Brent rose above $84 a barrel, after surging almost 4% in the previous session, while West Texas Intermediate was near $79. The attacks took place on Thursday night local time following explosions near Qeshm Island in Hormuz, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Crude has erased some of the declines from earlier in the week as optimism evaporated that a full reopening of Hormuz would see a resumption of energy flows from the Gulf. Under the proposed Iran-Oman agreement, Tehran intends to also ban Israeli ships from the strait and require compensation from hostile countries to use it.

“Deals to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remain elusive, with investors teetering in the balance,” said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategy director at US Bank Asset Management Group. “For now, traffic remains low and the path to a durable deal remains unclear.”

While President Donald Trump reiterated that he thinks the war will end “pretty soon” and things are “moving along good” on the strait, the parties in the conflict remain far apart on conditions for an accord. The US has insisted on free transit through the waterway and a return to the pre-war status quo, while Iran is pushing for a fee structure.

The conflict in the Middle East appears to be widening, with Iran-backed Houthis saying they conducted a “large-scale” attack against forces from Yemen’s Saudi-aligned government. The militant group earlier this week said it hit a Saudi tanker in the Gulf of Aden and threatened shipping in the northern Red Sea.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Pipeline and seaborne flows rose to 35.73 million tons in July, according to customs data released Friday. That’s up 22% from June, when shipments hit the lowest since October 2016. The volume for last month is equivalent to 8.45 million barrels a day, well below the pace in the same period last year.

Oil flows from the Gulf had ramped up following an interim peace deal between the US and Iran in June, but a recent escalation of hostilities has snarled Hormuz traffic once again. There’s also been a spillover to the Red Sea, crimping exports from Saudi Arabia, one of the Asian nation’s top suppliers. Beijing has been snapping up cargoes from Russia to fill the gaps.

Meanwhile, coal imports totaled 42.73 million tons in July, up 20% on an annual basis, after a deadly accident in Shanxi province in late May crimped domestic production. Natural gas imports fell 0.9% on-year, as liquefied supplies from the Middle East continued to be impacted by the war.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Beyond the separate budget lines, they are genuinely separate worlds within organisations: separate teams with different skills, tools, and incentive structures, following separate financial treatments and accounting logics.

This model became standard practice because it matched the industrial era it served: large capital projects built once, handed over cleanly, and then run steadily for decades. However, as GCC Vision programmes place unprecedented pressure on capital projects to convert investment into durable industrial capacity, it is important to understand its weaknesses, the blind spots it can create and the need to adapt the model to the region’s new industrial age.

Delivering plants that deliver value

The problems caused by the divide between projects and assets in asset-intensive industries have been evident and documented for some time. In fact, leading actors in the region, such as national oil companies, have challenged that model in the past decade, through stronger integration mandates, shared platforms, and digital twins that connect projects to assets. 

Here are the three main places the classic model breaks:

First, the divide rewards project delivery over value, leading to facilities failing to achieve the expected return on investment even a decade after commissioning. The average upstream oil and gas project fails to return as much as 40% of its value estimated at sanction, according to research by the Independent Project Analysis (IPA).  A similar gap has been found in other key industries for GCC ambitions, such as metals and mining.

Second, the delivery-led model reduces handover to a compliance exercise. Success is measured by whether large volumes of information have been transferred, usually through PDFs, emails, document registers, and close-out packages. That may satisfy a contractual requirement, but it does not necessarily prepare an operating team to run, maintain, and improve the asset. 

Recent research by consultancy Hatch on project ramp-up performance identifies a consistent pattern among projects that do achieve their expected value: strong attention to the quality of information handed over, not just the quantity; integrated teams that include operations staff during construction, not just at handover; and technology used to create genuine understanding of how the plant works; not just a document repository. 

What does that look like in practice? What we see more and more in successful projects across the Middle East is a common digital backbone connecting design, construction, and operations. It is often built around a digital twin platform implemented during construction, with an EAM platform ensuring that maintenance plans are live and accurate from day one of operations. The thread of intelligence that runs from engineering model to operational asset is what separates successful ramp-ups from those that struggle for years.

STOs: the risk of blind spots and siloed tools

Third, the divide is most damaging when capital projects happen inside an existing plant: not to build something new, but to transform something already running.

The standard model assumes a clean sequence: design, build, commission, operate. However, modern plants evolve continuously through upgrades, retrofits, and compliance modifications while remaining in operation.

Across the GCC this decade, major refineries and petrochemical facilities have undertaken precisely such transformations: shifting toward higher-value product slates, integrating new process units, meeting cleaner fuel standards, or otherwise altering the asset mid-life, long after the original handover occurred.

Even without transformation, the challenges caused by fragmented data and disconnected teams across the project/assets fault line are already visible during Shutdown, Turnaround, and Outage (STO) events that see maintenance work and modernisation happen side by side.

Without end-to-end supervision and a common platform such as an Enterprise Project Performance tool to coordinate work, these moments are prone to miscoordination between teams and scope creep, with predictable results: according to BCG, two-thirds of STOs fail to achieve their objectives, incurring high direct costs and significantly impacting long-term value.

Why this matters more in the Middle East, and why it matters now

This challenge exists across asset-intensive industries globally. But two converging forces make it particularly consequential for the Middle East today.

First, the scale of investment is unprecedented. Energy investment in the Middle East reached approximately $175 billion in 2024. Infrastructure construction is forecast to grow from $204 billion in 2025 to $267 billion by 2030. At that scale of investment, the value that can be created by better transitions from project to plant cannot be overstated.

Second, the reconstruction context creates a categorically different risk environment. Across the region, dozens of major industrial facilities, including refineries, petrochemical complexes, power generation assets, and water infrastructure, have sustained damage requiring reconstruction.

What makes this categorically different from a standard capital project is that reconstruction does not happen in a clean, sequential environment. It happens in parallel with ongoing operations: project teams and operations teams must work side by side on the same physical asset, often sharing the same infrastructure, the same utilities, and the same safety perimeter.

The CAPEX-OPEX divide, already a structural inefficiency in normal conditions, becomes an acute operational risk when the two worlds are literally co-located and interdependent.

The triple continuity resilient organisations need

The disconnect between CAPEX and OPEX is ultimately a problem of continuity: of knowledge, data, and people. Closing it requires different capabilities and accountabilities than the ones that created it.

First, organisations need the ability to carry engineering intent forward across the lifecycle, so that what was designed and built remains accessible to those who must operate and maintain it. Successful operators will connect fragmented data across design, construction and operations into a unified foundation - not as a one-time integration exercise, but as an ongoing discipline.

With that foundation in place, operators gain capabilities that matter in a more volatile environment. They can anticipate risk with fewer blind spots, assess the impact of change, reconfigure operations, and optimise performance with greater confidence than those who treat projects and assets as separate worlds.

Just as importantly, continuity of data and process supports continuity of accountability. Rather than one team being accountable for project delivery, another for asset performance and value falling in between, organisations can create a shared basis for value across the lifecycle.

That is precisely what the region needs to deliver on its ambitions for economic leadership, diversification, and infrastructure fit for the future. GCC countries are doing this in a period that does not tolerate inefficient practices and value that takes a decade to materialise. That means reducing the blind spots and silos of the past, and the CAPEX/OPEX divide is among the most consequential.

This reinforces a fundamental principle: the future of energy must be guided by the Energy Trilemma. Achieving this requires secure and reliable energy supplies, affordable energy that supports long-term economic competitiveness, and continued progress toward lower-carbon solutions. These priorities are not competing objectives — they must advance together.

ASEAN’s opportunity in the energy transition

While every region faces the Energy Trilemma, ASEAN’s challenge is unique. Unlike many other regions, ASEAN’s demand for natural gas continues to grow faster than domestic production as economies expand and electricity demand rises.

This widening supply-demand gap makes regional cooperation not simply beneficial, but essential. This challenge also presents a strategic opportunity. ASEAN has already developed one of its greatest strengths: an increasingly interconnected regional gas network, supported by cross-border gas pipelines and LNG infrastructure. By leveraging this connectivity, countries can share supply, strengthen system resilience, and collectively enhance regional energy security.

Energy security should therefore no longer be viewed solely as a national responsibility. For ASEAN, it is increasingly a shared regional responsibility built on interconnected energy infrastructure, trusted partnerships, and collective resilience.

Advancing the energy transition responsibly

Hydrocarbons will continue to play an important role in the global energy mix for decades to come. The challenge is therefore not to eliminate fossil fuels overnight, but to produce and use them more responsibly while accelerating practical decarbonisation.

At PTT, we are advancing an integrated portfolio of methane emissions reduction, carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen development, lower-carbon fuels, and nature-based solutions to reduce emissions while maintaining energy security, affordability, competitiveness, and sustainability.

Natural gas and LNG, as destination fuels, will continue to play a strategic role in enabling a balanced and practical energy transition. Within an integrated energy system, LNG serves as a strategic enabler that strengthens long-term energy security while supporting an orderly transition toward a lower-carbon future.

Collaboration will shape the future

The future of energy will not be determined by a single technology or a single fuel. It will be shaped by stronger partnerships among governments, industries, and communities, together with responsible investment and continuous innovation.

Gastech demonstrates that meaningful progress in the energy transition is achieved not through individual action, but through stronger international collaboration.

At PTT, we believe the future of energy must be guided by the Energy Trilemma — balancing energy security, affordability and competitiveness, and sustainability. These are not competing priorities, but mutually reinforcing objectives that must advance together.

We firmly believe natural gas and LNG are destination fuels that will continue to play a vital role for decades to come. The challenge is not to move away from fossil fuels overnight, but to produce and use them more responsibly by accelerating practical decarbonisation solutions.

Together, we can deliver the Energy Trilemma, strengthening energy security, enhancing affordability and competitiveness, and advancing sustainability through trusted partnerships, responsible investment, and practical innovation.

