Brent slid toward $76 a barrel after falling 1.1% in the previous session, and West Texas Intermediate was below $73. Vessels are transiting the waterway with their satellite signals switched on, indicating growing confidence among shipowners. The International Maritime Organization also said it had received safety guarantees allowing hundreds of ships to exit the Persian Gulf.

Washington and Tehran have both flagged early progress in talks to end the war that began in late February, although negotiations are likely to be protracted and claims from the two sides have diverged. Iran and Oman said they are beginning work on a pact for the administration of Hormuz, including transit costs, with lingering concerns the Islamic Republic could levy fees.

“I think the market has been waiting for the last of the hopeful bulls to give in and we’re finding a bottom close to $75,” said Carl Larry, an oil and gas analyst at Enverus. “There’s a lot of questions ahead: replacing supply, wait time for loadings, China back on the buy side.”

The Republican-led Senate voted Tuesday to end the US war with Iran in a rare symbolic rebuke of President Donald Trump. While the resolution is unlikely to force any changes in the administration’s strategy, it represents the latest sign that the president lacks domestic support for the effort.

Separately, Trump said in a social media post he had ordered the Department of Justice to look into why gasoline prices haven’t fallen faster as oil drops. The national average retail price has declined 14% since late May and is now below $4 a gallon, although it remains above the five-year seasonal average, according to data from the American Automobile Association.

Oil futures have retreated by more than a third from their wartime highs, driven in part by expectations of an impending increase in crude supply. The US has temporarily allowed purchases of Iranian oil as part of the diplomatic process, aiding efforts by sellers to court Asia’s largest refiners.

In a sign of fast-weakening market conditions, the spread between Brent’s two nearest contracts narrowed to 22 cents a barrel in backwardation on Wednesday. The gap was close $10 in early April.

Persian Gulf producers, including the United Arab Emirates, are moving to quickly restore exports. The UAE has recovered to almost 85% of pre-war output levels, according to the International Energy Agency, highlighting the region’s ability to ramp supply back up. Kuwait has rolled back its force majeure declarations, while Iraq is also boosting production.

Still, there are signs of tightness in some markets, including the US. The American Petroleum Institute reported crude inventories at the key storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, fell by another 1 million barrels last week, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. If confirmed by official data later Wednesday, that would mean stockpiles have dropped below the 20-million-barrel mark that’s widely seen as the minimum operating level.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The telecoms unit of SoftBank is seeking a stake in Tokyo Electric Power Co., Masayoshi Son told shareholders on Wednesday. Having Tepco — as the utility is known — within SoftBank’s sphere of influence would help the firm push into AI data centers, which require large amounts of power, he said.

Tokyo-based SoftBank is one of the world’s foremost supporters of AI, and has been exploring ways to secure energy for its ambitions in Japan. The group’s telecoms unit plans to transform a factory in Osaka into one of the country’s biggest production lines for large-scale batteries.

Tepco is on the hunt for a capital tie-up to help turn its business around and underpin the ballooning costs of cleaning up the wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. The company earlier this year sought proposals from potential partners.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Global gas flaring increased for the third consecutive year in 2025, reaching 167 billion cubic metres (bcm), according to the latest Global Gas Flaring Tracker released by the World Bank Group.

The figure represents a six-year high and equates to approximately $54 billion worth of wasted gas that could otherwise have been used to generate electricity, support industry, and strengthen energy security.  

The scale of the waste is significant. The amount of gas flared last year was nearly equivalent to Africa’s annual gas consumption and exceeded the volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that transited the Arabian Gulf during the same period.

The highest flaring countries 

In several oil-producing nations, large volumes of associated gas continue to be burned off at production sites rather than captured and brought to market.

According to the report, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Mexico, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, and the US in that order account for 80% of global gas flaring despite representing less than half of the world’s oil production. These countries have dominated gas flaring for the past 15 years.

The World Bank argues that reducing routine flaring presents an opportunity to address both energy security and emissions challenges. It estimates that eliminating routine flaring worldwide would require investments of between $70-$100 billion, which is less than twice the annual value of the gas currently being wasted.

For many developing economies, this represents a contradiction. Several countries continue to import expensive natural gas while simultaneously flaring substantial quantities of domestic gas resources at oilfields. Capturing and utilising this gas could help expand power generation capacity, lower energy costs, and create new revenue streams.

The World Bank argues that reducing routine flaring presents an opportunity to address both energy security and emissions challenges. It estimates that eliminating routine flaring worldwide would require investments of between $70-$100 billion, which is less than twice the annual value of the gas currently being wasted.

“At a time when many countries are struggling to increase affordable and reliable energy, the economic development costs of continued flaring are simply too high,” said Demetrios Papathanasiou, Global Director for Energy at the World Bank Group.

Despite decades of technological progress, industry experts argue that the barriers to reducing flaring are no longer technical. Gas capture technologies, processing systems, and financing mechanisms are widely available. Instead, progress is often hindered by regulatory shortcomings, inadequate infrastructure, financing constraints, and a lack of political and corporate prioritisation.

According to Zubin Bamji, World Bank Manager for the Global Flaring and Methane Reduction (GFMR) Partnership, the challenge now is one of leadership and execution rather than innovation.

“The technologies, policies, regulations and financing mechanisms needed to capture and utilise associated gas are available,” Bamji said. “What is missing, in too many places, is the leadership, prioritisation and governance needed to put these solutions into practice.”

But the industry is keen on reducing flaring, as can be seen from steps taken by several countries. 

“The technologies, policies, regulations, and financing mechanisms needed to capture and utilise associated gas are available. What is missing, in too many places, is the leadership, prioritisation, and governance needed to put these solutions into practice, creating access to markets and infrastructure.”

- Zubin Bamji, World Bank Manager for the Global Flaring and Methane Reduction (GFMR) Partnership

The World Bank noted the US was the only country that saw its flaring volumes decrease in 2025, even though oil production increased by 3% last year. Flaring quantities and intensity decreased by 13% and 15%, respectively in the Permian Basin, which was the main cause of this fall. The Matterhorn Express pipeline, which went into service at the end of 2024 and offered a practical export route for associated gas from the Permian, was a major factor in the decrease in flaring in the region.

Where governments and operators have implemented strong policies and invested in supporting infrastructure, results have followed. Kazakhstan, for example, has reduced gas flaring by 87% since 2012, including a further 16% decline in 2025 alone, demonstrating the impact of sustained regulatory action and industry commitment.

The situation in Argentina has been somewhat alleviated by new pipelines and gas processing developments, and flaring intensity has steadily decreased, with a notable decrease in both flaring quantities and intensity in 2025. In the same year, India passed new regulations requiring more stringent oversight and limiting flaring to 0.5% of field output. Producers have been able to stabilise operations in Syria thanks to peace following the end of political conflict. 

Saudi Arabia, Mozambique, Ghana, and Uzbekistan also saw small reductions in flare volumes.

The methane factor 

Flaring releases harmful gases, most importantly, methane. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), 125 million tonnes (Mt) of methane were released into the atmosphere in 2024. 

Moreover, World Bank data found that flaring in 2025 generated 429 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMtCO₂e) in total emissions, of which 50 MMtCO₂e came from unburned methane due to incomplete combustion.

While this is alarming, there is good news. Methane emissions are projected to fall in the lead up to 2050 in all models shown by the IEA. With no methane abatement policies, the figure could drop to 98 Mt by 2050. This is of course, if methane emissions remain constant, with changes in emissions tied to changes in fossil fuel demand.

However, if the IEA’s ‘Stated Policies’ are followed, this number could fall to 71 Mt. The Stated Policies Scenario is a model based on what governments are currently doing to reduce emissions. This includes actual practices, not aspirational goals. 

If countries strictly follow a full methane abatement policy, global emissions could be restricted to 13 Mt. 

“Around 70% of methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector could be avoided with existing technologies, often at a low cost,” the IEA said. 

