1 to Q2. This was supported by tighter, though very volatile, ...
Rotterdam Rotterdam’s LNG bunker price has jumped by $70/mt, mirroring gains in the front-month Dutch TTF natural gas contract. Over the past week, TTF has climbed by around 6% to $22.41/MMBtu ($1,165/mt). The latest rally in TTF prices has been driven by the escalating US-Iran tensions and growing concerns over energy shipments through the Strait ...
Japan’s MODEC has announced the arrival of a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel in Guyanese waters ahead of its deployment on a project in the Stabroek block, as the development moves closer to first oil expected later this year. The post MODEC’s FPSO reaches Guyana as ExxonMobil’s fifth oil project nears start-up appeared first on Offshore Energy .
#fwtv_tCDcsHYyTCU .fwtv-panel{border:1px solid #d0d0d0;padding:18px;border-radius:6px;line-height:1.6}#fwtv_tCDcsHYyTCU .fwtv-panel p{margin:0 0 12px}#fwtv_tCDcsHYyTCU .fwtv-note{font-style:italic;color:#666;margin-top:16px;padding-top:12px;border-top:1px solid #e0e0e0} Diesel prices are soaring, but spot rates continue to fall, creating a significant disconnect in the trucking market. This SONAR Market Update dives deep into the factors driving this divergence, from global conflicts impacting refinery output to shifts in intermodal rail and changing length of haul for truckload freight. Under
If you’re a fleet operator and you’re looking to evaluate fuel options that may help lower lifecycle carbon intensity, you don’t have to commit to a single alternative fuel overnight. The smarter play, according to Dave Slade, principal biofuels scientist at Chevron , is building flexibility into your fuel strategy and leaning on the right resources to guide those decisions. Chevron’s portfolio of conventional and renewable fuel options spans petroleum diesel, biodiesel, renewable diesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), renewable natural gas (RNG), and lubricants. Slade notes that range allows C