The AI boom, fueled in part by the success of DeepSeek, has prompted more Chinese firms to use Hong Kong as a springboard to test models and expand overseas. Deals for digital infrastructure accelerated in the last quarter, driving up prices for data center capacity on a per-kilowatt basis, according to Structure Research, a data center consultancy. 

Chinese hyperscalers, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., are increasing their capacity in the city, said Jason Zhou, senior analyst with the research firm. Some Chinese independent boutique AI firms are also entering the market to expand their overseas presence, he added.

“I would say 90% Chinese and 10% Western” for data center leasing deals in the past few months in Hong Kong, Zhou said. “It’s almost entirely a Chinese market now.” 

AI usage has drastically increased tech giants’ demand for capacity, as opposed to the lower requirements needed for cloud services in the past, he said. “Chinese players are very open to deploy inference AI in Hong Kong, so they need to buy a lot of capacity.”

As a result, wholesale pricing bands offered to hyperscalers have increased by 90% from the beginning of the year, one of the largest rises in Asia. Wholesale prices are now as much as $180 per kilowatt, still far behind the $300-$490 range in Singapore, where supply is constrained, according to Structure Research.

For these fast-growing tech firms, Hong Kong offers advantages over the mainland. Its free flow of data and direct access to the international market stands in contrast to China’s tightly controlled internet environment. 

“If you want to train some of your AIs and compete in an international space, Hong Kong is a nice cocoon to test some of your AIs and see how you fare,” said Zhou.

Major data center operators including SUNeVision Holdings Ltd., DayOne Data Centers Ltd. and Equinix Inc. are among those benefiting from the AI boom and raising billions of dollars in debt to fund their expansion plans.

Still, financial firms remain a key source of demand for digital infrastructure in the business hub.

“It’s important not to ignore the size of the customer base here in terms of traditional finance — it’s big,” said Dauwood Malik, managing partner in Hong Kong at law firm Clifford Chance, who has worked on data center deals. The rise of algorithm trading also results in higher demand for capacity, he added.

In a recently opened HK$1 billion ($127 million) facility by Equinix, financial services, together with tech companies, make up most of the demand.

For finance customers who care about latency, Hong Kong’s location near major markets like Singapore and Tokyo makes it hard to miss, said Simon Lockington, senior director at Equinix. 

“Just from a geolocation point of view, Hong Kong really has some advantages, plus the momentum and weight of being a financial hub is too big to ignore,” Lockington said.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The US and global benchmark futures contracts climbed more than 1% in post-settlement trading Thursday. Those moves followed the first gain in three days for West Texas Intermediate as signs mounted that a potential Iran-Oman deal won’t lead to a full-fledged resumption of oil shipments through the strait.

The contracts earlier surged to intraday highs after Iranian media reports that Tehran will seek to bar US and Israeli vessels from the waterway and require compensation from hostile countries before they’re allowed to use it. Traders interpreted the report to mean Gulf exports will remain restricted in the near term. 

European natural gas futures rocketed as much as 12% on the Fars news agency report of strikes as traders priced in increased risks to natural gas tankers.

Even before the latest developments, the outlook for an agreement had been growing murkier. Iran said a pact on proposed shipping lanes was in the final stages. But the country has insisted that the US isn’t part of the agreement with Oman and hinted a normalization of the strait will depend on the lifting of an American blockade on Iranian ports. 

“Crude traders remain focused” on the status of a potential pact, said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities Inc. “The longer the delays, the more prices will fade back to the upside.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on the announcement of a pending deal. US President Donald Trump said at a rally in Las Vegas on Wednesday evening that the US is talking to Tehran and he will “see what happens” in negotiations.

Even so, prices are holding most of this week’s slump after Iran and the US indicated a resolution was close for shipping through the crucial energy chokepoint. A return to normalized flows through Hormuz would unlock millions of barrels of oil shipments disrupted by the now five-month-old conflict.

Other risks also emerged, reinforcing traders’ reluctance to fully unwind long positions for fear of being wrong-footed by a sudden escalation. In a sign of persistent threats to shipping in the Middle East, the UK Navy reported on Thursday a tanker hearing two explosions while transiting the strait. 

Earlier, Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen said they targeted a Saudi oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden. 

Elsewhere, oil loadings at the key Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal on the Black Sea resumed after being halted by the risk of drone attacks nearby.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

As the AI boom accelerates, these technical problems suggest added costs and unforeseen reliability problems, with even a few minutes of lost uptime hitting data-center developers’ revenue. They come at a time when investors and lenders are already jittery about hyperscalers’ hundreds of billions of dollars of spending, amid growing concerns that these facilities could be depreciating much faster than estimated. 

The problems are also a potential source of wider instability in power grids that are already straining to keep the lights on.

“AI does create very unusual power demand,” said Amber Villegas-Williamson, principal consultant at the Uptime Institute in the UK, which advises electricity suppliers and data centers on standards and reliability. “It’s like over-revving your car wears out the engine faster than keeping a constant speed.”

Data centers have been around for decades, gulping down electricity while they ensure that everything from your favorite streaming show to your online grocery order functions smoothly. But facilities designed for AI computing are different because their demand is so large and swings much more dramatically. 

Power increments equivalent to the consumption of factories, towns or even cities can appear and disappear within seconds, creating repeated shocks that connected equipment struggles to absorb. 

A gigawatt data center is equivalent to a city the size of Boston, half of which can flicker on and off every few seconds, said Shannon Miller, founder and president of Mainspring Energy Inc., which works on micro-grid projects for industrial and data-center customers. Some AI campuses planned in Texas, the Midwest and other states are more than five times bigger, consuming nearly as much power on average as New York City.

AI data centers put particular strain on their power supply when they are training new models — a process that mobilizes all of the graphics processing units in unison. Like the digital equivalent of bees swarming or a school of fish changing direction, hundreds of thousands of GPUs can power up and down on a millisecond basis.

AI at times sees power usage spike as much as 50% above its design capacity, "so a 1 gigawatt facility may use 1.5 gigawatts for a split second,” said Drew Baglino, a former Tesla Inc. executive who started Heron Power Electronics Co. The company is developing equipment to manage power fluctuations for Nvidia Corp.’s even more energy intensive next-generation of servers, due in 2027. 

Most equipment isn’t designed for such big swings in power consumption. Jon Parrella, chief executive officer of energy-storage developer Terraflow Energy, likens it to driving a Ferrari and shifting straight from sixth gear to first. “You can’t swing that fast,” he said. 

This story is based on interviews with more than three dozen power experts in the US and Europe, including generators and other power suppliers, data-center developers, grid operators, utilities, investors, standards developers, insurers and regulators, almost all of whom said the physical stresses on the facilities were evident. 

Cranks on small natural gas combustion engines used to generate power at data centers have broken off, several of those people said. At xAI’s Colossus computing facility in Memphis, Tennessee, gas-fired turbines had developed cracks, one of the people said. Batteries were installed within the system to help smooth out power swings and reduce the strain on spinning turbines, the person said.

SpaceX, the parent company of xAI, didn't respond to requests for comment.

Turbines have also cracked at much smaller data centers in the UK, said Andrew Cunningham, CEO of GeoPura Ltd., which is providing hydrogen for use in fuel cells that smooth out power flows at some sites.

Cracks or wear on devices can cause electrical arc flashes — when a current jumps between conductors — potentially damaging AI chips, said Jennifer Scanlon, CEO of UL Solutions Inc., which tests and certifies new technology.

There is a suite of equipment such as batteries, capacitors, transformers and flywheels that can help stabilize power flows. However, in the bid to build AI computing capacity quickly not enough of these technologies are being used at new data centers, several of the people said. Batteries that have been installed for this purpose have sometimes needed to replaced within months or even weeks due to the high strain, according to the Uptime Institute and other people working with operators.

This problem is seen at data centers around the world, from the Middle East and Africa, to Europe and the US, said Villegas-Williamson of the Uptime Institute. 

Reliability Problems

These issues are already causing delays or curtailing operations – and therefore revenue – at some AI computing facilities. 

To ensure that a planned 2.67-gigawatt AI campus in West Texas can achieve the 99.999% reliability required by Microsoft Corp., extra time was baked into the schedule for engineering, said Chris James, CEO of Joulent Inc., which is developing the facility with energy giant Chevron Corp. This means power delivery will begin in 2028 instead of 2027, he said. 

If essential equipment breaks down prematurely, “the financial consequence is not primarily replacing a pump or a breaker or some power component — it’s the the value of that expensive compute capacity not generating revenue because it’s offline,” said Jason Hoffman, chief strategy officer at data-center builder and operator Switch.

The cost of downtime in terms of lost revenue varies widely, with estimates ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per minute, depending on the type of facility and its workload.

Data centers are built on the assumption that, once they are online, they will operate around the clock 365 days a year, said a person involved in the financing of such facilities. In reality, some are seeing uptime closer to 80%, and unless resolved this could hit investors in certain projects in the next 12 to 24 months, the person said. 

Any issues with reliability add to wider concerns about the returns generated from hundreds of billions of dollars of planned AI investments. The rate of depreciation of another crucial piece of equipment at data centers, the GPU racks themselves, has raised questions about whether the industry can be as profitable as it promises. 

These problems with reliability also have the potential to destabilize the wider power grid. This sprawling web of high voltage lines, transformers and power plants requires constant calibration, something that has become more challenging with each passing year due to aging equipment, rising demand and extreme weather.

The expansion of intermittent wind and solar generation, which often result in big swings in supply from one hour to the next, are already a destabilizing force. AI data centers can put this volatility on steroids. 

“These loads are extremely dynamic or fluctuating, which causes grid instability and can lead to, if not corrected, potential blackouts or power outages,” said Sreemant Roy, a power-quality expert and global offer manager at Schneider Electric in Nashville, Tennessee. Of particular concern is a data center’s ability to cause sub-synchronous oscillations in the power flow, which can damage equipment connected to other parts of the network, he said. 

“That has made utility companies globally very worried,” Roy said. 