Previous efforts have centered more narrowly on decarbonizing energy supply, including the closure of coal-fired power stations. The Climate Change Committee said Wednesday that the focus must now shift to electrifying demand to absorb growing volumes of renewable power. That will require the adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps on a scale comparable to the rise of mobile phones and refrigerators.

To help drive that shift, the CCC recommends removing policy levies from power bills. Although ministers have already taken some steps — this year transferring part of the cost of the Renewables Obligation into general taxation — more substantial action is still needed, according to the watchdog.

It also called for the government to bring down the cost of heat pumps, saying this would help accelerate the switch away from gas boilers. 

UK greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.8% in 2025 from a year earlier, the CCC said, leaving them 50% below 1990 levels.

“The transition to clean electricity is not happening fast enough,” said Nigel Topping, the chair of the CCC. “Government support to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles and heat pumps is critical, not only to keep our climate targets within reach but to unlock savings. 

“At this moment of political uncertainty, any weakening of current positions risks slowing these transitions, undermining investment and the long-term consistency businesses need.”

The recommendations will be an early test for Andy Burnham, who is widely expected to become the UK’s next prime minister in the coming weeks after Keir Starmer resigned on Monday. Burnham is likely to face tough questions over the future of North Sea oil and gas production, airport expansion and EV targets.

The incoming premier will also need to decide whether to offer energy bill support from October, when prices are expected to rise and the UK’s heating season starts.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The UAE’s 4.3 million barrels per day of oil exports in early June was up from just 1.9 million barrels per day in March, shortly after the war broke out, the IEA said. The UAE was able to achieve this by using a pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz to the port Fujairah, in addition to its 42-million-barrel Mandous underground storage facility near the port.

The UAE also ramped up exports through the Strait of Hormuz “with tankers’ transponders turned off to avoid detection,” the IEA said.  

Through the war, the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. has been quietly ferrying oil and gas shipments out of the Gulf using its own fleet, apparently clearing both the Iranian navy and US warships to reach energy-starved customers. That made Adnoc one of the region’s most active shippers, often using smaller tankers to shuttle crude out of the strait.

That type of shipping was one of the many workarounds that helped to keep crude from skyrocketing further during the supply crisis, with the market defying many of the industry’s grimmest forecasts for prices as high as $200. The steady trickle of crude that still made its way through the strait came amid record US exports, along with a sharp and unexpected slowdown in Chinese demand. 

Oil prices are now trading near pre-war levels, after the US and Iran signed an interim peace deal and flows picked up through the critical strait. Even though more ships have begun signaling their transits, some still opt to turn off their transponders for a portion of the crossing.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Petroleos Mexicanos and Petroleo Brasileiro SA signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to begin joint cooperation on exploration and production, including in shallow and deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico - and to determine whether a pre-salt layer exists there - as well as in refining, natural gas, petrochemicals and other areas, the chief executives of both companies said in an event in Rio de Janeiro.

The agreement brings together Latin America’s two biggest oil companies. For Pemex, it’s an opportunity to work with one of the world’s top deepwater operators as it grapples with huge debts, declining output and a reputation as one of the world’s most inefficient oil producers. Petrobras, meanwhile, is on the hunt for places to drill beyond Brazil as it tries to line up reserves for the decades ahead.

The agreement will kick off further collaboration on exploring Mexico’s largely untapped deepwater resources, though exploration will not be limited to the Gulf, Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Magda Chambriard said. 

Other opportunities could exist in shallow waters, increasing output of heavy and super heavy crude from Mexico’s maturing oil fields, and in natural gas, Pemex’s chief executive Juan Carlos Carpio said at the event. The companies will also explore whether a pre-salt layer of oil exists in the Gulf of Mexico, he said. 

In Brazil, the major pre-salt fields brought on line in the 2010s deliver about 80% of the country’s production.

Mexico’s deepwater and ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico remains largely unexplored, making it a promising frontier for Petrobras, according to geologist Pedro Zalan. Offshore areas such as the Bay of Campeche contain salt and warrant further exploration, said the consultant, who spent 34 years at Petrobras.

Pemex is also committed to turning the agreement into concrete opportunities and tangible commitments for joint investment as the companies look for ways to team up in refining, petrochemicals, fertilizers, gas processing, clean energy and industrial safety, Carpio said.

The idea of a partnership between the state-run oil majors began earlier this year after the Brazil’s leader suggested the nations could explore Mexico’s largely untapped deepwater assets together. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva discussed energy cooperation with his Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum in a video call earlier this month, as the leaders of Latin America’s two biggest economies seek to strengthen trade ties.

Pemex has been seeking joint ventures to boost crude output from its aging oil fields, increase gas production and explore for new assets. Pemex has struggled with its finances in recent years under a roughly $80 billion debt load, a loss-making refining business, inefficiencies, explosions, oil spills and flagging profits.

Pemex’s production woes partially stem from the fact that many of its key offshore assets like Cantarell, a once-massive shallow water field that at its peak produced more than two million barrels per day, have begun drying up in recent years. Output at its 60,000 barrel-a-day Ku-Maloob Zap formation is also declining, while its Zama field, a 750-million barrel play under development with partners Wintershell Dea and Harbour Energy, hasn’t yet come online.

For its part, Petrobras is seeking discoveries to expand its international upstream portfolio and extend the Brazilian oil boom, led by the 2006 discovery of the massive pre-salt offshore basin. The discovery helped Brazil become Latin America’s top energy exporter, with oil surpassing soybeans, beef, iron and other commodities as the nation’s largest export by 2024. 

Pemex is hoping to leverage the expertise Petrobras developed by lifting crude from Brazil’s ultra-deep water reserves trapped 5,000 meters (3.1 miles) or more below sea level. It’s a proposal that has a lot of appeal for Pemex, even if major questions remain over how the deal will be structured and which party will finance the exploration, John Padilla, founder and director of consultancy Paramos Energy, said in a June 5 interview.

“Details matter, and the question is whether the Mexican government will be willing to put up a significant portion of major risk capital that’s going to be needed,” Padilla said, adding that similar wildcat offshore exploration often require tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars in financing. “Presumably, Pemex isn’t going to put up that money, so that would imply that Petrobras would fund the vast majority of those efforts.”

Petrobras has had difficulties during previous expansions in Latin America this century. It had gas fields expropriated in Bolivia, and in Venezuela it scaled back and eventually exited after the investment climate deteriorated and fiscal terms got more onerous. 

While around 2 million barrels per day are produced in deep water fields in the US territorial waters of the Gulf of Mexico, on the Mexican side there’s not yet any commercial output from such projects. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, discontinued competitive oil auctions that had begun to offer up offshore fields a decade ago.

Chambriard said both companies, which are responsible for national energy security, have lagged at building robust exploration portfolios in recent years. Mexico’s side of the Gulf is an opportunity, and the two companies could even look at opportunities in Africa and Brazil, she said.

“Did all of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil really end up only on the US side?,” she said Tuesday. “We need to look at the Mexican side of the Gulf through a new lens and with new technologies.”

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Exelon Corp. Chief Executive Officer Calvin Butler said he’s working with officials in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey to change rules that prevent the company from owning generation assets. The company is exploring land acquisitions in those states to develop battery storage, gas-fired plants and solar farms, as soon as nine months of receiving regulatory approvals, he said.

“When legislation passes, we’ll be ready to go,” Butler said in an interview Tuesday. “That will help drive costs down.”

Artificial intelligence is spurring a sharp increase in electricity demand after two decades of stagnant growth, forcing a rethink of how to expand supply without saddling ratepayers with extra costs. After decades of market deregulation across much of the US, Exelon is leading a push for more utilities to get back into the power generation business and avoid missing out on a booming market.

Unlike utilities, so-called independent power producers in the states where Exelon operates have been able to generate electricity and sell it at higher prices. That market, known as a capacity market, seeks to ensure reliability during periods of system stress by paying power plants to guarantee they can deliver electricity when needed. Exelon has argued that those costs are being passed onto consumers and would be better contained under a regulated framework.

Chicago-based Exelon once owned generation assets through Constellation Energy Corp., including the largest US fleet of nuclear reactors, before spinning off the business into a separate company in 2022.

