Brent slipped toward $88 a barrel, after rising 12% over the prior six days, while West Texas Intermediate was near $82. On the diplomatic front, there was llittle apparent movement toward reopening the waterway, with US President Donald Trump claiming to have “total control” over the conduit.

Talks between the US and Iran appear deadlocked as both sides harden their positions, with Washington pressing on with a blockade of the Islamic Republic’s ports to raise the economic pressure on Tehran. Pakistan — which has acted as a mediator — said the larger peace process had stalled, although a deadline for a US-Iran memorandum of understanding could be extended.

Crude is still headed for a weekly gain after months of volatile trading, with traders tracking on-off efforts by Tehran and Washington toward ending their conflict. The war in the Middle East, coupled with fighting between Ukraine and Russia that’s seen waves of strikes against energy infrastructure including ports and refineries, have tightened oil and product markets.

“Volatility looks set to remain a defining feature” until diplomatic efforts lead to the reopening of Hormuz and production visibility improves, said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets. Weaker demand added to concerns, as higher prices are already destroying consumption, she said.

The global oil market faces a shortfall of 1.8 million barrels a day this quarter, more than double an earlier projection as the US-Iran war drags on, according to the International Energy Agency, which also cautioned that crude demand was being eroded by higher prices. For 2026 as a whole, the deficit will likely be the widest in five years, the IEA said in a report on Wednesday.

Still, US oil stockpiles swelled 17.4 million barrels last week, the largest gain since January 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration. The build was mostly on the Gulf Coast, driven by weaker exports and rising imports, including the return of Saudi oil and Venezuelan crude.

For US consumers, gasoline and diesel have never been this expensive, this late in the year, according to the American Automobile Association. That comes as millions of Americans typically take to the road for vacations and family visits.

“Oil and product markets are set to see upside,” said Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, citing factors including crude deficits heading back toward 4 million barrels a day.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

For governments and business leaders across the Gulf, the debate is no longer about adopting technology; it is about building “sovereign AI” systems that are trusted, resilient, and economically transformative. According to Accenture’s latest Pulse of Change research, 86% of C-suite leaders plan to increase AI investment in 2026. In the Middle East, this optimism is even more pronounced: 83% of regional organisations are ramping up spending, viewing AI not as a cost-saving measure, but as a primary driver of revenue growth and national resilience.

The shift from access to agency

In the first wave of AI, leadership was defined by access to global models. Today, as regional conflict tests the stability of global infrastructure, leadership is defined by agency. True digital sovereignty means having the confidence that critical systems — from energy grids to financial networks — can function independently of global connectivity shifts. It requires moving beyond a reliance on external tools toward the creation of domestic “AI factories” that can generate intelligence at an industrial scale.

While regional growth forecasts have been adjusted to 2.6% due to conflict-related domestic demand cooling, the tech-led “reinvention” remains the primary hedge against stagnation. In this environment, sovereign AI is “digital insurance.” It ensures that the logic of decision-making models and the security of sensitive data remain within national borders, protected from the second-order risks of global fragmentation.

A region prepared to lead

Accenture Research finds the Middle East is the most AI-prepared region globally, with 73% of the workforce ready for AI training versus 51% worldwide. This human capital advantage is the engine behind the ambitious transformations currently unfolding across the Gulf.

We see this most clearly in how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is anchoring AI to its national transformation agenda. By linking digital capabilities directly to productivity and economic diversification, the Kingdom is creating a blueprint for scaling AI responsibly across the public and private sectors. This isn't just about speed; it's about intentional design. Crucially, this is being enabled by high-performance sovereign infrastructure built in collaboration with global ecosystem leaders to ensure the Kingdom owns its compute future.

Similarly, the United Arab Emirates has prioritised regulatory agility and trusted platforms, serving as a global testing ground for secure, large-scale deployment. By emphasising “governance by design,” the UAE is bridging the gap between frontier technology and national security. In Qatar, the focus has evolved toward AI as an enabler of smart infrastructure and energy resilience — essential priorities as the region navigates current supply chain complexities.

Sovereignty is a continuum

A common misconception is that sovereign AI requires isolation. In reality, the most successful models are built on “hybrid sovereignty.” This approach allows nations to leverage the power of global hyperscalers for general-purpose tasks while maintaining secure, “air-gapped” sovereign environments for mission-critical workloads — a strategy recently bolstered by Accenture’s expanded partnerships with Palantir to bring advanced data sovereignty to regulated sectors.

However, despite high optimism, an “execution gap” remains. While 89% of regional leaders anticipate revenue growth, only 3% are actively redesigning job roles for an AI-enabled era. To close this gap, leaders must focus on three strategic pillars:

1. Anchor to national outcomes: AI must be tied to clear priorities — improving citizen services, strengthening financial stability, or unlocking industrial productivity.
2. Design for scale: Organisations must invest in data foundations and cybersecurity early, rather than relying on pilots to evolve organically. Success here means transitioning from isolated experiments to integrated sovereign platforms that can support an entire national ecosystem.
3. Trust as a strategic asset: In a period of heightened uncertainty, transparent governance, and explainable AI are accelerators of adoption, particularly in highly regulated sectors.

Beyond experimentation

The GCC has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to leapfrog traditional development stages. By treating AI as a system of national resilience rather than simply a software upgrade, the region is doing more than just participating in the AI revolution — it is helping to define its sovereign future. The era of AI experimentation has ended. The era of the AI-powered nation has begun.