Within the last two years, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. — the top US regulatory body establishing standards aimed to keep the lights on — has repeatedly warned and issued alerts that data centers are one of the greatest risks to grid stability.

NERC evaluated more than 33 gigawatts of operational data centers in the US an found about three quarters of their load models “are insufficient to represent data-center dynamic behavior,” according to a September report. Earlier this year, the agency issued a rare level-three alert requiring big data centers to address these immediate risks and submit their responses by Aug. 3.

From top to bottom, the AI industry is aware of these issues and actively working on solutions. 

Nvidia started working more closely with power experts when it developed Blackwell GPUs, which were first released in 2024 and have become pervasive in data centers, said Dion Harris, senior director of hyperscale infrastructure solutions at the chipmaker. 

“We’re building the chips and processors” but also using them in the company’s own data centers, Harris said. Nvidia is working to make its deployments a lot smoother “both on the data-center build out, design and engineering phase, as well as on the power delivery.” 

Data-center users have deployed techniques to smooth out the power fluctuations of AI workloads by running side computations — essentially dummy math that isn’t part of the training process — to keep GPUs operating steadily. However, this approach has been criticized for wasting electricity at a time when power demand is surging. 

Last year, the National Laboratory of the Rockies near Denver, Colorado set up a test-bed on behalf of the US Department of Energy to figure out how to integrate AI safely onto the grid, said Martha Symko-Davies, the NLR’s program manager for the DOE’s office of electricity. 

The site has GPUs and power generation on site that developers can use to figure out if their setup can handle the variability of AI. One power supplier said they will use the facility to test batteries, software and other equipment intended to smooth out oscillations between the data center and grid that can cause damage on either side.

“We have the opportunity right now to get it right,” said Symko-Davies.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Supertanker Romania Prosperity appeared in the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday after switching off its transponder in late July, laden with crude from the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., according to Kpler. It’s one of dozens of such exits from the Gulf as the state-run producer embarks on a novel marketing drive.

Individual ships spotted on ship-tracking databases give clues about the trade, but the real number is likely larger due to these dark crossings. Since the start of June, Adnoc has sold over 130 million barrels in an unprecedented seven tenders, according to traders familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified as they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

That’s equivalent to more than a month of crude demand from Japan, Asia’s third-largest consumer. 

Workarounds like Adnoc’s have been vital to limiting losses from the conflict and have helped keep oil markets in check, countering expectations of far more acute shortages and price spikes. The global benchmark, Brent, was trading around $79 a barrel on Thursday.

The UAE has been so successful in getting its crude out of the Gulf that Vortexa estimates it was the only Middle Eastern producer to reach pre-war levels of seaborne exports in June and July. Most of those barrels have been picked up by Asian refiners, including in Japan and China.

That milestone was achieved even after the US ramped up a bombing campaign against Iran last month, and the Islamic Republic attacked more ships around the strait. The practice of shuttling barrels out of the gulf — dark crossings that supply waiting vessels outside Hormuz — has picked up again after those strikes, people familiar with the matter said last week. 

A comprehensive deal to reopen the strait — should one be reached — would likely boost the volume of oil leaving the Gulf, but the stop-start nature of negotiations over recent months means analysts and traders expect shuttling to continue in some form. 

An Adnoc spokesperson said the company doesn’t comment on positions, movements or routing of its vessels as a matter of policy.

“Adnoc’s barrels have helped stabilize supply into Asia,” said June Goh, senior oil market analyst for Sparta Commodities SA. Refineries in the region can’t easily replace the medium-sour crude that’s typically produced in the Middle East, making any oil exiting the gulf so essential, she added.

It’s not just oil the UAE has managed to ferry out successfully, the producer has also been getting vital supplies of liquefied natural gas to global customers. An Adnoc tanker called the Mubaraz loaded with LNG recently appeared near India after turning off its transponder inside the gulf last month.

The UAE splurged on logistics to make its workaround possible. The nation snapped up tankers at exorbitant rates to embark on daring shuttle runs through Hormuz. Iraq and Kuwait have also been able to ferry out some supplies, but volumes have been smaller.

Once tankers carrying UAE crude exit Hormuz, the cargo is typically transferred to another vessel in the Gulf of Oman before being exported to buyers around the world. At times, this process has been delayed by escalating hostilities in the region. 

The UAE has also been able to make use of a pipeline stretching across the country to get extra barrels out, bypassing Hormuz.

Adnoc has made the most of its dominant position. When traders submitted crude bids last month below the regional Dubai oil benchmark after wider prices fell, the company told some of them to raise their offers. 

However, that has not advanced the UAE’s efforts to build a benchmark futures contract around its flagship crude, Murban.

Saudi Arabia has also kept large volumes of its crude flowing during the war by piping oil to its Red Sea port of Yanbu, allowing the kingdom to bypass Hormuz. Recent threats and attacks from Iran-backed Houthi militants have disrupted that trade, according to Xavier Tang, senior market analyst for Vortexa, potentially prompting refiners to lean even more on the UAE for barrels.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The Chinese company has began operation of the Galaxy Campus project in Ulanqab — a city about 350 kilometers (217 miles) northwest of Beijing with abundant wind power resources, it said in a statement. The initial 120-megawatt phase has already been allocated to two local tech giants, with plans to eventually scale the project to 2 gigawatts, which would make it one of the largest in China, the company said.

Envision’s push is part of a broader race among Chinese firms to secure a foothold in the booming data center sector. The segment has to date been dominated by telecom operators, specialized developers, and internet giants including Tencent Holdings Ltd., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and China United Network Communications Ltd., according to BloombergNEF.

AI company DeepSeek is also planning a 1 gigawatt data center in Ulanqab, according to people familiar with the matter. The city’s cold climate, with an average annual temperature of 4C (39F), helps reduce the energy required to cool power-hungry AI servers. Z.AI, formerly Zhipu, is also working on a 1 gigawatt project that it plans to fill with only domestically made chips.

Envision will benefit from its wide renewables portfolio, which ranges from wind turbine manufacturing to battery production. That will give it a unique advantage, especially after the government required four-fifths of data center power to come from green electricity. 

The Galaxy project is a cornerstone of Envision’s ambitions to develop 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity globally by 2030. It will get 80% of its power from the company’s nearby wind farms through dedicated transmission cables, it said. Battery storage will be used as backup — stepping away from the traditional data center model of relying on diesel generators.

Envision will provide the power infrastructure and supporting system, but won’t handle the actual data processing. Tech companies will effectively act as tenants, leasing the facilities and installing their own chip clusters, the energy firm said.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

If there is one lesson from the past decade, it is that the global LNG industry has repeatedly been tested and proven its value in delivering flexible and reliable energy worldwide. Whether during the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe’s gas crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or this year’s Middle East crisis, the LNG industry has faced immense challenges over the course of less than a decade. Yet each shock has helped to build greater industry resilience and flexibility to meet the next one.

This year marks the 10th edition of Shell’s LNG Outlook, an annual report compiled using data from third party providers. Every year it analyses where the market is heading and this anniversary gave us the opportunity to assess how far it has come. The numbers tell their own story. Since 2016, global LNG trade has expanded by around 60%, rising from 264 million tonnes to more than 420 million tonnes in 2025. The number of importing countries has grown from 36 to 49, while LNG-fuelled vessels in operation have increased from just 77 ships to more than 900.

A global energy shock

The disruption to the Strait of Hormuz removed around one-fifth of the world’s monthly LNG supply at its peak. The global LNG market was quick to adapt. More supply from North America, stronger performance from existing facilities, rerouted cargoes, and deferred maintenance helped cushion the impact on the supply side. On the demand side, a combination of fuel switching, slowing imports, and gas storage withdrawals helped to balance the market.

While prices were higher, the market response has been significantly more measured than during previous crises, showing its ability to respond to disruptions and move energy to where it is needed most. Over the long term, the LNG Outlook forecasts that global LNG demand could grow by around 65% by 2050, nearly 700 million tonnes per year as countries continue to prioritise the energy security gas offers. 

Asia is at the heart of that growth story. As economies develop and urbanise across South and Southeast Asia, demand for power and industry will continue to rise. By 2050, these regions are expected to account for around 40% of global LNG imports as countries turn more to gas to support economic growth while reducing dependence on more emissions-intensive fuels.

The demand forecast for LNG in Asia is also supported by declining domestic gas production, creating a structural supply gap that LNG is expected to fill. By 2050, without further exploration and production, that gap could approach 300 million tonnes annually. At the same time, LNG’s role is expanding beyond its traditional markets. In the shipping industry, more than 900 LNG-fuelled vessels are now in operation, with hundreds more on order.

Significantly, demand for LNG bunkering is forecast to increase sevenfold by 2035 to around 27 million tonnes per year, which is more LNG than India imported in 2025. Around 180 million tonnes per year of new LNG supply is expected to enter the market by 2030, improving the availability and affordability of gas. 

Progressing the energy transition 

Not to be overlooked as a catalyst for continued growth is LNG’s wide-ranging role in the transition to a lower carbon energy system. Switching from coal to gas has had a notable effect on reducing CO₂ emissions globally as it emits about 50% less carbon than coal when used to produce electricity. And the trend continues. In some places around the world, new gas-fired power plants are replacing coal-fired ones. Gas is an increasingly important partner to renewable energy and the rapid roll out of renewable energy projects in recent years has highlighted this trend.

When the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, gas-fired power plants can ramp up quickly to play a crucial role in maintaining a reliable power supply to meet demand. While the roll out of renewable energy has been rapid in recent years, it still faces limitations, especially in meeting the needs of hard-to-abate industries. As an industry, we need to make more progress on curbing methane emissions, bringing down the carbon intensity of the natural gas and LNG value chain through innovation and incremental blending of LNG with bio-LNG, to offer a pathway to net-zero emissions.