“Exelon could already be building and connecting new resources through an unregulated affiliate,” said Todd Snitchler, CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents competitive suppliers. Instead, they have pushed for a change in law that benefits them at the expense of captive customers, who cannot avoid the non-bypassable charges added to their bills when new generation is placed in the rate base, he said.

Butler’s comments add to signs that AI-fueled electricity demand is triggering changes across the utilities sector, following NextEra Energy Inc.’s agreement last month to buy Dominion Energy Inc. The blockbuster deal would create an industry giant, extending from Florida to the AI data centers clustered in Virginia.

Butler said Exelon’s plan would involve partnering with engineering firms to build new generating facilities. The company already can own battery-storage assets in New Jersey and Maryland, and expects Delaware to follow suit as soon as this week, he said. Additional changes should come over the the next 18 months, he added.

“Our governors and legislators are realizing you can’t drive prices down if you don’t have adequate supply,” Butler said.

(Adds comment from industry association executive in seventh paragraph.)

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

West Texas Intermediate fell less than 1% to settle above $73 a barrel. Global benchmark Brent dipped about 1% to around $77 a barrel. Oil has fallen precipitously since the US and Iran inked an interim peace deal last week that promised to reopen the strait, a vital chokepoint for seaborne oil trade. Prices are currently around 40% lower than they were at the height of the conflict.

Now, more ships are transiting the strait with their satellite signals switched on. India, meanwhile, sent two ships back to the region for the first time since February. And the International Maritime Organization said it had received safety guarantees allowing hundreds of ships to exit the Persian Gulf.

“The simple fact that flows are resuming through the Strait of Hormuz and strategic petroleum reserves are continuing to push oil into the market will keep things down for the near term,” said Joe DeLaura, global energy strategist at Rabobank.

Prices have also been pushed down by Monday’s news that the US issued a 60-day license permitting the sale of some Iranian oil and petroleum products, offering Tehran an economic lifeline. The two sides are continuing talks to try and find a permanent peace agreement, though the licenses were detailed in the interim pact.

The US waiver permits almost anyone to purchase and pay for Iranian oil, including American refineries, though some might be unwilling to take on the risk. 

And while Iran is wooing customers, buyers in Asia don’t appear to be in a rush, having already secured alternative shipments to work around the months-long blockade of the strait.

Supply from the Gulf has ticked up recently, with producers such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates finding workarounds to get energy out. Iran has also shipped more than 30 million barrels over the past week. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday that a “record” 19 million barrels had flowed out of Hormuz the previous day.

In addition to oil waivers, Iran said $12 billion of its frozen funds are set to be released as part of ongoing talks. US President Donald Trump said Iran will only be able to use those funds to purchase food and medical supplies from the US.

While both sides are indicating progress in the talks, questions remain about the prospects of a long-term deal, offering something of a floor to prices. There’s expected to be protracted wrangling on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the status of a ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah and the safe reopening of the strait.

Iran and Oman said they were beginning work on a pact for the administration of the strait, including the cost of managing transit, with concerns remaining that Iran will levy a fee for traveling through the vital chokepoint.

The road to fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz will be a “long, drawn-out, paced” process, Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier said at a JP Morgan Chase & Co. conference on Tuesday.

Similarly, clinching a deal could prove to be an extended process, he said.

Other supply concerns may also lift prices, including the possibility of a complete diesel export ban in Russia. The country is mulling the move amid relentless Ukranian drone attacks on refineries, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Tuesday.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

In a letter to European leaders, the countries asked for a “pragmatic approach” to clarifying the rules and adopting changes to allow importers to continue to obtain oil and gas needed by the EU.

The letter, also signed by Nigeria and Algeria, comes as the EU is under pressure to lower its persistently high energy prices and is set to boost gas imports from the US against the backdrop of the Middle East conflict. Some European governments want to discuss the impact of the methane regulation on energy security at a meeting of the bloc’s energy ministers later this week.

In Brussels, the call to amend the methane rules is led by the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who want European Commission to “consider as a matter of urgency all available options to reduce barriers to natural gas and crude oil imports,” including through targeted amendments to the regulations.

The commission, the EU’s regulatory arm, has so far declined to change the regulations, choosing instead to rely on recommendations to member states to limit fines for companies that are unable to comply with the rules on the powerful greenhouse gas. Member states could also adopt a light-touch approach to monitoring, reporting and verifying sources of emissions.

Next year, fossil fuel imports will have to be aligned with the EU’s rules designed to curb emissions of a greenhouse gas that’s 80 times more powerful than CO2 over its first two decades in the atmosphere. By 2030, penalties will be issued for imports that are above a methane-intensity threshold. Under the existing rules, companies could be fined as much as 20% of annual turnover.

For the push at the ministerial meeting to gather momentum, support from big European economies such as Germany will be needed, according to EU diplomats. It’s not clear what position the government in Berlin will take, with the economy ministry endorsing regulatory amendments and the environment ministry opting against weakening the law.

Mike Sommers, chief executive officer of the American Petroleum Institute lobbying group, told reporters Monday that the EU methane policy is flawed.

“We have sent delegations to the EU to work with them on this, and we’re dealing directly with the United States government to hopefully get a policy that makes sense for American producers,” Sommers said. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The funding, announced by the US Energy Department on Tuesday, is being offered on a conditional basis for as many as five loans for utilities and other energy companies that will build two reactors each. Westinghouse has signed letters of intent with seven potential partners, each with identified project sites, the Energy Department said. The agency declined to name the utilities involved until final selections are made. 

President Donald Trump sees nuclear reactors as a key source of power for data centers and economic growth. He signed an executive order last year that called for the US to have 10 large conventional reactors under construction by 2030 amid a goal of quadrupling nuclear power in the country to 400 gigawatts.

While several companies are pushing to build a new generation of small modular reactors in the US, development of large traditional nuclear plants has been mostly dormant. Only three have been completed in the US this century. Not a single one is currently under construction.

The loans will be used to purchase “long-lead time items” such as transformers, steam turbines and reactor vessels that can take years to deliver, according to a press release.

The last commercial-scale reactor built in the US, Southern Co.’s Vogtle nuclear project, was more than $16 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule. 

“We want to get things moving again,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters Tuesday. “We need to build more large reactors again in the United States.”

The gigawatt-scale AP1000 reactor is built by Westinghouse, which is owned by Brookfield Asset Management and Canadian uranium producer Cameco Corp, is the only licensed large scale advanced commercial reactor operating in the US. 

“We believe the right incentives are being created to advance the rapid deployment of AP1000 reactors in the US,” Tim Gitzel, Cameco’s Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement.

(Updates with details throughout.)

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The Austin-based firm shut down e360 Power Fund, LP in December after it was rocked by extreme market volatility exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s April 2025 tariff announcements, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing non-public information. 

It was the second such closure for e360 in less than a decade and leaves the firm running less than $100 million via separately managed accounts, one of the people said.

The firm, which posted huge gains in some years after its 2021 relaunch, was a victim of the increasingly volatile US gas and power markets. Although some hedge funds and commodity trading houses like Vitol and Citadel Energy Marketing have profitably expanded physical gas trading operations, the downfall of the e360 fund illustrates the downside of trying to profit from volatility.

e360 Power declined to comment for this story. The firm managed roughly $400 million as recently as mid-2024.

The firm, which continues to actively trade with less than 10 full-time employees, is now pursuing a lower-volatility strategy that may preclude the sort of double-digit monthly gains recorded earlier in the decade. e360 was up between 8% and 10% for the first five months of this year after raising between $25 million and $50 million in March, one of the people said.

e360’s flagship fund was performing poorly even before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariff announcements in April 2025, logging 17.5% losses for the first three months of that year, according to an investor letter seen by Bloomberg. Trump’s decrees on broad-based global tariffs caused huge selloffs across equity and commodity markets, which pulled down gas and electricity prices.