The rules of the global LNG market are being rewritten, and Asia is holding the pen. Rising energy demand, geopolitical uncertainty, the appetite for power of artificial intelligence, and the urgency of energy security are all transforming how nations and companies think about natural gas. In the market landscape being transformed today, the future of LNG will not be defined by transactions. It will be defined by partnerships.

Across Asia, the world’s largest and fastest-growing LNG demand centre, governments and industries are looking beyond spot cargoes and short-term market dynamics. Their priority is resilience: securing reliable energy supplies that support economic growth, industrial development, digital transformation, and sustainability ambitions.

This evolution is taking LNG from a seller’s market into a partnership market. Success will belong to companies that offer more than molecules. Customers increasingly seek reliability, commercial flexibility, long-term certainty, and a commitment to shared growth.

At ADNOC Gas, this philosophy has guided our business for decades. Since commencing LNG exports in 1977, we have safely and reliably delivered more than 3,500 cargoes worldwide, building enduring relationships with customers across Asia and beyond.

Building for the next chapter of growth

The Ruwais LNG development represents a major milestone on our journey to meet growing global energy demand with greater scale, flexibility, and long-term supply security. Once operational, it will significantly expand our LNG production capacity and strengthen our ability to serve customers worldwide.

More than 80% of Ruwais LNG’s 9.6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) capacity has already been committed through long-term agreements with customers in Asia and Europe. This strong market response reflects confidence in a project that will also be the first LNG export facility in the Middle East and Africa to operate on clean power, producing some of the world’s lowest-carbon LNG.

Complementing this is our Rich Gas Development (RGD) project, one of the most strategically important investments in ADNOC Gas growth story. RGD will unlock major new volumes of rich gas from Abu Dhabi’s world-class resource base, expanding feedstock availability, monetising additional supply following the UAE’s sovereign decision to exit OPEC, strengthening domestic energy security, and creating more value-added export opportunities. This is further demonstration of our commitment to customers.

A new global LNG platform

As LNG markets evolve, customers increasingly value integrated solutions that combine supply, trading, shipping, and market expertise. To meet these needs, ADNOC recently launched its global LNG marketing and trading platform, bringing together the LNG marketing activities of ADNOC Gas and XRG with the trading capabilities of ADNOC Trading into an integrated commercial platform. 

For ADNOC Gas, the platform marks the next phase in our evolution as a global LNG supplier, enabling access to a more diversified LNG portfolio that spans Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia. This broadens our global market reach and enables us to provide greater supply optionality and more flexible, resilient, customer-focused LNG solutions.

Targeting 47 mtpa of combined marketable LNG by 2035, the platform will rank among the world’s leading LNG players and reinforce Abu Dhabi’s position as a global energy trading centre.  

Meeting Asia’s evolving energy needs

Asia is at the heart of the global energy future. Its growing economies, expanding industries, and accelerating digital transformation are driving sustained demand for reliable energy.

India remains one of ADNOC Gas’ most important LNG markets. By 2029, 20% of ADNOC Gas’ LNG volumes are expected to flow to India. Over the past two years, we have signed approximately $20 billion in LNG agreements with Indian companies, including a 10-year agreement with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, alongside long-term partnerships with Indian Oil Corporation and GAIL.

Our partnership with Japan tells a similar story. The recently signed 15-year Sales and Purchase Agreement with INPEX for 1 mtpa from Ruwais LNG builds on six decades of energy cooperation between our countries and marks the first long-term agreement signed through our new global LNG platform.

This is complemented by expanded collaboration with JERA Global Markets and Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. Ltd., as well as a Strategic Collaboration Agreement between ADNOC, XRG, and Mitsui & Co. to explore new opportunities across LNG, shipping, chemicals and lower-carbon energy solutions.

The future belongs to partnerships

No company or country can meet the world’s growing energy needs alone. The future will belong to those who build resilient partnerships that span borders, markets, and value chains. At ADNOC Gas, we believe natural gas will remain an important pillar of global energy security for decades to come, and that lasting partnerships will underpin this future. And I say this with conviction: ADNOC Gas is committed to helping shape that future, supporting customers across Asia and beyond through reliable energy and enduring partnerships.

SK Shipping will receive 16 LNG vessels and their long-term contracts from H-Line in exchange for 12 tankers, their contracts and approximately $300 million in cash, the buyout firm said in a statement on Thursday. 

The deal will turn SK into what Hahn & Co. described as the world’s third-largest operator of LNG carriers, while H-Line will become a leading tanker and bulk-shipping company in the region.

The swap, part of a years-long effort to reshape Korean shipping, also comes as months of conflict in the Gulf upend the energy trade and create lucrative opportunities for shipowners, charterers and traders.

A large, consolidated fleet backed by long-term contracts can offer relatively predictable cash flows in an industry otherwise buffeted by sharp swings in freight rates. The swap will allow H-Line to benefit from “increased scale, operating efficiencies, and capital” at a time of geopolitical uncertainty, Hahn & Co. said.

Hahn & Co. created H-Line in 2014 by acquiring Hanjin Shipping Co.’s long-term dry-bulk operations. It added Hyundai Merchant Marine Co.’s long-term dry-bulk business in 2016.

Hahn & Co. then acquired about 80% of SK Shipping from SK Group in 2018 and shifted the company away from speculative spot-market operations toward vessels backed by secured, long-term contracts.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

West Texas Intermediate settled little changed near $83 a barrel, after jumping 10% over the previous four sessions. Futures have been sensitive to headlines on efforts tied to reopening the crucial waterway, repeatedly fluctuating between optimism that a deal is near and indications that progress has stalled.

US President Donald Trump claimed the US had “total control over the Hormuz Strait,” as Washington and Tehran toughened their stances. Meanwhile, Pakistan said the deadline for a memorandum of understanding between the two nations could be extended.