As a trusted LNG supplier to both long-established and new customers, Shell’s core focus is on continuing to expand our global LNG portfolio and capability to deliver cargoes around the world to best support our customers. Through recent investments and acquisitions, namely Singapore-based Pavilion Energy, LNG Canada, the Ruwais LNG project in the United Arab Emirates and the Manatee gas field off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, Shell is working to bolster LNG supply volumes in the years to come and helping to meet the energy security needs for people around the world.

Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan said the projects are expected to come online between 2026 and 2030, supporting higher oil and gas output, job creation, and infrastructure development.

Speaking at an event in Lagos, Eyesan said, “Since 2024, the NUPRC has approved over $57 billion in Field Development Plans, some of which have already translated into Final Investment Decisions.”

Nigeria ramps up crude production

Eyesan said the planned offshore developments could generate between $30 billion and $50 billion in investment. 

“Beyond increasing production, these investments will create jobs, expand infrastructure, strengthen energy security, and reinforce Nigeria's position as a leading global upstream investment destination,” Eyesan said.

The announcement comes as Nigeria pursues a target of raising crude oil production to 3 million barrels per day by 2030 through a combination of new project approvals, exploration activity, and reforms aimed at attracting fresh capital.

Alongside advancing existing discoveries, the regulator said Nigeria is maintaining a strong exploration pipeline through successive licensing rounds designed to unlock prospective oil and gas acreage.

According to the NUPRC, 31 companies were awarded 37 oil and gas blocks during the 2025 Licensing Round following what it described as a transparent, data-driven evaluation process. Preparations for the 2026 Licensing Round are already underway.

“With preparations already underway for the 2026 Licensing Round, Nigeria is demonstrating that investment certainty is no longer an aspiration; it is becoming an enduring feature of our regulatory framework,” Eyesan said.

Expanding oil and gas infrastructure 

Eyesan also outlined measures to address infrastructure challenges that have constrained upstream development, including expanding gas gathering systems, processing facilities, pipelines, and export infrastructure.

“We are expanding gas gathering systems, processing facilities, pipelines and export infrastructure, while promoting shared facilities, open access, third party access and field tiebacks to reduce costs, speed up project delivery, maximise the use of existing infrastructure, and help bring stranded oil and gas resources into production,” she added. 

The NUPRC said it is promoting shared facilities, open-access infrastructure, third-party access arrangements, and field tiebacks to help reduce development costs and accelerate project timelines.

Eyesan added that greater collaboration among government agencies, operators, host communities, and private-sector partners, together with the implementation of the Host Community Development Trust, has improved the protection of critical energy infrastructure and strengthened the resilience of Nigeria's upstream sector.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has endorsed the creation of an independent transmission system operator, or TSO, outside Eskom as part of efforts to open the electricity market to greater private-sector participation. But carving out the utility’s most profitable division has raised concerns about Eskom’s long-term financial viability and the treatment of government guarantees backing its debt. 

“The transaction is being carefully designed to ensure that Eskom is left no worse off, and that Eskom remains sustainable,” Treasury Director General Duncan Pieterse said in an interview in Cape Town on Tuesday. “The TSO itself also has to be sustainable.”

Pieterse, who Ramaphosa this year appointed to head a team in charge of Eskom’s restructuring, faces a complex balancing act in ensuring that all the company’s units remain viable after the split, and that Eskom’s bondholders accept the changes. 

“There are ways of designing this transaction to achieve all of that,” he said. “We have no interest in running a process where lenders are not brought along.”

The process will require engaging the market and careful planning with transparency playing a key role, said Raphi Rootshtain, lead portfolio manager at Otto1890 Asset Management in Johannesburg.

“There’s a whole lot of covenants that exist currently and agreements in place with current existing debt,” he said by phone on Wednesday. “From what I understand, there will be need to somehow restructure that debt in order to be able to move ahead.”

The government has guaranteed about 330 billion rand ($20 billion) of Eskom’s debt, according to Pieterse.

Eskom itself this week warned that the process will have to be managed carefully as establishing the transmission operator as a separate business would entail a material event — a significant development that fundamentally alters the risk profile of its credit.

Pieterse declined to say whether Eskom or the government may need to secure bondholder consent for the split, saying the first step would be hiring a transaction adviser.

“Of course the process will be managed properly,” he said. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The New Delhi-based explorer’s net income more than doubled in the quarter ended June to 170.34 billion rupees ($1.8 billion), according to a stock exchange filing. That compares with 152.67 billion rupees average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue jumped 45% from a year earlier to 464.60 billion rupees.

The state-run oil and gas producer’s earnings mirror bumper profits posted by global energy supermajors as they reaped gains from the biggest supply disruption in history caused by the US-Iran war. Benchmark Brent crude prices in the June quarter averaged almost 50% higher year-on-year as the US-Iran war choked most of the Gulf flows.

Stronger earnings are crucial for ONGC as it needs to ramp up spending on high-risk exploration to help reverse India’s declining domestic oil and gas production. The company is central to the government’s efforts to curb India’s growing reliance on imports, which meet almost 90% of oil demand and about half of gas consumption. Acute shortages of cooking fuel during the Middle East war had further exposed that vulnerability.

The firm, which accounts for two-thirds of India’s oil and over half of gas output, has been struggling to stem the decline in production from its ageing fields, while new assets have been slow to contribute. ONGC’s standalone oil and gas production declined 3.4% on year to 9.4 million tons of oil and equivalent gas.

ONGC is investing more than 400 billion rupees ($4.2 billion) in projects across its Western Offshore assets to reverse the production decline, it said in a statement. The company has also hired BP Plc as a technical services partner to boost output from these fields.

“We expect their benefits to progressively materialize from FY 2027-28 onwards, leading to enhanced production, improved recovery, and sustained value creation in the years ahead,” ONGC said.

The company’s earnings on every barrel of crude oil sold in April-June was 50.4% higher than a year earlier. Earnings from gas produced from old legacy fields were up 5.4% but that from new deepwater acreage rose 61.5% on year.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The platform is powered by SLB’s DrillOps intelligent well delivery and insights solutions. It provides a unified environment to monitor, analyse, and manage drilling activities across ADNOC’s onshore and offshore assets. It can also process large volumes of real-time drilling data through automated dashboards and AI-driven analytics. 

By consolidating multiple existing tools into a single system, ADNOC said the RTOC can cut engineering effort by 30-40%. This enables engineers to oversee two to three times more rigs simultaneously.

Reducing downtime 

DrillOps combines operational data, advanced analytics, and AI-driven insights, meaning that tasks that previously took days can now be completed within hours, while some analytical tasks have been reduced from a full day to just a few minutes.

The system also helps identify potential operational issues before they escalate. According to ADNOC, this can shorten incident response times by four to 12 hours and help avoid up to two days of rig downtime.

“The Real-Time Operations Center creates value across ADNOC's drilling operations every minute by embedding AI into the heart of our drilling operations, helping our teams make faster, smarter decisions at scale,” said Musabbeh Al Kaabi, CEO of ADNOC Upstream.

A “sovereign cloud environment”

ADNOC said that with this implementation, it is putting intelligence to work across its operations, incorporating AI into fundamental workflows, and driving the shift to more autonomous and efficient operations.

“Built securely here in the UAE, it is further proof that ADNOC is moving from AI ambition to real-world impact as we become the world's most AI-enabled energy company,” Al Kaabi said.

The platform, which is deployed across ADNOC Drilling’s fleet and supporting ADNOC Onshore and ADNOC Offshore, gives business, asset, and drilling teams a live view of operations, improving coordination, and risk management across the company’s portfolio.

“DrillOps transforms real-time drilling data into operational intelligence that helps teams make faster, more informed decisions,” said Rakesh Jaggi, President, Digital, SLB.

“Deployed within ADNOC's sovereign cloud environment, the technology provides the scalable digital foundation for AI-enabled workflows across one of the industry's largest rig fleets and supports the continued progression toward more autonomous operations,” Jaggi said. 

ADNOC added that maintaining sensitive information within the UAE jurisdiction would strengthen data security and operational resilience, helping push the region towards more autonomous drilling operations and enhance its long-term digital independence. 

PETRONAS offers the clearest case. Malaysia's national oil company, producing 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, runs a predictive-analytics programme across its LNG and deepwater assets that AVEVA has documented over several years: around $33 million in savings and a twenty-fold return, with the system flagging 51 equipment warnings, twelve of them high-risk, before they became failures. This is AI working where a wrong call can shut down a platform. The payoff shows up as avoided outages.

While AI adoption has accelerated rapidly, turning it into profit is the harder task. Economy-wide, more than six in ten organisations across the region direct 11% to 40% of their technology budgets to AI, while around 60% report under a 5% gain in EBIT. Energy has a structural advantage in closing that gap. In asset-heavy operations, the highest-value use cases, predicting a compressor failure, trimming a refinery's energy draw, forecasting turbine output, produce returns a CFO can price to the dollar. 

Measurable returns

Energy leaders see it: in EY's December 2025 AI Pulse survey, 78% of energy executives whose AI investments delivered productivity gains called those gains a catalyst for strategic transformation, against a 55% cross-industry average. The physical complexity that makes energy hard to digitise is what makes its AI returns legible.

Southeast Asia's energy sector carries a second role that raises the stakes. The same operators adopting AI must also supply the round-the-clock power for the region's AI buildout, and the capital is arriving from every direction. AWS, Google, and Microsoft have committed over $50 billion to regional AI infrastructure as of mid-2025. In May 2026, Thailand's Board of Investment approved a $25 billion data-infrastructure expansion by a local TikTok unit, its single largest approval, alongside a $1.4 billion, 200-megawatt data centre from Dubai's DAMAC. 

Industry coordination

Data centres need firm, continuous power, which presses on grids still balancing legacy baseload with rising intermittent renewables. Thailand's board now treats power readiness, its Power Development Plan and direct renewable purchase agreements as decisive to winning the next facility. Grid capacity has become the gating factor for AI investment.