That month was one of the most difficult periods the firm had faced since its inception in 2009 as erratic price moves forced traders to liquidate positions, the person said. Later that year, following additional losses, one of the firm’s two co-founders, James Shrewsbury, departed the firm, leaving the other co-founder Juan Penelas at the helm.

The losses coupled with investor cashouts meant there was not enough money left in the fund to justify fixed expenses, so it was shuttered and the remaining money was refunded in December, the person said.

The losses were a reversal of e360’s extraordinary performance earlier in the decade, when it surged 53% in 2020, 188% in 2021 and 97% in 2022 before slowing to a 5% gain in 2023.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry told miners to supply an additional 2.7 million tons of coal to power plants this month, according to a letter dated June 12 seen by Bloomberg News. It cited a ministerial decree allowing the government to force producers to prioritize domestic sales if local needs are not met.

The extra demand amounts to about 2% of the total coal contracted so far this year by state power firm Perusahaan Listrik Negara.

The Energy Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Rolling blackouts last week across Java — Indonesia’s most populous island — are the latest setback for Prabowo, whose administration has been rocked by protests, corruption scandals and the economic fallout from the US-Iran war. The former general has unnerved investors with his fiscal expansion and policy making, leading to a sharp decline in the local currency. 

Indonesia, the world’s top exporter of thermal coal, sharply cut its production this year by tightening government-issued mining quotas in an effort to boost prices. Power blackouts have triggered scrutiny over that policy.

Energy Minister Bahlil Lahadalia, though, said in a Sunday statement that the power outages were caused by technical issues rather than a shortage of coal. Darmawan Prasodjo, president of PLN, said the power disruptions were caused by problems at two large power plants on Java.

Indonesian miners are required to sell a proportion of their coal to domestic consumers, including power plants, each year, usually at below-market prices. Their obligations are often set at the start of the year.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

It is called the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), and it forces a choice the bloc has been reluctant to state plainly: that it cannot, right now, run its energy transition both quickly and on its own terms. It must choose.

The EU narrative “has shifted from climate change to strategic autonomy and security,” Alessandro Torello, Director for Energy and Climate at Brussels-based Rud Pedersen consultancy, told Energy Connects. “And more recently, because of the war in Iran, the security argument is even stronger than the climate argument. What we need to keep an eye on is that third element — affordability. The economics, the cost, must go along with the speed of the transition.”

“Because of the war in Iran, the security argument is even stronger than the climate argument. What we need to keep an eye on is that third element — affordability. The economics, the cost, must go along with the speed of the transition.”

- Alessandro Torello, Director for Energy and Climate at Rud Pedersen consultancy

The Act’s central mechanism is a “Made in EU” requirement: public money — government procurement contracts, renewable energy auction subsidies, support schemes — would increasingly have to be spent on equipment produced in the EU. If the transition is being funded by citizens’ taxes, it should generate jobs and factories at home. But for the technologies that matter most, those factories are not ready. China currently fills the gap, and the EU does not control the terms on which it does so.

The Brussels-based Commission formally tabled the IAA proposal in March. It is now being negotiated between the 27 governments and EU institutions and will not be finalised before late 2027, with transition periods ranging from one to six years depending on the technology.

Decarbonisation, competitiveness, and economic security “are not easy to reconcile,” said Marc Vanheukelen, a former EU Ambassador to the World Trade Organization and EU climate envoy. “You have to make trade-offs.”

The offshore wind test

Nowhere is the challenge sharper than in offshore wind. The EU plans to build roughly 109 gigawatts of new offshore capacity by 2035, but the supply chain to deliver it is dangerously thin. There are only three significant European turbine manufacturers — Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, and GE Vernova. More than 90% of the permanent magnets that go inside those turbines are produced in China, a dependency that runs all the way down to the extraction and processing of the required rare earth material.

When Beijing tightened export licenses on rare earth magnets in 2025, exports fell by three-quarters, and several European carmakers were forced to halt production. The wind sector has so far been less directly exposed — but as offshore construction accelerates, its dependence on those inputs will deepen at exactly the wrong moment.

The gigawatt target looks considerably harder under a strict Made in EU framework. “If the pylons you need for windmills become more expensive, that will probably slow down their deployment,” Vanheukelen told Energy Connects. “All else equal, the Made in Europe provisions of the IAA will slow things down further.”

Permitting backlogs

You cannot build a sovereign manufacturing base for wind turbines if the wind farms themselves keep getting stuck in planning.

Italy, the EU’s third-largest economy and second-biggest manufacturing power, is the starkest illustration.

On 16 June the country’s main business lobby Confindustria called on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government to declare a renewable energy emergency, warning that some 4,000 permits for renewable projects totaling 130 gigawatts are currently blocked. Without urgent action, manufacturers will leave for countries with lower energy costs.

Permitting backlogs and grid delays are slowing renewable deployment across the bloc. A “Made in EU” requirement is a difficult sell when demand is not growing fast enough to justify the investment it is supposed to unlock.

Trade pressure and escape clause

The Act faces significant external pressure. China has warned that its rules discriminate against foreign producers and violate international trade commitments. “It is almost certain that China will take countermeasures — export restrictions as well as import restrictions,” said Vanheukelen. “And then we will see whether the EU has the stamina to say: we are going to go on regardless.”

The “Made in EU” definition itself is fiercely contested. France wants strict EU-only rules. Germany favors a broader model including countries that signed trade agreements with the Union such as the United Kingdom and Japan. There is also a financial escape valve. If the cost premium of sourcing Made in EU products exceeds 25%, public authorities could revert to third-country suppliers. “There is a clear willingness to privilege European production,” said Vanheukelen, “but not at any cost.”

“There is a clear willingness to privilege European production, but not at any cost.”

- Marc Vanheukelen, former EU Ambassador to the World Trade Organization and EU climate envoy

The role of the 2022 energy crisis

The Act descends from the Clean Industrial Deal proposed by the Commission last year, and before that from the Net Zero Industry Act — Europe’s answer to the American Inflation Reduction Act and the subsidy race it triggered. But the political wind behind it was sharpened by the 2022 energy crisis, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed how dangerous it is to depend on a single supplier for an essential resource.

That urgency is already fading. The Middle East conflict has temporarily reversed that trend. But Torello cautions against assuming external shocks produce durable policy. “The European Parliament members will vote taking into account what happens the night before if something big happens — in terms of trade, in terms of the EU-China relationship.”

And “if there are big protests from end users saying the products I have to buy are becoming much more expensive, they will go to the Commission and to national governments — not to the European Parliament,” Vanheukelen noted.

When IAA meets AI and…nuclear

IAA and AI share more than a vowel or two. Both represent domains where Europe nurses ambitions while harboring deep external dependencies — with the speed-versus-sovereignty dilemma playing out in almost identical terms.

“If you want data centres in the EU, you need a lot of electricity,” said Torello. “You need to scale that up quickly and massively.”

AI-driven electricity demand will press nuclear back onto the agenda whether Europe is ready or not. Nuclear “used to be a dirty word. Now it has become generally accepted again,” said Vanheukelen. Whether small modular reactors can come on stream before the demand wave hits is another matter. “There might be a timing problem,” he said.

The bond required in onshore federal drilling leases will be cut to $25,000 from the $500,000 imposed during the Joe Biden administration, the department announced Monday. Such bonds ensure that the costs of capping and cleaning up any wells abandoned by drillers don’t fall to taxpayers. 

The change will be subject to a 60-day public comment period once it is published in the Federal Register.

In a separate move, the department is eliminating some provisions and clarifying definitions in the waste-reduction rules that have applied to drilling-permit applications. 

“These targeted updates cut through the red tape that has historically deterred investment, ensuring our public lands remain a reliable engine for economic growth and innovation,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in the statement. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The easing of sanctions, although brief, is a step toward the return of more normalized relations between the two nations, which have been at odds for nearly five decades. The Iranian supply could also alleviate the impact of the worst global oil disruption in history, but it’s unclear if US refiners will have the appetite to resume purchases again. 

When American fuel-makers last imported significant volumes of Iranian oil, the shale boom was still decades away and the Soviet Union was intact, though only months away from collapse. The US was also a net importer of oil, relying heavily on supplies from OPEC countries. 