The commodity briefly touched intraday lows after the Energy Information Administration reported that US crude inventories expanded by 17.4 million barrels last week, nearly double the increase estimated by a widely followed industry group. That was the biggest build in more than three years and coincided with imports rising to the highest level since November 2024. 

Diesel exports, meanwhile, hit an all-time high of nearly 2 million barrels a day, sending futures for the fuel higher. Tightness in the refined products market has pushed gas and diesel prices to a record seasonal high, according to data from the American Automobile Association.

“Ongoing weakness in crude exports has combined with a massive jump in imports to drive on the second largest crude inventory build in history, with the vast majority of the build happening on the Gulf Coast,” said Matt Smith, Americas lead oil analyst at market intelligence firm Kpler. 

The whopping inventory add didn’t fully assuage concerns that American barrels will be able to offset deep supply losses spurred by the Iran war. Data released Wednesday by the International Energy Agency showed that as the energy shock continues, global oil inventories will fall this quarter at more than twice the rate previously estimated. Markets are estimated to face a shortfall of 1.8 million barrels a day.

Brent has surged almost 50% this year, and some fuel prices have rallied even harder, with diesel also pushed higher by the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war. The US expects oil disruptions stemming from the Iran conflict to reach about 600,000 barrels a day through the end of 2027, according to the Short-Term Energy Outlook from the Energy Information Administration.

Tensions around Hormuz remain elevated, with a US Navy helicopter this week firing two Hellfire missiles at a Panama-flagged cargo vessel that was attempting to breach a blockade of Iranian ports. Hostilities have also spread to the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthis have targeted ships and energy infrastructure.

Visible traffic through Hormuz is down to a trickle, but some oil is exiting the Persian Gulf, often on tankers with their transponders switched off. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a social media post that almost 9 million barrels a day is crossing the strait with US military assistance.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

President Bola Tinubu on Aug. 6 signed an executive order granting tax credits of as much as $11.50 per barrel of crude for new deepwater developments, starting with Shell Plc’s Bonga Southwest Aparo project, confirming earlier Bloomberg reporting. It also provides a credit of as much as $8 per barrel of oil equivalent for non-associated gas projects.

The incentives will remain in place until Dec. 31, 2029, the presidency said in a statement Tuesday.

Tinubu has made reviving Nigeria’s oil and gas industry a key priority since taking office in May 2023, seeking to reverse years of declining investment and production in a sector hobbled by crude theft, pipeline vandalism and aging infrastructure.

Demand for new energy sources has grown since the US-Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows. 

The executive order reflects Nigeria’s commitment to building an investment environment defined by clear rules, strong institutions and enduring partnerships, Tinubu said.

A significant part of the order is the so-called profit oil reset. It allows new projects within certain mature fields to start from a more favorable 70:30 contractor-government profit split, “thereby materially improving project economics and investment returns,” said Emmanuel Ifeanyi, senior associate on energy at Andersen in Nigeria.

“That said, the ultimate verdict on the order will depend on whether it generates genuinely incremental investment and new production, rather than simply granting additional benefits to projects that would have proceeded regardless,” he said.

Africa’s largest oil producer’s most significant deepwater projects like Shell’s Bonga Southwest and Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Owowo field, have been stranded for decades as the firms weighed the risks of regulatory uncertainties on such huge commitments. The Bonga Southwest project is expected to attract $20 billion in foreign direct investment and produce 150,000 barrels a day upon completion, Nigeria’s state oil company said in March.

“The incentives makes deep-offshore blocks that were not being developed now bankable,” said Julius Rone, chief executive officer of UTM Offshore Ltd., a company that’s nearing the development of a $3 billion floating LNG plant in Nigeria.

The company remains on course to reach a final investment decision before year end to “seize this opportunity and achieve more with the project,” Rone said.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

That’s based on new projections from Wood Mackenzie, which sees US grid operators and utilities likely committing to about 28% of the 1,066 gigawatts requested for data center projects. A gigawatt is the equivalent generating capacity of a traditional nuclear reactor.

While no one expects every proposed project to be built, the data reveals how inflated projections of future power demand complicate planning and budgeting by utilities and grid operators. That can translate into higher utility bills, since capital costs for upgrading infrastructure are typically covered through rate hikes.

“Everyone’s trying to figure out the rules of the road in order to make this the most efficient process without increasing grid prices,” said Alex Klaessig, co-founder of energy market intelligence firm Halcyon.

Developers have been taking a shotgun approach to pitching projects to utilities, seeking to get ahead in the AI build-out. That’s overwhelming US grids and creating even more data center bottlenecks. The explosion of requests is stretching approval timelines, forcing more applications to be vetted than ever before, and threatening to undermine US efforts to compete in the global AI race.

“If we don’t allow these data centers to come online as fast as we can, then we might lose the future benefits of AI,” Klaessig said.

Some developers are pitching the same project to multiple utilities, with plans to push ahead with the application that lands the best deal and speediest approval. That creates what the industry calls “phantom” applications, complicating efforts to accurately forecast true power demand.

“Grid operators don’t know which ones are real and which ones aren’t,” said Glenn Schwartz, who heads energy policy at consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group. He estimates that only 20% to 30% of the power that developers are seeking will go toward projects that get built, due in part to phantom requests.

Flooded grid queues aren’t specific to data centers: renewables projects are regularly hampered by long wait times to connect to electrical networks across the world.