Scaling AI on both sides of that equation, inside operations, and across the power system, is a coordination challenge as much as a technical one. Value at scale needs grid operators, hyperscalers, technology vendors, capital, and regulators aligned on shared standards, across six markets that rarely coordinate by default. Cross-border groundwork has started: PETRONAS, Malaysia's TNB, Singapore's Sembcorp and PetroVietnam have formed a consortium to trade clean power under the ASEAN Power Grid plan.

This is the coordination AixEnergy in Bangkok during 14-17 September is built to enable. It brings the region's energy operators, AI and cloud providers, power developers, and policymakers together at the point where a promising pilot becomes a scaled standard, shortening the path from adoption to measurable value.

Southeast Asia's energy companies have shown they can scale AI above the global benchmark and put it to work in demanding operations. The advantage now goes to those who scale it across the enterprise, and who build the partnerships to power and coordinate that growth before the buildout is complete.

• AixEnergy is co-located with Gastech 2026, taking place from 14-17 September at BITEC, Bangkok, Thailand. Make sure to register for your All Access Pass to AixEnergy.

Sources:

• McKinsey, EDB Singapore & Tech in Asia, "AI in Southeast Asia: An Era of Opportunity"
• Thailand BOI approvals, TikTok $25B / DAMAC $1.4B
• PETRONAS predictive-analytics figures, AVEVA case study
• EY US AI Pulse Survey
• PETRONAS/TNB–Sembcorp–PetroVietnam ASEAN Power Grid consortium
• AixEnergy

Ahead of Gastech 2026 in Bangkok, Hans Neidig, P&GA Manager, ExxonMobil, highlights the growth of the company’s Low Carbon Solutions business and how leveraging technologies can help diversify energy supplies while supporting customers’ emissions-reductions goals. 

What is ExxonMobil’s presence at Gastech 2026?

ExxonMobil returns to Gastech as a Co-Host sponsor, underscoring our commitment to global energy dialogue and collaboration. At booth J80, leaders from our LNG and Low Carbon Solutions businesses will engage with potential and existing customers and stakeholders on market developments and emerging opportunities. Our senior executives will also participate in panel discussions across a broad range of industry topics.

What is top of mind for ExxonMobil?

ExxonMobil sees the energy future as an “AND” equation: we need to provide the energy the world needs AND reduce emissions. LNG is key to meeting rising global energy demand. As the world grows and prospers, we project natural gas demand to rise 20% by 2050.

Consequently, ExxonMobil’s ongoing focus is to bring online stable and reliable LNG supply that can help provide security as well as flexibility to meet growing global energy demand. LNG is expected to play a central role in enabling countries to diversify their energy supply, reduce dependence on single sources, and enhance resilience against market disruptions.

Brent crude traded near $85 a barrel, after losing almost 5% in the previous session, while West Texas Intermediate was above $81. “We’re talking about the strait, the opening of the strait, having it open literally by tomorrow,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

“This is a last chance for them to sign a good document,” he said, without clarifying what negotiations he was referring to or who was involved. “I want to give them every last chance before decapitation.” 

Tehran denied it was talking with the US, but said discussions with Oman to get more ships moving through Hormuz are making progress. Washington must “take the first step and change its behavior,” Mohsen Rezaee, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, said on state TV.

Oil has swung wildly in recent weeks as fighting resumed following the collapse of a June truce and the conflict expanded to the Red Sea. Trump has repeatedly cited diplomatic efforts when he backed off threats of military escalation only to see talks fail, and on Monday called off an attack on Iran that he said would have been the biggest since World War II.

“As long as there are these openings to move barrels around, I think this on-off can continue,” said Carolyn Kissane, associate dean at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. “Iran doesn’t want to escalate but does want to keep up the tension, and there will be more attacks after this market retreat. We have been here before.”

Commodity flows through the Strait of Hormuz — which carried about a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas before the war — have slowed to a trickle. In the latest incident, a cargo vessel northeast of Al Khasab, Oman, broadcast that it had been hit by an unknown projectile on Monday, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations.

Meanwhile, the key Saudi export port of Yanbu on the Red Sea appeared to have its busiest day since Houthi threats upended shipping in the region, as more vessels transited dark through the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint. Saudi Arabia’s observed crude exports edged lower in July as threats to vessel traffic in the Gulf and Red Sea held back the kingdom’s shipments.

With global energy markets under pressure from the Iran war, Ukraine’s shifting strikes across Russia’s oil supply chain increase the risk of further disruptions to global flows. Large refineries, oil tankers, and sea and major pipeline infrastructure were hit at least 30 times in July — the second-highest monthly number of attacks since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

In recent days, four ships have completed loadings at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, a Black Sea port on Russia’s coast crucial to Kazakhstan’s crude exports. Recent attacks on oil tankers in the area have made some vessel owners cautious about loading there. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The country’s biggest data center operator, which is owned by government-backed NTT Inc., intends to add roughly 750 megawatts of capacity over the next seven years to meet soaring demand from companies seeking to catch up in AI, people familiar with the matter said.

That would mean spending at least ¥1.5 trillion ($9.6 billion) for construction and equipment installations, estimated the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private. That’s based on the assumption that each megawatt of data center capacity installed in Japan costs ¥2 billion to ¥2.5 billion, excluding the cost of AI accelerators such as Nvidia Corp.’s. 

The scale of the investment is subject to changes in pricing and demand for computing capacity, the people said. An NTT Data spokesperson said the company does not disclose investment plans, citing company policy. Computational demand is expected to grow in tandem with the size of the economy, the fourth largest in the world, according to Yasuo Suzuki, who headed NTT Data’s data center operations in the Asia Pacific through July.

NTT Data, which competes globally against the likes of Digital Realty Trust Inc. and Equinix Inc., is fielding interest from companies seeking to secure around 100 MW of capacity for AI inferencing, Suzuki said. 

The company now plans to add a total 42 MW of capacity this year and begin construction on a 100 MW data center next year in Tochigi, a prefecture just north of Tokyo. NTT Data expects its spending on data centers to grow about 33% to around $3.3 billion this fiscal year to March. 

“From where we stand, we don’t see much competition,” Suzuki said in an interview earlier this year. “There aren’t many players building data centers due to a number of reasons, leaving limited supply against high demand.”

Shares of parent NTT fell about 1% in Tokyo morning trading. A ¥1.5 trillion investment may weigh on the stock, potentially putting it at a disadvantage against global rivals with access to deep pools of capital, said Yasuhiro Ono, chief executive officer of infrastructure investment firm Deepstone Partners.

“It’s difficult to gauge how much of the data center capacity will end up being used,” Ono said. “But because the power constraint is real, the gap between high demand and low supply will likely persist.”

Questions about long-term demand and growing fears that big tech firms are building more data centers than they need have been pummeling AI-related shares around the world. But NTT Data has seen little sign of slowing demand.

Companies like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp. are racing to expand their own data centers in Japan while also seeking more capacity from NTT Data, according to Suzuki. Global cloud providers comprise more than 80% of the Japanese unit’s data center business revenue, he said.

The bigger issue is the country’s longstanding shortage of grid capacity, making it difficult to connect power-hungry data centers quickly. NTT Data relies on its partnerships with utilities such as Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Some regions of the country — such as Inzai, Chiba prefecture, just east of Tokyo — suffer from chronic shortages in transmission capacity. In those areas, it will likely take 8 to 10 years to secure the necessary approvals to meet data centers’ electricity needs, according to Suzuki. Due to such bottlenecks, data center capacity is taken up by customers as soon as it becomes available, he said. NTT’s rival SoftBank Corp. is eyeing an investment in Tepco to secure the electricity required for its aggressive data center plans.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Britain’s offshore oil and gas sector has become uninvestable. Labour and Conservative governments alike have delivered years of poor — and what is worse, inconsistent — policy on a crucial national asset. No exploration wells were drilled last year, for the first time since 1964. New licensing rounds have been blocked.

The price of uncertainty

The ‘energy profits levy’ imposes punitive levels of taxation. The headline rate of tax — 78% — may be the same as Norway’s. But that overlooks the Nordic state’s far superior policy consistency, active ongoing licensing programme, greater remaining resource base, and the more favourable fiscal allowances.

This is a failure across the political spectrum. Shadow Energy Secretary and Aberdeenshire MP Andrew Bowie claimed, “Only the Conservatives have a plan to get Britain drilling again by ending the licence ban, scrapping the energy profits levy paid for by cancelling net zero projects.” He conveniently omits the party that introduced the levy under Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022.

The cost of decline

From 370,000 workers in the offshore oil and gas sector in 2015, only 110,000 remained by 2025. Many of these were high-skilled, well-paying positions. Scotland has been particularly hard-hit. For all the crocodile tears shed over the coal miners left on the scrapheap by Margaret Thatcher, left-wing activists have shown less sympathy for oil and gas workers. Notwithstanding its success, the UK wind power industry employs about 55,000, estimated to rise to 112,000 by 2030. Fewer than 14,000 work in solar power, a large part of that in London.

The most successful firms on the UK continental shelf are now looking elsewhere. As capital flees, Enquest announced a major acquisition in Malaysia in June; in July, Serica Energy agreed to buy Pharos, a company operating in Vietnam and Egypt. Of the basin’s mainstays, Shell has already combined its assets with Norway’s Equinor; TotalEnergies merged its UK E&P unit with Repsol, and private equity-backed NEO Energy. bp was the last supermajor to retain a standalone business.

Why the North Sea still matters

Declining production in the North Sea is inevitable, but the rate of decline is not. The 2010 discovery of the Johan Sverdrup field, one of the largest ever found in Norway, shows that even mature basins can spring surprises. The 500 million barrels in the UK’s largest undeveloped field, Rosebank, have sat around off the west of Shetland since it was discovered in 2004.

The good reasons for reviving UK oil and gas exploration and production have been well-rehearsed. It would sustain employment, especially in Scotland, generate badly needed tax revenues, and improve the balance of payments. It would almost certainly be lower carbon than importing hydrocarbons, especially liquefied natural gas. The extra production will add only minimally to global emissions; most will displace oil and gas that otherwise would have been imported.