The final barrels to enter the US before the 1995 oil embargo imposed by the Clinton administration went to fuel-makers in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Chevron Corp and Marathon Petroleum Corp were among the last to import Iranian supplies in 1991, according to Energy Information Administration data. US refineries imported mostly medium sour oils from Iran, a variety that was scarce at the time. 

The history of Iran as an oil supplier to the US changed irrevocably in 1979, when mounting political and civil unrest culminated with the Iranian revolution, driving Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, an ally of the US, into exile. 

American refineries immediately halted purchases of oil from Tehran after US President Jimmy Carter banned imports from the country. Volumes that peaked at 850,000 barrels a day in 1977 slumped to zero a few months after the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

In a letter to the European Commission, countries including Greece, Hungary, Latvia and Poland called for scaling up financing under the Modernization Fund in the post-2030 period as part of an upcoming review of the bloc’s Emissions Trading System. The commission is due to unveil a reform of the carbon cap-and-trade program on July 15. 

The EU ETS has moved to the top of the bloc’s political agenda as the Middle East conflict exacerbated concerns over Europe’s declining competitiveness and some governments criticized carbon pricing for contributing to high energy costs. 

“In the current political and economic context, characterized by increased geopolitical risks and uncertainty, predictable financing mechanisms remain an essential condition for the success of the energy transition in the EU,” the alliance said in a letter seen by Bloomberg News. 

The July review is set to adjust the carbon market to a new climate goal of reducing 90% of greenhouse gases by 2040 compared with 1990 levels. The call by the coalition, which also includes Croatia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Estonia, highlights the emerging battle lines in what is shaping up to be a heated debate on the final shape of the reform.

The Modernization Fund is financed by proceeds from carbon emissions trading to help lower-income EU countries invest in cleaner energy and improve efficiency. The commission estimates its total revenues in the 2021-2030 period at €57 billion, assuming carbon prices of €75 a metric ton. Benchmark emissions contracts traded at around €80 on Monday.

The signatories of the letter also include Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

An explosion and fire hit the Barzan local gas supply facility on Sunday, according to operator QatarEnergy. Qatar’s interior ministry said in an online post that 54 people were injured in the blast, and 18 are missing. 

The Barzan gas plant feeds domestic industries and power generation, and it is unclear if liquefied natural gas output will be affected. Qatar, the second-biggest LNG exporter before the war, halted production of the super-chilled fuel early in the conflict between the US and Iran after attacks on its vast facilities and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The explosion illustrates the challenge that the Gulf nation faces as it seeks to ramp up operations at Ras Laffan, the world’s biggest LNG export plant. Its progress is being closely monitored by the market as a fast resumption would ease global prices. US-Iran tensions saw Dutch natural gas prices — an international benchmark — rise early on Monday. 

Restarting operations at gas facilities is a complex process that requires carefully balancing pressure to avoid damage and leaks. Qatar is seeking to resume 80% of LNG production at Ras Laffan within two months of Hormuz safely opening.

Spanning roughly 300 square kilometers, Ras Laffan is one of the world’s largest industrial hubs, housing LNG export plants, refineries, gas-to-liquids facilities, desalination units, and power stations.

It doesn’t appear that Qatar is trying to slow down the restart of LNG exports. Four tankers — either owned by Qatar’s state shipping company or under long-term charter with the country — were traveling through Hormuz toward Ras Laffan on Monday, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Brent crude slipped toward $79 a barrel, reversing an earlier gain of as much as 2.2%, while West Texas Intermediate was near $77. The parties have agreed on a roadmap toward reaching a final deal in 60 days, and technical talks will continue for the remainder of the week, according to a statement issued by Qatar and Pakistan, which are mediating discussions in Switzerland.

The high-level meeting follows a memorandum of understanding signed by both sides last week, which was tested over the weekend after Iran claimed to have closed the Strait of Hormuz, accusing Israel of violating a ceasefire in Lebanon. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a post on X that mediation in Switzerland has delivered major progress to end the conflict in Lebanon.

Negotiations got off to a shaky start when Iranian media reported the Islamic Republic halted discussions following Trump’s threat, but people familiar with the matter said they continued into the early hours of Monday in Switzerland. Talks covered topics including mechanisms to ensure the strait remains open and how to enforce the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, according to a senior US diplomat engaged in the discussions.

The war in the Middle East has choked off supply in a region responsible for a third of the world’s oil production. Crude futures have come off in recent weeks — although prices remain higher than pre-war levels — after global refiners found temporary workarounds, and as the prospect of an end to the conflict fueled optimism over a rapid return to normality.

Despite Iran claiming to have closed Hormuz again, millions of barrels of oil continued to flow through the waterway over the weekend. Still, Chubb Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Evan Greenberg told Fox News that security remains volatile, despite US efforts to open shipping channels.

“We believe markets remain overly optimistic over the sustained resumption of oil flows from the Middle East,” said Vivek Dhar, an analyst with Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Uncertainties over production and whether vessels are willing to return to the region are set to hamper flows, he added.

A peace deal would in theory unleash a gush of supply where there’s less demand for now, especially given a slump in purchases by top importer China. About 80 million barrels of crude are set to suddenly hit the market should Hormuz fully reopen, threatening to leave refiners swamped.

Meanwhile, Gulf producers are preparing for a production ramp-up, with Kuwait canceling earlier force majeure notices. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. told customers to resume loading supply from inside the Gulf, while selling spot crude in a series of tenders.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

National oil company Kuwait Petroleum Corp. issued a tender to sell naphtha — used to make gasoline and plastics — requiring buyers pick up cargoes from the country’s ports, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. To reach customers, these would need to transit the waterway.

Kuwait’s move is the first such offer in a long while, according to traders, without being specific. It differs from previous sales in that it requires buyers to charter their own vessels, they said. Meanwhile, the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside office hours.

Kuwait’s move adds to a flurry of signs from across the region that producers are taking steps to revive vital energy flows following the interim peace deal between Iran and the US. At follow-on talks this weekend, mediators said the sides also established a communication line to avoid incidents and miscalculation, with the aim of ensuring safe passage for commercial vessels through Hormuz.

Last week, Kuwait Petroleum Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Nawaf Al-Sabah said the company had started boosting oil output. All so-called force majeure notices —  a legal clause allowing producers to not honor contractual commitments — that were issued during the war would be lifted, he said.

To be sure, the situation around Hormuz remains fluid, and Kuwait Petroleum’s offer need not mean buyers and shipowners are willing to risk sending a vessel, the traders said. The security of ships transiting Hormuz remains an “hour to hour” play, according to Chubb Ltd., a major insurer.

During the war, Kuwait Petroleum previously shipped liquefied petroleum gas through the chokepoint using its own ships, and also offered crude oil from ships from outside the waterway.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Four tankers — either owned by Qatar’s shipping arm or under long-term charter with the country — are traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. If successful, this would be the largest volume of empty LNG ships to go through the waterway on a single day since the war began over three months ago.

Another five vessels linked to the emirate are near eastern Oman, while several more are on the way, ship data shows.

Qatar, the second-biggest LNG exporter before the war, halted output early in the conflict between the US and Iran after attacks on its vast liquefaction facilities and the closure of the strait, which blocked its route to international markets. Doha seeks to resume most production within two months of Hormuz safely opening.

At least three other empty Qatar-linked tankers have traversed the waterway in the past week, ship data shows. Until these ships, Qatar hadn’t brought any empty LNG carriers into the Gulf due to security concerns.

Qatar has managed to export some cargoes, loading just over 300,000 tons of LNG in the week to June 19, the most since early March, ship data shows. That is still only about a fifth of levels before the US and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February.

The bringing home of the tankers comes after the US and Iran signed an interim peace agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz, raising hopes that there would be an increase in traffic through the waterway. Still, tensions between the sides remain high, with President Donald Trump threatening strikes on Iran if Hezbollah keeps attacking Israel, while Iran claimed to have closed the waterway again — although millions of barrels of oil transited over the weekend.