While it’s impossible to determine how many requests are duplicates, Reid Ramdathsingh of Rystad Energy estimates about half of the applications are credible on the biggest US grid, operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which serves 67 million Americans from Illinois to Virginia. He sees 14% of applications as legitimate on the main grid in Texas, a state that has seen the fastest data center growth.

PJM said in a statement that it has taken steps to improve the forecasting of large loads.

Of course, the 1,066 gigawatts of applications cited by Wood Mackenzie would require a staggering jump in US electric capacity. The amount represents 83% of the nation’s total utility-scale generation capacity at the end of last year, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Many applications are from firms with no prior experience building facilities with energy needs that can rival mid-sized cities. The projects of those first-time developers are often disproportionately large, though generally less likely to come to fruition than those from well-established big technology firms, said Wood Mackenzie analyst Caitlin Connelly.

To crack down on the barrage of requests, many utilities have introduced steep upfront application costs, demanding big-money collateral and near-perfect credit ratings. Such requirements are squeezing small to mid-sized developers that often pay project costs up front and then sell completed facilities to well-capitalized AI companies.

Getting through a queue used to be straightforward with utilities offering up electricity to developers, according to Brad Richter, senior vice president of energy at Hut 8 Corp., which manages 11 data centers. Now, for the most part, utilities are saying, ‘I don’t have it anymore,’” Richter said, noting that those power providers are increasingly “closed for business.”

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott ordered regulators on Aug. 3 to audit every data center seeking access to the state’s main grid, effectively pausing those projects’ approvals until reviews are complete. His surprise call puts $13 billion in industry revenues at risk and threatens to delay almost a fifth of America’s data center pipeline in the medium term, according to BloombergNEF.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is tracking about 474 gigawatts of connection requests, with around 90% of those from data centers, according to Abbott. That total is more than five times the system’s record peak demand. 

Ercot uses multiple screening stages to distinguish between speculative and credible projects, a spokesperson said.

Exelon Corp., a utility owner serving customers from Illinois to Delaware, in July slashed its pipeline of energy demands from data centers by nearly 40%, leaving a queue of about 11 gigawatts. Exelon is prioritizing connection requests that are likely to come to fruition.

“Utilities are using what they’ll refer to as a ‘first-ready, first-served’ model, as opposed to a ‘first-come, first-served’ model, to weed out folks that really don’t have the capability to deliver,” said Brian Janous of Cloverleaf Infrastructure LLC, which works with utilities to develop ready-to-build sites for data center users and providers.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The United Arab Emirates’ state oil company has been the most successful producer at getting its crude out of the Gulf through the Hormuz. It has used so-called shuttling tactics, where vessels make short trips — often with their transponders turned off to avoid detection — before typically transferring their cargoes to other ships just outside the gulf. 

In recent days, Adnoc has offered spot cargoes to Asian buyers, using the same method to carry crude from other Middle Eastern producers, most notably Iraq, the people said, asking not to be named as they’re not allowed to speak to the media. Indian refiners were among those receiving offers, they added.

Shuttling, which has also been used by some other producers as well as Adnoc, has become an important means of transporting oil out of the gulf even as the Iran war continues, helping to contain the rise in global prices. However, it’s unusual for Middle Eastern countries to turn to their neighbors to assist with carrying their energy exports.

Until now, trading house Vitol Group and French oil major TotalEnergies SE have been the major carriers of Iraqi crude. Adnoc’s offers may already be having an impact. Ali Nizar, the chief of the country’s state oil marketing company SOMO, said on Tuesday crude exports had recently jumped to around 2 million barrels a day this month. That compares with a 1.5 million to 1.7 million barrels a day estimate from the country’s oil minister last week.

An Adnoc spokesperson said the company doesn’t comment on commercial matters. SOMO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US and Iran have both recently hardened their stances in negotiations to reopen Hormuz, although Pakistan’s defense minister said on Tuesday that the two sides were close to some sort of arrangement. The stop-start nature of the talks and continued strikes on ships has made it difficult for Gulf producers to export their oil. Several Adnoc tankers were attacked while transiting Hormuz last week. 

Offers of oil by traders other than Adnoc have slowed this month as tensions in the Gulf increased again, the people said.

Iraq has so far followed a strategy of selling its oil on a loading basis, relying on other companies to transport the fuel, SOMO’s Nizar told a local television station this week. Adnoc, meanwhile, has its own fleet of ships, which it has expanded recently, and has also hired vessels from Sinokor Group, the world’s largest oil supertanker owner.

SOMO has been offering deep discounts on its oil for companies that were willing to transit Hormuz, slashing prices to as much as $30 a barrel below benchmark prices for volumes loading this month. For its flagship Basrah Medium crude, discounts ranged between $25 and $27 a barrel.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The upgrade is another step in Vestas’ turnaround after the company spent years struggling to improve profitability amid soaring costs and supply-chain disruptions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, with demand for its equipment growing, Vestas has been able to increase prices and says it is well-positioned to deliver growth for years to come.

“It’s the start of something much bigger,” Vestas Chief Executive Officer Henrik Andersen said in an interview. “We’ve scaled for it and so we are ready to deliver.”

Vestas expects a profit margin of between 7% and 9% for the full year, up from 6% to 8% previously. The company will also return cash to shareholders through a €400 million ($461 million) buyback that will run until the end of the year.

Reformed permitting rules in Germany are leading to a surge in wind-farm installations in Europe’s biggest power market, while other countries are revising incentives to install more turbines at sea. 

Even in the US, where President Donald Trump has sought to stymie the industry, soaring power consumption from AI data centers has bolstered demand for all generation technologies, including wind.