Maintaining North Sea infrastructure is crucial for future uses, particularly for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Once decommissioned, it will be very expensive to reconstruct. CCS is an essential part of any realistic path to net zero for the UK, for dealing with unavoidable industrial emissions from sources such as chemicals and cement plants. Skilled petroleum professionals are essential for future low-carbon industries such as CCS, geothermal, and hydrogen.

A political opportunity

As the turmoil in the Gulf continues, Russia remains an adversary, and oil and gas prices stay rather high, the economic and energy security benefits of more domestic production should be an easy political win for Mr Burnham. He campaigned on re-industrialising left-behind parts of the country. Energy secretary Ed Miliband has been appointed foreign secretary; his replacement, Miatta Fahnbulleh, may be equally supportive of net zero but is less politically influential.

Labour has also gained in the polls recently against the Greens, solidifying Mr Burnham’s left flank. As a record heatwave and drought sweep Britain, and apocalyptic wildfires overshadow France in smoke, it is easy to make the case for stronger climate policy too. Done right, low-carbon policies will deliver economic growth and investment and, eventually, reduced energy bills.

There is no need to fall prey to the “lump of money” fallacy and assume that promoting low-carbon energy is in opposition to domestic oil and gas production. Private companies fund offshore petroleum exploration and production. Solar and wind are mature technologies that should not require large subsidies. The UK has more than enough finance and talented people to make a success of all viable energy sources.

Reconciling climate and hydrocarbons

Mr Burnham could draw on a few creative options to manage the apparent tension between tackling climate change and supporting oil and gas development. One, promoted by Oxford University climatologist Myles Allen in a recent Financial Times article, is the carbon take-back obligation. Companies producing hydrocarbons in the UK would be required to capture a rising share of the resulting emissions, reaching 100% by 2050.

An alternative, or complement, would be to hypothecate offshore petroleum taxation to green objectives — for instance, funding the conversion of the UK building stock to heat pumps and high levels of energy efficiency. That would tackle emissions at the source and give the public a very visible benefit in the shape of lower bills.

A Britain overloaded with debt, struggling for growth, burdened by high bills, and sweltering in endless heatwaves, needs bold and creative climate and energy solutions. The North Sea is not what it was in the heyday of bp and Sir Ian, but it is not dead yet.

However, adjusted net income stood at $33.4 billion, up 33% year on year but 0.6% lower sequentially. Earnings for the first half of 2026 was recorded at $67.2 billion. The board also declared a second-quarter base dividend of $21.9 billion, payable in the third quarter. 

Cushioning the impact of the Hormuz closure

The results highlight the company’s ability to withstand one of the most significant disruptions to Gulf oil flows in decades, after the conflict severely restricted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz from March. 

To overcome this, the company bypassed the Strait of Hormuz by utilising the East-West pipeline to transport oil through its western terminals of Yanbu and Jizan. 

“Aramco’s first half performance in 2026 has been defined by the remarkable resilience of our people and the agility of our business and operations to withstand and respond to rapidly changing market conditions,” said Amin H. Nasser, President and CEO of Aramco. 

“Despite the unprecedented supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, we continued to demonstrate our ability to maintain business continuity by capitalising on our diverse asset base and multi-decade planning, including strategic infrastructure such as the East-West Pipeline, storage capacity, and export terminals. That enabled us to sustain production and exports while advancing key projects, despite the challenging regional environment.” 

Maintaining oil flows

Meanwhile, Aramco’s storage capacity and network of export terminals also helped maintain supplies to customers during the disruption. Ziad T. Al-Murshed, Executive Vice President & CFO of Aramco, said that the company’s strategic domestic and international infrastructure provided flexibility and optionality. 

“Our resilience stems from decades of long-term planning and our strategic domestic and international infrastructure that provide flexibility and optionality. This positioning supports our ability to deliver strong results even in a complex environment, allowing us to increase adjusted net income by 33% compared to the previous year.” 

Higher oil prices boost earnings

Aramco’s realised crude oil price rose 62% year on year during the conflict. This increase helped compensate for a sharp reduction in production, with average hydrocarbon output falling to 9.46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from 12.61 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in the first quarter. 

Overall, Aramco’s capital expenditure increased to $13.2 billion from $12.3 billion a year earlier, as the company continued investments across its oil and gas portfolio.

Aramco said the Zuluf crude oil increment remains on track for completion this year, while the Fadhili Gas Plant expansion is expected to be completed in 2027. Phase one of the Jafurah Gas Plant maintained steady sales gas production, with phase two procurement and construction continuing towards expected completion next year.

Despite its resilient performance, Nasser warned that global oil inventories remain depleted following months of supply disruption, as around 600 million barrels of commercial inventories have been drawn down since the Middle East conflict began. 

The path forward is not a simple substitution of one energy source for another. It is an expansion of the system — an energy addition, requiring sustained investment, infrastructure, and new capabilities across the full value chain. Recent events have reinforced that this system is deeply interconnected, where infrastructure, logistics, policy frameworks, and long-term investment ultimately determine how supply responds.

From a global gas perspective, liquefied natural gas (LNG), is fundamental to how the energy system operates and evolves. It enables countries and customers to balance affordability, reliability, and lower carbon progress in practical, scalable ways. 

This is a system shaped not only by global dynamics, but by long-standing partnerships with governments and customers across key markets. Chevron’s diversified, integrated portfolio is designed for this environment, enabling reliable energy delivery across a range of market conditions.

From energy security to meeting demand at scale

Global energy demand continues to grow, particularly across Asia, where population growth, industrial expansion, and the rapid rise of data and AI-driven consumption is accelerating requirements for reliable supply. Recent geopolitical developments have underscored a central lesson: energy security cannot be assumed.

In a more volatile environment, resilience must be built into the system through diversification, integration, and sustained long-term investment. LNG plays a central role in maintaining system balance, connecting supply with demand across regions, and delivering energy where it is needed most.

Chevron operates across this system, with a global gas portfolio spanning Asia Pacific, the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa, the Permian Basin, and the US Gulf Coast, supported by long-standing partnerships and operating excellence across key markets in the region. Energy security remains the foundation, but the challenge is to meet rising global demand at scale.

This requires sustained investment across infrastructure – from upstream production to liquefaction, shipping, regasification, and downstream integration, underpinned by disciplined capital allocation through the cycle. It also depends on well-functioning markets and flexible commercial models that allow supply to respond to changing customer needs.

Delivering solutions that work

In today’s environment, credibility is defined by reliable delivery. How energy is produced, moved, and supplied at scale through consistent execution in periods of volatility and disruption. LNG plays a central role, lowering emissions by enabling a shift from higher-carbon fuels while supporting renewable integration through firm, dispatchable power.

At Chevron, lower carbon solutions are advanced alongside our gas business, including carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, methane intensity reduction, and digital technologies that improve efficiency and transparency. Importantly, these are not standalone efforts. They are integrated into a broader system designed to deliver energy at scale, both now and in the future.

Partnering for progress

No company or country can meet this scale of demand alone. Progress depends on collaboration across the value chain to develop solutions that can be deployed at scale and sustained over time. Policy frameworks also matter. Clear, stable, and predictable environments are essential to unlock investment in long-term infrastructure and emerging technologies. At Chevron, our focus is on building these partnerships and advancing solutions grounded in operational experience and aligned with customer needs.

Gastech provides a timely opportunity to engage on these priorities, particularly in Asia, where demand is most concentrated and suppliers, customers, governments, and partners are working together to advance pragmatic, system-level solutions. The task ahead is clear: deliver an energy system capable of meeting rising global demand while improving resilience and lowering carbon intensity. That will require discipline, sustained investment, and collaboration — and a focus on delivering results at scale. 

Trump on Monday said the biggest US oil companies are “making too much money,” urging them to “give some of that back to the public” and cut retail gasoline prices.

“I don’t like it. I should be the last one to say because I’m a big free enterprise guy, nobody bigger,” the president told reporters at the White House. “You surprised I’m saying it? I’ll say it loud and clear. I’m not happy about it.”

ExxonMobil and Chevron more than doubled their second-quarter net income on the heels of global energy market disruptions stemming from conflicts in the Middle East and Russia. Instead of using the money for investor proceeds, the supermajors put it toward lowering their debts.

Trump has come under intense political fire from the economic fallout from the war.

Americans already grappling with the high cost of housing, food and consumer goods are now paying more than $4 per gallon of regular gasoline on average. Voters have given Trump increasingly poor marks over his handling of the economy and the war, imperiling his fellow Republicans’ chances in November’s midterm elections. 

In recent weeks, he’s pointed to big oil companies as a scapegoat for high fuel prices. Trump in June ordered the Justice Department to investigate why gasoline prices had not fallen, suggesting companies could be engaged in price gouging. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Large solar farms are being built around the Arctic Circle in the Nordics, rooftop panels are spreading across northern Scotland and the technology has even found a role in the notoriously cloudy Faroe Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Its rise is giving governments another way to electrify their economies while producing more energy at home.

Across the Nordic region, for the first time, investors and utilities added more new solar capacity than wind in 2025, a lead expected to continue this year, according to BloombergNEF. Governments have upgraded their own forecasts as installations exceed expectations. Sweden reached its original 2030 solar target in 2023 and is already close to meeting a newer, more ambitious goal. Finland hit its end-of-decade target six years early.

“The question isn’t whether solar works this far north anymore,” said Warren Campbell, chief executive officer of Swedish solar developer Alight AB. “It’s how much we’re going to build.”

Developers are already planning the next wave of projects. Companies have proposed at least another 300 megawatts of solar in Finland’s northern Lapland region. Projects of around 600 megawatts are seeking grid connections in the north of Sweden. 