The restart of Ras Laffan — the world’s biggest LNG export plant — is being closely monitored, as a fast resumption would ease global prices. The US-Iran tensions saw Dutch natural gas prices — an international benchmark — rise early on Monday. 

Meanwhile, Ras Laffan operator QatarEnergy said an incident during startup at the complex resulted in an explosion and fire at the Barzan gas supply facility on Sunday. That plant supplies domestic industries and power generation, and it is unclear if LNG output will be affected.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

OPEC has also recently ushered in a historic milestone itself, with the publishing of the 20th edition of its World Oil Outlook (WOO) in June. What the publication underscores is the need to maintain a long-term focus on oil and energy outlooks, despite headlines often being dominated by short-term dynamics. This will be vital in helping to ensure necessary future investments are made.

The WOO 2026 data and analysis offer readers a veritable wealth of information, but overall, there are perhaps six key high-level takeaways.

Ultimately, the energy futures of more than eight billion people – soon to be 9.7 billion – depend on fostering an investment-friendly climate that acknowledges the profound shifts in demographics, society, technology, economics and energy before us. 

Our choices today will shape the energy world of tomorrow. Thanks to publications like the WOO, we can ensure our decisions are well informed.

“It’s from day to day, hour to hour,” Greenberg, whose company is a major insurer of commercial shipping, said on Fox News’ .

“Mines are the greatest uncertainty” in the strait, Greenberg said, as US and Iranian negotiators held talks in Switzerland on a permanent ceasefire and to lock in free passage through the waterway.

“We’re talking more about a war-zone environment,” he said. “Only a narrow channel is really being used to transit, and so it limits the number of ships that can actually go in and out. The Navy has been working to open up a broader set of channels, and as that happens, then shipping will increase.”

Oil has kept flowing even as Iran seeks to exert control, including its announcement Saturday that it had closed the strait once again. The US military’s Central Command said commercial ship traffic increased in the strait on Saturday, with 55 merchant ships transiting cargo and more than 17 million barrels of oil.

Lloyd’s of London Ltd. and Chubb announced on Friday a joint $400 million marine war risk consortium offering companies insurance for passage through the Hormuz strait.

The US International Development Finance Corp. announced a $20 billion reinsurance program in March that Chubb and other companies joined in April to provide an extra $20 billion in funds.

The US military says it has defended commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz against regular threats, according to a document sent to the industry. The US began guiding vessels through the strait with their signals turned off, using a route that hugs the coast of Oman, helping to boost oil and cargo flows.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Basra Oil Co. requested lifting output to the maximum available capacity at the Rumaila, West Qurna-1, West Qurna-2, Zubair and Artawi fields, according to a document dated June 19 seen by Bloomberg. The return to higher production will be gradual, and will depend on operational conditions and buyers arranging tankers for loading, Oil Ministry spokesman Salim Al-Rikabi told Bloomberg. 

The boss of Iraq’s state oil-marketing company SOMO, Ali Nizar, said separately in an interview with Iraq 24 television that two ships are currently loading at the country’s southern terminal but that more would need to enter Hormuz for output to keep rising.

OPEC’s second-largest producer saw its oil exports plummet after the US-Iran war caused marine traffic through the trait to come to an almost complete halt. Iraq is dependent on the waterway for the bulk its crude exports and has only limited capacity to ship oil through pipelines over land that some of its neighbors used at the height of the crisis. 

Still, production in the country’s petroleum heartland in the south, where the five fields are located, has already climbed to 1.5 million barrels a day in recent days, a senior executive said this week.

Companies that have been requested to start lifting output from the fields have already begun work to increase production, Al-Rikabi said. The focus currently is on fields that pump associated gas with that would support local demand for power generation and cooking fuel.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The reality of four years of war pushed deeper into everyday life on Thursday when a swarm of nearly 200 drones hit Moscow’s oil refinery. Residents were stunned by images of thick black smoke rising over the city’s south, the shutdown of major roads and airports, and reports of black rain falling in some districts.

As the immediate shock faded, many Muscovites turned their attention to a more practical concern: Will the region have enough fuel and how much will it cost?

Some drivers in several Moscow districts and near the capital were already reporting gasoline prices rising to more than 90 rubles ($1.23) per liter on Thursday, compared with about 70 rubles before the attack. Some Muscovites said they encountered shortages and long lines at the pump. Residents in Moscow’s outer suburbs also reported that some filling stations had stopped selling gasoline in jerry cans.

Some level of gasoline shortage in the Moscow region is unavoidable, according to Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and a former Russian oil executive. There may be a short-lived decline in gasoline sales to 80% to 90% of normal levels, with the duration depending on the speed of repairs, he said.

“The authorities will do everything they can to bring fuel in from other regions,” Vakulenko said. “However rail capacity is not unlimited, and nearby refineries have also been damaged.”

Kyiv has significantly stepped up attacks on oil infrastructure in recent months, with the Moscow refinery alone hit twice this week. Russia’s crude-processing rates have fallen to their lowest level in two decades so far in June, according to estimates by EA Analytics, part of industry consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. 

Before Thursday’s attacks, the cost of fuel was already rising in Russia. Average retail gasoline prices increased 1% week-on-week to 69.11 rubles a liter in the June 9-15 period, according to data published by the Federal Statistics Service late Wednesday. That was the biggest jump since early January, weekly data show. 

Authorities across Russia have sought to reassure motorists that the situation is under control.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak held a meeting on the domestic fuel market on Friday and stressed that reliable and timely supplies, as well as continuous monitoring and control of prices, remain the main focus, according to a government statement. After gasoline prices rose at some Moscow-area filling stations, the country’s antitrust service requested pricing and sales figures from two fuel retailers.

According to data compiled by a service that tracks retail gasoline sales, prices at major refueling chains including Gazprom Neft, Rosneft, Lukoil and Tatneft remained near the regional averages seen before the Thursday attacks.

Traffic restrictions imposed in southeastern Moscow after the drone strikes have gradually been lifted, according to the city’s administration.

Russia’s biggest airline, Aeroflot, canceled about 170 flights on Thursday, while more than 500 flights in total were canceled or delayed at Moscow airports. Airports experienced further disruption on Friday, as Moscow’s mayor said that the capital’s air defenses repelled more than 70 drones.

Moscow authorities said air quality in the capital remained within normal limits even after the refinery fire, which burned for much of the day. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the blaze had been mostly contained by about 3 p.m. local time on Thursday, while firefighters continued working to extinguish remaining hot-spots. He has not provided any updates since then on whether the fire has been fully extinguished.

Following Thursday’s strike on the Moscow refinery, a complex crude-processing unit and four tank reservoirs were damaged, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a Telegram statement on Friday.

Authorities and federal media largely played down the incident, with reports about the Moscow refinery fire receiving only brief coverage on major television channels.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov brushed aside questions about the drone attack on Moscow, urging reporters to focus instead on what he described as the “impressive” results of Russian strikes on Ukraine. Peskov also said President Vladimir Putin receives daily reports on developments across the country, indicating he had been informed about the attack.

The disruption to fuel supplies and transportation show how, more than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war’s impact is increasingly visible in everyday life, with no let-up in sight. 

“This is the new reality, and it’s an unpleasant one,” said Elena, a 47-year-old owner of a small restaurant in Moscow. “But I have a business here, nowhere else to go, and I can’t stop the war.”

(Updates with number of drones repelled below second chart)

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The government has started reviewing the state of the industry after being approached by private sector groups, but has yet to decide whether it will act or not, a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations said, asking not be named because the information isn’t public. The government is of the view that demand is likely to rise in the mid-term and bolster the industry, the person said.

No decision has been made and the government could decide not to offer any support to solar energy producers.

Spain’s solar industry has come under stress since last year, after prices plummeted due to overcapacity. While many solar power producers have supply contracts that ensure fixed prices, many smaller companies are vulnerable to spot market volatility.

Fostering clean-energy has been a central policy of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government since he took office in 2018, with the strong expansion of solar energy leaving Spain better positioned to whether energy crunches than other European nations.