“The US is coming to a conclusion of ‘We need more of everything,’” Andersen said on a call with analysts. 

Put together, efforts to decarbonize the power system, meet rising electricity needs and bolster domestic energy production are driving growth at Vestas, one of the world’s oldest and largest producers of the technology in the world. 

Second quarter earnings before interest and taxes and before significant items came in at €446 million, more than double analysts’ estimates. 

“Vestas reported a stellar second quarter performance,” JPMorgan Chase & Co analysts led by Akash Gupta wrote in a note. “Overall, this may be the best print the company has had in several years.”

While the company has increased prices in recent years, orders have continued to climb. Total turbine orders rose more than 50% in the first half from a year earlier, and the value of the delivery backlog reached €36 billion by the end of June. The wind-turbine business traditionally sees stronger activity in the second half, potentially setting Vestas up for a record year.

Shares have been highly volatile in recent years. After doubling in price in 2020, shares plunged by a third in 2021 as the company struggled with rapidly rising costs. Shares are up almost 20% so far this year after a 77% gain in 2025. 

Outlook for revenue for the year was unchanged and is set to be in a range of €20 billion to €22 billion.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The investment is intended for projects including data centers and compute power, renewable-power generation, energy storage, natural gas, electricity transmission and critical minerals and mining. The goal is to support energy security, job growth and economic competitiveness, the bank said in a statement Wednesday. 

“Without hard infrastructure, it’s difficult to preserve our competitiveness and leadership for the next generation,” said Karen Fang, global head of infrastructure and sustainable finance and co-head of global capital solutions, in an interview. “Old infrastructure has to be modernized.”

It’s the latest in a string of infrastructure initiatives across US banks. Morgan Stanley this week announced its own $1.5 trillion pledge to help with capital raising, financing and advisory over the next decade. The US is coping with aging infrastructure as it also embarks on a massive buildout of artificial-intelligence data-center capacity, which is straining the power grid in places. The Bank of America pledge isn’t limited to the AI frenzy, focusing on sectors such as transportation and water systems as well. 

The initiative is in addition to an earlier commitment by the bank to back $1.5 trillion of sustainable-finance projects by 2030. Last year, larger competitor JPMorgan Chase & Co. vowed to funnel $1.5 trillion into industries that bolster US economic security and resiliency over the coming decade.

Bank of America’s commitment is in honor of the country’s 250th birthday, with capital deployed through July 4 of next year. The target includes loans from Bank of America’s balance sheet and transactions the company arranges or advises on.

“This is our statement that we are making that infrastructure investing is a uniting theme,” Fang said.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Shares in the Sydney-based company rose as much as 6.1%, the most since Feb. 11, paring this year’s decline. The company said Wednesday that underlying profit after tax fell 1.7% to A$631 million ($445 million) in the year through June 30, and it forecast A$470 million to A$670 million for the current fiscal year. 

AGL is increasingly looking to batteries and renewable energy as it retires its aging fleet of coal plants, under pressure from its biggest shareholder, billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes. Australia’s rapid energy transition has seen renewables’ share of generation rise to more than 40% in the main grid, leading to lower prices and pushing out fossil fuel plants.

“The improved availability and flexibility of our generation asset portfolio, including the continued strong performance of our batteries, supported earnings resilience in a period of low volatility,” Chief Executive Officer Damien Nicks said on an earnings call. Value is shifting toward flexible assets, while increased electrification, higher EV penetration and AI data centers are driving strong long-term demand growth, he said.

AGL said its batteries contributed A$57 million to total earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, an increase of A$10 million from a year earlier, despite lower market volatility. Capital expenditure yield from the company’s growing battery fleet has risen to 20%.

The utility declared a fully franked final dividend of A$0.26, taking fiscal year dividends to A$0.50, slightly higher than estimates. 

“We expect a modestly positive market reaction with strong operational performance across generation and retail, solid FY27 guidance and a modest dividend beat,” Citi analysts Tom Wallington and Sumeet Ozarde said in a note. 

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Delivering programmes of new nuclear around the world will require investment to scale far beyond current levels. Governments and strategic investors cannot fund deployment at this scale on their own, so private capital will need to play a much larger role than it has to date.

A new Roadmap to Mainstream Finance: The Path to Scale Nuclear Energy sets out how nuclear can move from a bespoke, predominantly government-led financing proposition towards a mainstream infrastructure asset class capable of attracting broader institutional investment.

The scale of the investment challenge

The scale of the investment challenge is substantial. Governments have collectively set targets for 1,446 GWe of nuclear capacity to be operating by 2050, more than triple today’s installed capacity. Meeting those ambitions will require an average annual investment of $250 billion, or approximately $6 trillion of cumulative investment by 2050, with capital needed not only for new generating capacity but also across the wider nuclear value chain, including investment in continued operation of current reactors, fuel services, and back-end capabilities. 

Deploying capital at this scale requires greater participation from private capital. The challenge is not a shortage of global capital, but creating the policy certainty, confidence, risk allocation and financial frameworks needed to crowd in larger pools of private capital and also accelerate financial decision-making in markets around the world so projects can start breaking ground sooner.

Closing the gap between nuclear and finance

This issue points to the real barrier. For mainstream financiers, the constraint is not the amount of capital required, nor a fundamental aversion to risk. It is market readiness. Three main things are missing, and each is specific and addressable. 

First, data and track record. The financial community does not have access to meaningful amounts of independently verified, market-standard data on cost, schedule and operating performance. Without a deep set of comparable transactions to benchmark against, risk is difficult to price with confidence, and premiums stay elevated even where underlying project risk is well managed.