The industry’s momentum in Europe’s northern flank is in sharp contrast to its struggles further south. So much solar has been installed in Spain that power prices are plunging and investors get very little or no return at all for their buck. 

But in the Nordics, the shift has been driven by a sharp improvement in economics. Panels and related equipment costs in Europe have fallen 30% since 2021 according to Aurora Energy Research, while higher electricity prices have made projects far more attractive. Nordic wholesale rates averaged about €11 per megawatt-hour in 2020 before surging to more than ten times that level during the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They averaged €79 during the first six months of this year.

Few projects illustrate that transformation better than Exilion’s Simo solar park, just south of the Arctic Circle. Tommi Riski, the company’s director of business development and electricity markets, says that in the early days of the project, the typical response was “Who the hell builds a solar plant in Lapland?”

Less than three years later, the €40 million ($46 million) project is generating electricity for almost 22 hours a day at the height of summer. 

The park earns most of its revenue during the summer months. The European Commission’s solar calculator show that a project in northern Finland would generate around 82% of its annual output between April and September. For a similar project in Madrid, it would be 58%. 

Exilion’s business case assumes virtually no generation between November and January, treating any winter output as a bonus. The site also hosts a wind farm, which generates most of its electricity during the dark winter months, illustrating how the two technologies increasingly complement one another in northern climates in so-called hybrid projects. Batteries are also increasingly included. 

Operating that far north also comes with some advantages over those building on the continent. Cooler temperatures help solar panels operate more efficiently, while snow reflects additional light onto the site’s double-sided panels, boosting production. 

Finland and northern Scandinavia may offer the clearest example of how far north large-scale solar can now work. But the shift isn’t confined to the Nordics. Across northern Scotland, households and businesses are adding panels at a record pace. Installation company AES Renewables has added solar systems as far north as Thurso, almost on the same latitude as Oslo. 

Nearly 2,000 homes across the Scottish Highlands and islands installed solar panels in the six months through April, despite the region receiving barely half the sunshine of southern Spain. The demand has prompted AES to increase its workforce by more than 50% since the start of last year.

Installations are also picking up in the Faroe Islands, a windswept archipelago northwest of Scotland and regarded as one of the world’s cloudiest places. The islands had only a handful of solar farms a few years ago but lower costs and growing interest from households and businesses are changing that. 

Local utility SEV estimates there are now more than 60 installations, with another 25 to 30 awaiting approval. Although the Faroes receive relatively little sunshine overall, the new solar installations dovetail nicely with wind and hydropower, which generate less electricity during the summer. 

 That allows solar to fill a seasonal gap in the system, just as fossil-fuel use is increasing. “Since we rely on expensive diesel in the summer, that is a benefit for solar,” said Helma Maria Trondheim, an SEV research engineer. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

After crossing the 100-gigawatt mark in 2012, it took the world 10 years to deploy 1 terawatt of solar power. An additional 1 terawatt, enough to meet all of US power demand at its peak, took less than three years to build. Not even two years later in 2026 — the precise timing is subject to debate among analysts — the 3-terawatt threshold was reached.

No one really noticed. 

That makes sense. For most people, the increased deployment of solar isn’t perceived in figures, but in other ways. “Take a train anywhere, say in the UK, and you’re likely to spot solar panels,” said Lara Hayim, head of solar research at BloombergNEF.  

The visual signal is only going to get stronger. Forecasters are so bullish about solar that, in just a few years, the 3-terawatt milestone will seem almost insignificant. BNEF expects the world to deploy more than 9 terawatts of solar by 2036.

But dig in a little deeper and you’ll find interesting stories. The first terawatt was mostly rich countries subsidizing the installation of solar, with China and poor countries still finding photovoltaics too expensive. That story changed going into the second and third terawatt, with China taking the baton from rich countries. 

The result is that, even as the world has added solar power at an accelerated pace, the share of deployment going to poor countries has largely stalled since 2020. China has clearly been the main driver of the global story, said Hayim. But disaggregate the numbers, and “you can now see solar booms in other countries too.” In the past few years, countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and the Philippines have seen an extraordinary increase in the amount of solar power installed on rooftops. Some smaller markets, such as Cuba and Lebanon, have also seen rapid uptake. It’s why the number of countries with at least 1 gigawatt of solar installed has grown to as many as 74 last year, up from 42 in 2020.

China’s solar deployment has been faster than the buildout of supporting infrastructure, such as transmission and batteries. That’s leading to more curtailment of solar production during peak hours, and thus a waste of resources. So analysts expect deployment in China to slow down. In its latest five-year plan, the country announced a series of measures to increase renewables consumption, rather than production, by more than 50%.

BloombergNEF expects that poor countries’ share of solar deployment will start growing again from this year onward. Most developing countries are starting with very low amounts of solar penetration in the grid and won’t hit the limits that China and other big adopters are facing now. By 2036, more than a quarter of all solar deployed will be in developing countries, with rich countries’ share falling to about 20%.

The boom in solar power has happened as countries have overcome local issues, from a lack of skilled workers to challenges of managing a grid with intermittent renewables. Still, Hayim says the main constraint for developing countries continues to be the lack of accessible financing. 

There is, however, a theoretical upper limit to how much solar can be added to the grid. That’s because, once solar power meets all the demand during the daytime, adding more is of no value. Countries such as Australia and regions like California, which have among the highest solar penetration, regularly set negative electricity prices during the daytime, signaling there’s too much solar power on the grid.

Lithium-ion batteries can help extend the solar boom for some time, absorbing excess power in the day and releasing it later in the evening. That’s what Australian policymakers have helped encourage through subsidies for home batteries. It’s also what’s starting to happen, regardless of policy support, in developing countries like Pakistan and the Philippines, where a battery boom is following a solar boom. 

Without battery energy storage, the solar revolution is unlikely to continue. “Without enough energy storage, you cannot maximize solar’s potential,” said Hayim.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Brent for October lost as much as 7.3%, after futures surged by almost a quarter in July to post the biggest monthly gain since March. West Texas Intermediate was below $80. Trump said on Sunday that he called off a massive attack on Iran after allies in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, asked him to pursue a deal instead.

The US leader said he’d agreed to cancel the assault, “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL” to quickly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to an earlier post on Truth Social. “Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE.”

“The drop is a reflection of relief that further escalation has been avoided,” said Takahiro Asaoka, a commodities researcher at Itochu Research Institute Inc. “The move appears to be largely driven by short covering as the geopolitical risk premium eases. A sustained decline in oil prices is difficult unless there’s an agreement that allows shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to return to normal.”

Brent swung through a roughly $32 range last month as fighting resumed following the collapse of a June truce. That saw the conflict spreading to the Red Sea and Jordan before another pause in late July to allow diplomatic efforts to continue was shattered. 

European natural gas fell as much as 6.3% in early Asian trading. 

Oil futures pared some of their early decline after UK Maritime Trade Operations said a tanker off Oman reported an explosion in close proximity on Sunday. That highlighted the persistent risks for shipping through Hormuz — which carried about a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas in peacetime — after an LNG vessel was struck by a projectile late last week.

Meanwhile, Gulf producers continue to seek alternative export routes. Turkey and Iraq agreed to extend an expired oil pipeline deal by one year that would be able to export as much as 750,000 barrels a day, according to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday on Telegram that negotiations between Iran and Oman are in the final stages. The two countries that flank the strait are discussing a new route through it, but the talks don’t cover whether the waterway will be closed or open, a ministry spokesman said on Iranian state-run TV. 

Elsewhere, major OPEC+ nations approved the latest small increase to their production quotas, a move that will complete the theoretical revival of supplies halted in 2023 and give them scope to add more barrels once the Middle East war ends.

In addition, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said the Caspian Pipeline Consortium continues to operate with oil intake at 100,000 tons a day from Aug. 1 after a temporary suspension on Friday. While CPC will allow vessels to load, the pace of exports will also depend on whether tankers are willing to risk the journey. 

A series of attacks on tankers loading at or near the Black Sea facility has disrupted flows from the CPC, a major export route for Kazakh crude.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The raised quotas restore the 1.65 million bpd of supply OPEC+ had voluntarily removed from the market, with the seven producers now returning to their original production levels before the additional voluntary cuts were introduced in April 2023.

“The seven OPEC+ countries also noted that this measure will provide an opportunity for the participating countries to accelerate their compensation,” OPEC+ said in a statement. 

However, around 2 million bpd of separate OPEC+ production cuts dating back to 2022 remain in place and are currently scheduled to run until the end of 2026.

Conflicts hindering increased supplies

The return of OPEC+ production follows heightened geopolitical tensions that are limiting oil supplies. Export disruptions affecting Gulf producers, Russia, and Kazakhstan amid regional conflicts have also meant that much of the additional supply approved by OPEC+ this year has yet to reach the market.

The organisation’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) also expressed concerns “regarding attacks on energy infrastructure,” adding that “restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time, thereby affecting overall supply availability.” 

The attacks on energy infrastructure have impacted supplies, even as the group steadily raised its official production targets. It remains to be seen whether OPEC+ will continue raising output during the rest of 2026 or pause after September. 

Jorge Leon, Head of Geopolitical Analysis at Rystad Energy, said the completion of the restoration programme increases the likelihood of a pause later this year.

“OPEC+ has finished unwinding its voluntary cuts. The next challenge is managing the surplus that could emerge as export flows normalise,” Leon said.

“Having completed the restoration campaign, OPEC+ has little incentive to rush into further supply changes. Our base case is a fourth-quarter pause while the group prepares for the 2027 quota negotiations.”

The seven producers are scheduled to meet again on 6 September to review market conditions.

Meanwhile, the JMMC said it had reviewed May and June production data and noted overall conformity among OPEC and non-OPEC countries participating in the Declaration of Cooperation.

The JMMC said it would continue monitoring the situation and compliance with existing production commitments, with its next meeting scheduled for 4 October. 

The energy transition is not only about shifting energy sources or adopting new technologies, but also about designing a future energy system that meets every dimension of development, including security, accessibility, and sustainability. 