But with an abundance of solar farms and sunlight, Spain has already beaten its annual record for hours of negative electricity prices. While the build-out of solar has helped reduce fossil-fuel use and lower wholesale power costs, investment in grids and storage has lagged behind. That is leaving growing volumes of clean electricity with nowhere to go, forcing some generators to sell power at a loss or switch off altogether.

Over-reliance on solar was a central issue behind Spain’s nationwide blackout in April of last year. Since then, the grid operator has become more cautious in managing the system’s stability with the increased use of gas-fired generation that’s less susceptible to voltage swings. 

A government spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a call and a text message seeking comment. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

RWE is in late stage talks to buy the stake of around 17% that Swiss Life currently holds in M31, a holding company that in turn owns a 74.9% stake in Amprion, the people said. Amprion transports electricity to about 29 million people and industrial consumers across seven federal states mainly in the west of the country.

The move to buy all or a part of Swiss Life’s stake, which hasn’t been previously reported, could be announced as early as next week, the people said, declining to be identified because the information is private. They added RWE will likely announce the acquisition of a 24% stake in M31 from AEBG, an investment group representing five major German medical pension funds, at the same time.

Representatives for RWE, Swiss Life and AEBG declined to comment.

Germany’s grid needs billions in investment as its buildout hasn’t kept pace with the expansion in renewable-energy output. Grid bottlenecks occur as most wind farms are located in the north of the country, but demand is centered in the industrial areas in the south, driving up costs for consumers.

RWE recently secured fresh capital in a deal with co-investor Apollo Global Management Inc, which has pledged to spend €100 billion in Germany. The two firms are investors in a joint venture that holds 25.1% in Amprion.

The move would highlight RWE’s return to regulated assets after having shed some of its offshore wind exposure recently. Amprion itself plans to invest around €42 billion by 2030. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The unprecedented nature of the closure left many people working blind and without a timetable. 

In the United Arab Emirates, one official says the country spent the early days of the conflict working out how to stagger oil-well shutdowns to ensure production would be best-placed to rebound. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have managed to keep enough pressure in their fields to potentially return to prewar production rates within two weeks, officials say. Saudi supertankers have passed up millions of dollars in earnings since April waiting on standby to pick up the kingdom’s crude at a moment’s notice should the Strait reopen.

Gulf Countries Begin Loading Tankers

Within hours of the interim peace deal being signed by the US and Iran on Wednesday, three Saudi supertankers emerged outside the strait, among the first in a swelling flow of traffic, though the volume of visible traffic slowed on Friday.

Other players are more circumspect and want further reassurances on a demining program and the order that ships will be allowed out of the gulf. But the deal signed by US President Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian should be the signal for oil wells and refineries dotted across the region to crank into gear — a restart so big that it should be visible from space, where thousands of megawatts of heat signatures will be picked up as fields burn off gas.

“We should be able to restore normal operations across this entire market within the next six months, provided that we truly return to a period when the strait is open,” Patrick Pouyanne, chairman and chief executive officer of TotalEnergies SE, told the French parliament on Wednesday. “Everyone will be watching to see what’s actually happening on the ground.”

An Oil And Gas Reboot

Critical for the Gulf states, the restart of production and barrels flowing out of Hormuz also offers the prospect of lower energy prices and an easing of the inflation fears of central bankers across the world. For Trump it has the added attraction of lowering fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections and giving the US an opportunity to restore inventories that have hit bare-minimum levels.

To run smoothly, the reopening needs to be properly choreographed with ships in the right place, wells restarted, infrastructure repaired and agreement on a demining operation. It could easily be derailed if not enough owners are willing to enter Hormuz soon enough to carry the barrels, or if Iran begins imposing tolls as the interim deal implies it could or if Trump’s peace plan falters and hostilities resume.

At times during the last four months, Gulf oil exports were down almost 15 million barrels a day — a 60% drop from where they were in February. And benchmark crude prices topped $126 a barrel, a price that didn’t go higher in recent months only because of record releases from emergency oil reserves and plunging demand which helped ease global supply shortages. Iranian attacks have caused about $42 billion of damage to major facilities from refineries to pipelines, consultant Rystad Energy estimates. Imposition of a US blockade designed to curb Iranian oil revenues further halted traffic. Some refining units could take months to fully return, say senior oil executives.

And all the time more than 100 oil-laden tankers with hundreds of crew members onboard have been stuck inside the Gulf, analysts at shipbroker E.A. Gibson estimate.

Reinstating Prewar Status

Saudi and Emirati officials are also bullish about how quickly they can restore crude flows. Restarting the refineries that process oil into consumable fuels will likely be a longer-term process, requiring bespoke equipment and complex engineering. Collectively, the six largest refining plants in the region had about 1.4 million barrels a day of processing capacity offline, according to IIR Energy, which analyzes such data, a volume that is more than a fifth of the amount of refined fuel exported through Hormuz before the war.

Not all producers have had the same success in keeping their fields running optimally while the conflict raged. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were able to divert some oil supplies through pipelines to Yanbu on the Red Sea and Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman to bypass Hormuz. 

Even within the same country the picture is confused. One official warns that restoring Iraq’s fields to previous levels will be a slow process because the prolonged shutdown has left wells clogged with substances like paraffin. At the same time, Iraq’s output is already showing signs of an increase, with a top official at the southern Basra Oil Co. saying this week that production had risen by about 500,000 barrels a day from earlier in the war.

Scaling Supplies

A spokesperson for Iraq’s oil ministry said that the pace of output restarts will vary from field to field. They added that the ministry is prioritizing fields that produce associated gas, or where such gas can be utilized.

“Restoring supply on this scale is wholly unprecedented,” said Fraser McKay, head of upstream analysis at consultant Wood Mackenzie, which estimates that 70% of prewar production can be returned within three months and 90% within six months. “There will be pleasant surprises for producers but also setbacks.” 

In fact, the reopening of Hormuz has already been quietly underway for weeks. Each day, a handful of oil tankers, starting with a trickle but more recently carrying as many as five million barrels a day — somewhere between a quarter and a third of the normal prewar traffic — were hugging the coast of Oman and escaping the 21-mile wide waterway. 

That flow should now turn into a gush if the Middle East’s oil industry restarts in earnest. The heavy lift will see Saudi oilfield engineers, Indian tanker captains and others working around the clock to try and return the oil market to something more closely resembling normality. 

“You don’t need to be back at 100% of prewar flows right away,” says Saad Rahim, chief economist at commodity trader Trafigura Group, “but you need to be back to at least 50% fairly quickly.” 

Where Are All The Ships?

Almost as soon as Trump announced on Sunday that a deal would be struck this week, Gulf producers were inundated with calls from clients seeking clarity and further details about how real any resumption in shipments might be. 

On Thursday many were still seeking that same reassurance. The world's main oil tanker trade group Intertanko, called for urgent clarity on what steps would be needed to get ships through Hormuz safely, with owners needing to be reassured that there are no mines present before risking a crossing. 

It’s still not clear what a demining operation in Hormuz would look like or who would do it, but security officials say it would be an operation that’s likely to take weeks rather than days.

“Everyone would like to get the ships out, but the mood is that you don’t necessarily need to be the first one,’’ says Jan Rindbo, chief executive officer of D/S Norden A/S. “Obviously with traffic resuming that will build confidence. But it’s still fragile, it will not take a lot for that confidence to disappear again.”

Shipping Industry Takes A Gamble

For those willing to take the risk, there could be a handsome financial reward. Shipowners think there’ll be hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to earn by getting their ships in the right place at the right time. On Wednesday at least six supertankers, capable of hauling 12 million barrels of crude, conducted screeching turns in the middle of the Indian Ocean and began sailing toward the Gulf on the prospect of reopening. Some Greek owners and an enigmatic South Korean shipowner, Ga-Hyun Chung, who recently became the world’s largest operator of supertankers, have also been sending vessels close to the Gulf of Oman.