Second, standardisation. Because nuclear projects have historically been treated as unique and first-of-a-kind, financial products, contract terms and risk-allocation structures have not converged around common templates the way they have in other infrastructure sectors. Every transaction is negotiated close to from scratch, which raises cost and slows financial close.

Third, institutional support and stable frameworks. Many markets still lack policy and market-design structures that properly recognise and value what nuclear delivers, such as inclusion in green taxonomies, revenue mechanisms suited to long-lived firm capacity, and legal and regulatory environments consistent enough across jurisdictions for due diligence and documentation to be reused rather than rebuilt project by project.

How the Roadmap helps mainstream finance to scale

Being able to engage mainstream finance matters because it shows a stage of market maturity in which the three challenges described above are solved or greatly reduced. At this stage, financial products are standardised enough to be priced with confidence, private actors lead underwriting on the strength of demonstrated data and track record, and development-stage and supply chain financing needs are met by purpose-built instruments rather than treated.

The Roadmap sets out how the nuclear sector is moving in that direction, the same way that other sectors such as solar energy, offshore wind, LNG, and other capital-intensive infrastructure industries scaled and followed the same path in the past.

No single actor can deliver this transition alone. It requires all parties to act together, each addressing a different part of the gap. Governments’ primary role is to ensure policy stability, establishing liability and legal frameworks, and calibrating support so that it can be reduced as risk is demonstrably lowered. The nuclear industry has the primary role in generating the track record and data that the finance community needs and making cost and performance information available on terms the financial community can use.

The financial community has the primary role in building standardised instruments, benchmarks, and frameworks that allow faster financial decisions. None of these roles substitutes for the others. Bringing nuclear capacity to the scale governments are now targeting depends on all stakeholders advancing their respective parts of this transition in parallel.

Building a more investable pipeline

Over the past year, discussion between the nuclear and financial communities has focused on how these conditions can be translated into investable projects. Senior representatives from financial institutions, project developers, policymakers and industry organisations have examined financing channels, fleet deployment models, the cost of capital and the conditions needed to support nuclear growth at scale.

That work has drawn on expertise from across the nuclear, finance, legal, advisory, and international policy communities. The most useful insights are practical ones: how to improve project comparability, how to allocate risk more clearly, how to build confidence in delivery, and how to create financial structures that can be repeated across markets rather than reinvented for every project.

To reach scale, markets will need visible pipelines, repeatable delivery models, and sufficient confidence for institutional capital to participate alongside public and strategic investors. Delivering new nuclear programmes globally will depend on closer and more sustained cooperation between the nuclear and finance communities. Bridging knowledge gaps, standardising approaches and aligning policy, project and capital-market requirements will be essential to turn ambition into investable pipelines.

From dialogue to delivery

The next test is whether dialogue between nuclear and finance can translate into clearer market practice. That discussion will continue at the Finance Summit during the World Nuclear Symposium, where financial institutions, development banks, investors, policymakers and industry leaders will examine capital flows, partnership models and the investment conditions emerging across the global nuclear pipeline.

The bigger question is how quickly those discussions can be converted into durable frameworks that make nuclear projects more bankable, repeatable, and capable of attracting capital at the scale required.

As the world faces the dual challenges of rising electricity demand and energy transition, the definition of energy security is undergoing a profound transformation. Traditionally, energy security has focused on ensuring an adequate supply of fuel and electricity to meet a country’s needs. Today, it encompasses the ability to deliver energy that is reliable, resilient, and credible in response to increasingly complex and rapidly evolving energy consumption patterns. 

Energy resilience is no longer merely an enabler of economic growth; it has become a strategic infrastructure imperative that shapes the competitiveness of nations and businesses worldwide. At the same time, the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is driving future energy systems to strike a balance between energy security and the transition to a low-carbon society.

Revenue climbed 42% year-on-year to $6.57 billion, exceeding analysts' expectations of $6.10 billion, according to LSEG data.

The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) reached $2.80 billion during the quarter, up 149% from a year earlier and marking the highest adjusted EBITDA in the company's history.

YPF said these earnings were driven by record shale production, stronger refining performance, and higher international oil prices.

These were fuelled by continued growth in unconventional production from Vaca Muerta, the vast shale formation that has become central to Argentina's strategy of increasing energy exports and strengthening foreign currency reserves.

In February this year, YPF highlighted its intention to step up spending on Vaca Muerta as it pursues higher production and export growth.

Vaca Muerta's growing importance

Shale oil production rose 47% year-on-year to an average of 213,000 barrels per day, while total crude oil output reached 266,000 barrels per day.

YPF said it remains on track to increase shale oil production to 250,000 barrels per day by the end of 2026. Natural gas production this quarter, however, fell 6% from the same period a year earlier.

Located in Argentina's Neuquén Basin, Vaca Muerta is considered the world's second-largest unconventional gas reserve and fourth-largest unconventional oil reserve.

The formation has attracted growing international interest as energy companies seek new sources of supply to meet rising global demand.

The latest earnings come as YPF advances an ambitious development and export strategy for the basin, including efforts to position Argentina as a major LNG exporter.

In June, ADNOC's international investment platform XRG and Italian energy major Eni agreed to acquire 32% stakes each in three upstream gas blocks operated by YPF in Vaca Muerta, while YPF retained a 36% interest.

The assets are expected to supply gas to the planned Argentina LNG project, which aims to connect the basin's vast gas resources with international markets through a proposed 12 million tonnes per annum LNG export facility.

About 38 gigawatts of orders were placed in the three months, up 29% from the first quarter and 71% from the same period last year, analysts including Phil Buller said in a note on Monday. The US remained the dominant market, accounting for nearly half the orders, they said.