Ultimately, the success of the energy transition is not measured solely by the increasing share of clean energy, but also by the ability to build confidence among the public, businesses, and investors that the energy system remains stable, supports continuous economic growth, and maintains affordable costs along the transition journey. This is a mission that no country can drive alone; it requires collaboration across all sectors at both national and international levels. 

Mission for a secure future

Thailand’s energy transition must advance in parallel with power system security. Progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions should not compromise power system stability or impose an excessive cost burden. The concept of “Bridging the Next Energy Era” has been developed to connect today’s power security with the future energy system.

It reflects the role of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) as the organisation responsible for safeguarding Thailand’s power security by balancing energy security, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. EGAT aims to ensure that Thailand’s energy transition is secure, fair, and sustainable.

Regional stability and connectivity

Throughout the energy transition, liquefied natural gas (LNG) remains a key fuel for maintaining power system stability. At the same time, EGAT continues to develop modern and flexible energy infrastructure through grid modernisation to support the growing share of renewable energy.

As today’s energy landscape extends beyond national borders, regional energy cooperation has become important in strengthening shared energy security. The Lao PDR–Thailand–Malaysia–Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP) is a significant example of regional energy connectivity and represents an important step toward realising the ASEAN Power Grid. The project enables the efficient cross-border transmission of clean energy, enhances energy security, and creates new economic opportunities across ASEAN. 

Multi-pathway approach: no single solution for the future

EGAT is accelerating the study and development of low-carbon innovations through a multi-pathway approach. EGAT recognises that no single technology can address the complexity of the energy transition; rather, it requires diverse solutions that systematically complement one another. 

• Hydrogen: Studying and developing hydrogen as a promising fuel of the future

• Small Modular Reactors (SMRs): Studying SMRs as an energy source with high efficiency and low emissions

This approach will pave the way for preparing the country for a diverse range of alternative energy sources to increase the share of renewable energy without adverse effects on power system security, driving Thailand toward net-zero emissions in a tangible manner.

Energy is a foundation of the digital economy

The energy transition must align with the rapid shift toward a fully digital economy. Artificial intelligence (AI), data centres, and digital infrastructure need secure, high-quality, and adequate power supply. Beyond an energy mission, power development also lays the foundation for enhancing competitiveness and serves as a key driving force behind the country’s industrial growth on the global stage. 

A platform for collaboration at Gastech 2026

Gastech 2026 is much more than a global energy technology exhibition. It is a collaborative platform that provides an opportunity for the public and private sectors, academics, and global policymakers to exchange knowledge, experiences, and views to help shape the direction of the future energy system.

The energy transition will succeed not only through technologies but also through a network of collaboration, trust, and a shared vision across all sectors to build a secure, resilient, and sustainable energy system for everyone.

Separately, Moscow claimed a Ukrainian drone struck the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces since 2022, near one of the facility’s power units. Ukraine hasn’t commented. 

The Saratov attack resulted in a fire at the refinery, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a Telegram statement. Ukraine’s forces also struck Engels airfield in the Saratov region, about 730 kilometers (450 miles) southeast of Moscow and over 1,000 km east of Kyiv, according to the statement. 

The Engels air base is a critical operating hub for Russian warplanes including the Tu-95 long-range strategic bomber, which has been used to launch cruise missile strikes against Ukraine, the General Staff said. 

Regional authorities said there was damage to civilian infrastructure in Saratov and Engels following the attack, which also killed two people. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces also hit an oil depot in Russia’s Kaluga region and on a drone storage facility in the Bryansk region. 

Images of the Saratov refinery captured Sunday by NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System show fresh heat anomalies that may indicate active fires. 

Rosneft didn’t immediately respond to a Bloomberg request for a comment sent via WhatsApp outside normal business hours.  

The Saratov refinery, which has a design capacity of processing about 140,000 barrels of crude a day, was previously hit on July 8 and had restored operations after that attack.   

Ukraine’s forces intensified strikes on Russia’s refineries, including facilities far from the nations’ border, in the final days of July after a short lull over the previous couple of weeks. On Friday, Kyiv hit the Volgograd refinery, one of Russia’s largest, while attacks on Saturday targeted Ufa, home to three Bashneft refineries, in Russia’s Bashkortostan republic. 

Earlier on Sunday another drone attack on the republic’s industrial facilities sparked a fire at an industrial area in Ufa, Radiy Khabirov, head of Bashkortostan, said without providing details.  

Intensified attacks threaten to disrupt fuel supplies in Russia again, just as many regions across the country were increasing limits for gasoline and diesel sales at filling stations or even lifting them after a period of shortages. Following the attack on the Volgograd refinery, filling stations of Lukoil PJSC and Gazprom PJSC temporarily introduced gasoline rationing in the Volgograd region, according to regional authorities.

In the past 24 hours, 1,158 unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down by Russia’s air defense systems, the Defense Ministry said in a statement after midday Moscow time. That was Ukraine’s record for the number of drones launched in a single day, according to estimates from Agentstvo. Novosti, an independent media outlet. The previous record was on June 18, when 992 Ukrainian drones were shot down, it said. 

While Ukraine continues so successfully target Russian oil infrastructure, Zelenskyy said certain Russian enterprises not currently subject to Western sanctions are working to step up production of drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs. 

“The aggressor is investing more and more in its ballistic weapons capability and is trying to ramp up production,” Zelenskyy said on X. “Pressure is needed on every segment of Russia’s defense-industrial complex.” 

Alexey Likhachev, chief executive officer of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said a Ukrainian drone hit a passageway that connects six power units at the Zaporizhzhia plant overnight, several meters from the reactor compartment of the third unit. There was no explosion, he said, according to Rosatom’s in-house media service’s Telegram. 

Likhachev said Rosatom hopes Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will visit the Zaporizhzhia facility in the near future. Grossi has visited the plant several times since 2022. 

The IAEA hasn’t commented on Likhachev’s claims, which couldn’t be independently verified. 

On Saturday, the UN’s nuclear watchdog said the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeast Ukraine lost off-site power for the 23rd time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. During the outage emergency diesel generates provided back-up power for reacting cooling and other safety functions.   

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

One of the two reactors still operating at the Paks plant was shut down early Sunday, with the final one powering down later in the day, according to Magyar. He cited the progressively lower water levels, which are causing a shortage of water for cooling at the facility, which is operating at a little over a tenth of its 2,000 megawatt capacity.

The nation is heading into uncharted territory by shutting the nuclear plant for the first time in its 44-year history — a result of sustained drought across much of central Europe. 

The plant, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Budapest, accounts for 40% of the country’s electricity generation. Neighboring Romania on Friday ordered a state of alert in the energy sector after reducing output at its own nuclear plant.

Hungary’s government is boosting power imports to cover part of the shortfall, and has asked large industrial companies, including car and battery makers, to voluntarily cut their consumption, warning that mandatory reductions may also be ordered.

A new crisis plan focuses on prioritizing electricity cuts at firms and limiting household usage only as a last resort. For example, rail freight will be stopped at peak hours from Monday while decorative lighting on state buildings has been turned off. Budapest ordered trams and subways to go slower to conserve electricity. Water supplies are also under strain, prompting the government to order a halt to the watering of grass and stadium pitches.

It’s all shaping up to be a major test of Magyar’s leadership, less than four months after a landslide election that ousted Viktor Orban. That’s true even as the new premier pointed to the deterioration of energy and water infrastructure during 16 years of Orban rule, including delays to the modernization of the Paks plant’s cooling system as well as in its controversial Russian-led expansion.

“We inherited a fragile, expensive and vulnerable system,” Magyar said in an address on social media. “We now have to operate, defend and fundamentally rebuild this system all at once.”

Before the drought, Magyar had moved quickly to deliver on his pledge to dismantle Orban’s illiberal regime, crack down on corruption, restore the rule of law, and hold officials of the previous administration to account. Now the energy crisis is eclipsing all other issues.

The call to pare energy usage by companies is likely to hamper industrial production, just as it was showing signs of revival after nearly three years of contraction. The drought is also poised to devastate agriculture, restraining economic growth and potentially fueling food inflation. That may challenge central bankers who’d penciled in a third consecutive monthly interest rate cut in August and potentially more for later in the year. 

The unexpected outlays on electricity imports are also roiling budget consolidation efforts. The government is still in the process of amending this year’s fiscal plan, which Magyar has said were based on falsified numbers and didn’t include much of Orban’s spending splurge ahead of the elections.

Energy crisis concerns are spilling into the markets. The forint, one the world’s best performing currencies since investors started pricing in Magyar’s election win early this year, closed at the weakest level in three months against the euro on Friday, and posted its worst month in July since October 2024.

Even before the drought, Magyar’s government had started to address key energy and water system vulnerabilities. It opened a call for bids for major investments in wind energy, with the government planning to use freshly released EU funds to finance projects. Consultations had also started on modernizing the country’s irrigation system.

But none of that will of help to deal with the immediate crisis as Hungary heads into another heat wave. Temperatures in Hungary’s capital are expected to hit 37 or 38C (98.6F-100.4F) on each of the next six days, with no precipitation in the forecast.

The most acute situation is at Paks, where the cooling of nuclear reactors remains a vital task even after the reactors are taken offline. That can be done even under extreme conditions, when the water flow is as much as 90% below average, and even when the water temperature is elevated, the Hungarian Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement, citing available technology and reserves.

But with Europe warming faster than any other continent, the longer term outlook is grim and the short-term one isn’t any brighter.

Historical water levels show that the Danube reaches its annual low point in August or September, according to Laszlo Nagy, the deputy director of the Paks plant, who added that it takes about a further week to bring the reactors online once water levels become adequate again. That means Hungary may have to do without its single-biggest energy asset for several months.

“The outlook isn’t too good, unfortunately,” Nagy told reporters on Friday at a joint briefing with Magyar. “We’re facing an unprecedented situation.”

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.