Their wager is that there’ll be a surge of cargoes and not enough ships in place to carry them. Clarksons Securities estimated this week that the equivalent of about 140 supertankers would be needed to restore flows from the Gulf. There are about 120 empty supertankers, east of the Malacca Strait that could in theory get to Hormuz within a week, though some will also need to sail to other destinations around the world.

One Chinese oil company was looking for a ship to carry an Iraqi cargo of crude this week and several shipbrokers said tanker owners were quoting a rate above $600,000 a day — at least 10 times the price of last year. Oil companies are balking at those numbers.

Stranded Seafarers Await Relief

For those who have been stuck onboard tankers in the strait it’s a different calculation. Abhjit Chopra, the captain of a tanker with 22 crew, has spent 110 days stranded and now just wants to go home to his family in India. He heard about the deal via mobile phone messages that woke him on Thursday morning, but says there was no celebration onboard or from the ships around them.

He paints a picture of mundane days over the last few months broken up by occasional missiles flying overhead and says he and the crew are now just waiting for instructions.

“There has definitely been a sense of strain and uncertainty over this 100-plus days where we do not have clarity of what is about to happen,” says Chopra. “The vessels are being careful. We are all waiting for instructions from our shore offices to carry out the next steps.”

The Asia Market

Reopening will present a further opportunity for commodity traders who thrive in times of major market shifts. Several of the industry’s biggest energy traders have so far this year seen their highest profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

As the restart plays out, barrels are set to flood toward Asian refiners — the biggest buyers of Middle Eastern crude. After months of shortages that have forced processing cuts and four-day weeks to ration energy supplies in some nations, buyers from Japan to Vietnam say they are already inundated with cargo offers. One of the first tankers to leave Hormuz on Thursday was loaded with liquefied natural gas destined for Pakistan, which has faced severe fuel shortages since the war began.

A series of workarounds — some unexpected such as a plunge in Chinese imports, others more deliberate initiatives including the release of emergency reserves, and a diversion of flows through pipes in the Middle East helped stave off higher prices. Until now, those levers have kept the market in balance, and the added supplies could push it back into a surplus. But countries and companies will also be looking to rebuild more than a billion barrels of inventories that have been lost since the conflict began.

“With China’s ability to swing demand so much and so quickly, the system is pretty secure against supply shocks,” said Rory Johnston, oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context. “This is obviously the ultimate supply-shock test, and the market so far seems to have passed.”

Building A Resilient Supply Chain

Several commodity traders said that once the oil market has worked its way through this most recent shock, they expect it to return to what had been expected prewar for 2026: a period where supply far outstrips demand. That means oil prices, which stood at around $79 on Thursday, are poised to tumble even further. 

China recently began tapping its commercial oil reserves, and there’s little sign of its imports picking up. Lower prices and more barrels flowing through Hormuz, traders say, could soon change that.

Focus will then quickly turn to lessons learned from the conflict. The UAE has already announced plans to build more pipelines to bypass Hormuz so that if conflict breaks out again it will be better insulated and able to export at least some of its oil. Traders and refiners in Asia say processors — which typically purchase oil via long-term contracts for Middle Eastern crudes — will be reassessing their huge reliance on the region. 

There are also expectations that the barrels that emerge will quickly flow into storage tanks depleted over the course of the war. The US strategic reserve is now at its lowest level since the 1980s, while Japan has released about 15% of the stock it holds since March. Some expect that refilling process to put a floor under oil prices into the end of the year at least, and keep demand for the tankers hauling barrels across the world supported.

“Everyone is going to look around and say we need to rebuild inventories,” says Trafigura’s Rahim, “crude producers and refiners will run as hard as they can.”

(Updates with latest traffic in fourth paragraph and Iraq oil ministry comments in fourteenth paragraph.)

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The United Arab Emirates state-owned producer said oil from its ports at Das and Zirku islands, which are located inside the Gulf, has been available for loading since April 27. Failure to pick up the crude would constitute a breach of buyers’ lifting obligations, it added.

In light of the recent US-Iran deal and “the envisaged uninterrupted flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, we expect that all cargoes will be lifted in accordance with the published loading programs,” it said in its notice to the company’s long-term buyers.

If buyers can’t secure their own tankers, Adnoc would be able to assist with its own or affiliated vessels. The company also cited its general terms and conditions for the sale of crude oil, which states that a buyer shall pay compensation to the seller in the event of a failure to take delivery.

Adnoc declined to comment.

The company had been among the most successful of Gulf producers to get supply out through the Strait of Hormuz, offering crude to buyers in a series of tenders. It has sold at least 30 million barrels so far, with more likely to transact this week. Other sellers like Kuwait have also been getting oil out of the gulf.

The United Arab Emirates recently left the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, allowing the country to ramp up production as it’s no longer bound by cartel-wide limits. The nation is one of the few regional producers with large amounts of spare production capacity and has long chafed at OPEC’s curbs.

The UAE is working on plans to lessen its dependence on the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint. It will double its capacity to export crude bypassing the Hormuz by next year by accelerating the construction of a pipeline that runs to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman.

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The company’s reactor — the Ward 250 — reached “criticality” on June 18, Valar said in a statement Thursday. That means it achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, allowing it to produce a steady release of energy. 

Valar is the second company to reach the milestone this month, following Antares Nuclear Inc. Both are participating in the Energy Department’s reactor pilot program, which was announced last year and set a goal of seeing three reactors achieve criticality by July 4.

“Nine months ago, this was an empty site. Today, there’s a critical reactor on it, built and operated by the Valar team,” Isaiah Taylor, chief executive officer of Valar, said in the statement. ”We met the milestone the executive order set.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a series of orders Thursday tailored to the country’s power grids in a bid to remove bottlenecks that had risked slowing the AI boom. The aim is to handle requests for power within 90 days, a dramatic acceleration of a process that currently can take years. 

The fast-tracking will come with tradeoffs for AI hyperscalers. Under the plans, they could be required to bring their own power or curtail demand during times of high stress on the system. They will also be on the hook for costs associated with needed grid upgrades so they can receive vast quantities of electricity, according to Laura Swett, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“This is the biggest priority our country is facing at the moment,” Swett said. “We are taking historic action to push our country’s electric markets and economy into the future.”

The six regional grid operators and their transmission owners must, within 60 days, either justify tariffs that do not clearly address large-load customers or submit proposed revisions, according to a FERC fact sheet.

The order comes amid pressure from the Trump Administration to ensure AI becomes the backbone of the American economy, and highlights the surging demand in power markets after two decades of stagnation. At the same time, the data center buildout and the inflationary impact it has had on consumer power bills have become hot-button election issues ahead of the mid-terms in November.

FERC’s moves follows a call last year from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright for expedited reviews for data-center grid connections and a broader framework for accelerating access to power supplies.

“We’re out of the wild west era of data center development,” said Robert Montejo, a partner at law firm Duane Morris LLP. “This order may be remembered less for its technical reforms and more for recognizing that large-load interconnection is now a core political, planning, and economic issue.”

The data center buildout presents both opportunity and risk: Technology companies could help finance grid upgrades, but their power needs are arriving faster than the system can adapt. Data centers can add the electricity demand of a small city within a few years, forcing grid operators to meet large new loads without increasing the risk of shortages or blackouts.

While various US grids have attempted to address concerns over ensuring data centers are connected with electricity generation and keeping costs in check, the rollout of such policies have been inconsistent. PJM Interconnection LLC, the largest US grid covering 13 states and 67 million customers, has come under particularly heavy criticism for being slow and seeing power bills surge.

That mismatch is something FERC is now trying to rectify, though it stopped short of a blanket rule for the whole country. Swett said it was now up to states to ensure costs are allocated evenly. Utilities will also be required to report costs tied to data centers to the federal agency to help ensure transparency, Swett said in an interview with Bloomberg News in Washington after the public meeting. 

New York Independent System Operator spokesman Kevin Lanahan said in an email that FERC’s new approach provides flexibility to grid operators to address their region-specific conditions.

(Updates with FERC chair comment from Bloomberg News interview in the penultimate paragraph.)

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