Orders for gas turbines have surged in recent years due to the expansion of data centers and electrification. Natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, and offers more stable electricity than wind or solar power. The boom has led to shortages in some regions, including Southeast Asia, as a scarcity of turbines puts constraints on the delivery of planned capacity additions.

The rising demand is boosting costs. A combined-cycle gas turbine delivered in 2031 will be three times as expensive as one last year, the analysts said.

Siemens Energy AG booked the most orders in the second quarter, with about 12.5 gigawatts, followed by GE Vernova Inc. at 11.3 gigawatts and Mitsubishi Power Ltd. at 5.3 gigawatts, according to the bank.

(Corrects company name to GE Vernova in last parargraph)

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The near-record high auction figure was paid by the owner of the vessel, the Seaspan Benefactor, according to people familiar with the matter who could not be identified because the auction data is private. 

Seaspan didn’t respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

While typical transits through the waterway are paid by a flat rate via reservations, the Panama Canal Authority also offers customers an auction process in order to bypass the regular queue. 

Shipowners are shelling out millions of dollars to use the auction workaround as the Iran war forces more congestion at the Panama Canal, which links the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific. Buyers and sellers of oil, natural gas, fertilizer and chemicals, especially those in Asia, have scrambled to find alternative routes with traffic deeply curtailed at two key Persian Gulf transit points — the Strait of Hormuz and more recently the Bab el-Mandeb.

Neopanamax-size vessels, such as those carrying liquefied petroleum gas, liquefied natural gas, crude oil and refined products, without booked transit slots have to wait 10 days in line, the highest since May for Pacific-to-Atlantic transit, according to data from Argus Media. 

The $4 million paid by the Seaspan Benefactor to jump to the front of the line on Monday was more than double the average of the previous seven days, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. 

The ship was last shown in South Korea before heading to the Panama Canal. As of Tuesday, it was seen positioned on the Pacific side of the canal and looked to be waiting to transit northbound, according to shipping data compiled by Bloomberg. 

The Panama Canal Authority said in a statement that auctions have experienced an increase in market costs due to shifts in global trade supply and demand and acknowledged that some have exceeded $1 million.

It declined to comment on the most recent $4 million transaction and vessel owner.

Adding to the bottleneck are maintenance outages at the locks. Work that is expected to last until September is also affecting locks that handle Neopanamax-size vessels. The canal also recently reduced the maximum allowed draft in the Neopamax locks over the coming weeks amid lower-than-expected rainfall due to the El Niño phenomenon. 

(Updates with details on wait time, and with ship stopping in South Korea in the eighth paragraph. A previous version of the story was corrected to clarify ship type in the first paragraph.)

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Power demand in Texas will rise by 5.6% next year, according to government data released Tuesday. That’s slower than the 14% annual load growth predicted in a July report, which would have been the biggest gain in a decade.

The revision follows Texas’s Aug. 3 decision to conduct an audit on all proposed data center projects seeking to connect to the state’s power grid, a move that effectively pauses the booming industry. The grid operator is considering about 474 gigawatts of connection requests, more than five times the state’s record peak demand.

The new US estimate for demand growth in Texas is, however, still above the average annual growth of 3.5% over the past decade.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the main state grid, projected in April that peak power demand may reach more than 367 gigawatts by 2032, with data centers driving more than 60% of the increase. That kind of unprecedented increased usage would require adding the equivalent of almost 300 traditional nuclear reactors.

The anticipated power consumption from data centers has led to concerns about reliability, adverse environmental impacts and rising consumer utility bills. It is also driving a growing pushback against plans to build the power-hungry facilities. New York in July became the first state to issue a moratorium on large new data centers, and several other states are considering similar polices.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The progressive Democrat’s order includes an increased review of air pollution permitting, additional rules on noise created by data center equipment, and a more thorough vetting process for future data centers that would consider water use, electricity demand and impact on neighborhoods, among other items. Johnson needs city council approval for a moratorium. Chicago is already home to about 39 data centers, according to the mayor’s office.

Last year, the former headquarters of Cboe Global Markets Inc. was sold to a company that specializes in data centers. 

“Chicago will not allow unchecked development to strain our water supply, drive up energy costs, or compromise the health of our communities,” Johnson said in the emailed press release. “We are open to innovation and investment, but it must be done responsibly, transparently, and in partnership with the people most affected.”

Johnson is the latest official to respond to the growing backlash against data centers and the impact of their water and energy uses on municipalities. Ahead of the midterm elections, both Democrats and Republicans are trying to address concerns over high energy costs. Last month, New York became the first state to issue a moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, implemented a statewide freeze on tax credits in May. 

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“We can still get there, but we do have to see the market prices move to incentivize the filling of the storage,” Lewis said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.

Germany has Europe’s largest gas-storage capacity, but it currently lags behind the rest of the region. Its sites are just over 48% full, compared with a European average of about 59%.

Germany entered the injection season this spring with unusually low inventories after cold spells reduced storage levels to around 20%. The war in the Middle East has since pushed up gas prices, making it more expensive to buy the fuel in the summer than in the winter and discouraging stockpiling.

“However, we are seeing the forward curve come up a little bit, and of course we’re now starting to see people think about the winter and what we might do,” Lewis said.

However, Lewis said storage levels are only one part of ensuring sufficient supplies for the coming heating season, as Europe also depends on continued liquefied natural gas imports.

“We need to make sure that the LNG flows to Europe this winter, and that’s why we need a resolution of the Strait of Hormuz closure as soon as possible,” Lewis said. “We need a peace deal in the Middle East.”

When asked by journalists about possible government intervention to boost storage levels, Lewis said that “ad-hoc interventions are always unpredictable” and best avoided.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Brent traded near $88 a barrel after advancing 5% in the previous session, while West Texas Intermediate was above $82. The US leader demanded compensation from Iran for the people it has killed in conflicts after Tehran reiterated requests for reparations as part of talks to wind down the conflict.

Trump said in a social media post that he would put the new demands “firmly into any, and all, future negotiations.” The hardening stance makes it unlikely that Tehran and Washington will be able to agree to any immediate pact.

Crude has jumped almost 45% this year after months of volatile trading, as the war in the Middle East disrupted flows and damaged infrastructure. Product prices have rallied even harder, with diesel also gaining from the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, which has squeezed supplies. Benchmark prices of the key fuel in Europe jumped on Monday, and have more than doubled in 2026.

Iran and Oman have been negotiating a deal to reopen Hormuz, although Tehran reiterated on Monday an accord would require the US to end its blockade and compensate for damages. About a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas was shipped through the waterway to global markets before the war.

“Given that the strait is still closed, global inventories have been reduced dramatically, and flows are nowhere near normal levels, we could see shorts cover aggressively,” said Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, referring to traders ending wagers on lower prices. “We continue to expect Brent to trade $10-$15 above current levels.”

The Middle East conflict has also spread to the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthi militants are threatening shipping and energy infrastructure. Saudi Aramco has pushed back restarting its Jazan refinery to late August, according to IIR Energy, following an attack claimed by the rebel group.

Trump said on Monday that compensation for Iran “was never mentioned in any of our negotiations or meetings.” But a 14-point memorandum of understanding that Tehran and Washington agreed to in June detailed plans for the US and regional partners to develop a $300 billion fund for the “rehabilitation and economic development” of Iran after the war.

The US president had signaled on Sunday that he was prepared to let economic pressure on Iran build, rather than launch fresh military strikes to force a reopening of Hormuz, where visible traffic remains at a trickle.

About five vessels are transiting each day, far below the roughly 14 ships a day seen after the US and Iran reached a memorandum of understanding in June, Energy Aspects founder and director of market intelligence Amrita Sen said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday.

Further insights into global market conditions will come later Tuesday from the US Energy Information Administration, which is scheduled to issue its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook. Commercial crude inventories in the country touched to the lowest level since 2018 last month, while holdings in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve have sunk to the smallest in more than four decades.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

The 400,000-barrel-a-day complex is now tentatively expected to restart by Aug. 30, IIR, which specializes in monitoring refinery activity, said on Monday. That would be roughly two weeks later than was initially scheduled. 

Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen claimed responsibility for an attack on the plant, located in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, over the weekend. The Saudi energy ministry said it put out a fire at the site, without giving a cause, while a person familiar with the matter said the blaze impacted one crude storage tank. 

Disruptions to oil refineries in the Middle East and Russia are straining the global diesel market, as fallout from both the Iran war and Moscow’s ongoing war with Ukraine combine to squeeze supplies. European and US diesel futures both jumped on Monday.

Saudi Aramco didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Brent traded above $84 a barrel after climbing more than 5% over the previous three sessions. West Texas Intermediate was near $79. An agreement with Oman to establish a shipping route through Hormuz was “very close,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said over the weekend, ruling out direct talks with the US for now because of violations of an interim peace deal reached in June.

Still, he cautioned that any deal would not immediately reopen the waterway, tempering hopes for a swift restoration of disrupted energy flows. President Donald Trump signaled patience, telling Axios on Sunday that the US was now “low-keying it.” The remarks followed weeks of Trump threatening massive strikes on Iran only to pull back.

“The bias stays bullish as long as the market is pricing the ‘possibility’ of disruption rather than the certainty of normalization,” said Haris Khurshid, chief investment officer at Chicago-based Karobaar Capital LP. “Until we see actual flows normalize, I think geopolitical risk keeps a floor under crude.”

Washington has repeatedly said it is involved in talks over the management of Hormuz, a claim disputed by Tehran. On Saturday, Iran reiterated its conditions for fully reopening the strait, including an end to the US naval blockade, the removal of sanctions and compensation for war damage.

Prior to the war, about a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas was shipped through Hormuz to global markets. The market has been spared an extreme squeeze by a number of factors, including soft Chinese demand and the release of emergency reserves, but supply buffers have been worn perilously thin.

The risk of a renewed flare-up across the Middle East remains high, keeping markets on edge. Another tanker operated by Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. was targeted in Hormuz over the weekend while Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen claimed an attack on Saudi Arabia’s Jazan refinery.

The kingdom’s energy ministry said a fire was extinguished at Jazan early Sunday, without providing details on the cause. The blaze is at least the second in the past month at the facility, after satellite images showed a fire at a tank in late July following Houthi claims of an attack.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

In an energy system that is increasingly interconnected, volatile, and fragmented, natural gas and LNG are moving to the centre of the global energy debate. They offer a reliable and flexible source of energy to meet rising demand, while also strengthening energy security. Asia is now the primary driver of global energy demand growth, offering a vantage point from which to consider the future of gas and LNG markets.

The challenge is no longer only to produce more energy but to build systems capable of providing continuity, competitiveness, and sustainability in a more complex geopolitical landscape. For Eni, addressing this challenge starts from a clear principle: diversification.

Diversification in a changing energy landscape

This begins with geography. A presence across multiple basins — from Africa and the Mediterranean to the Americas and Asia — reduces exposure to individual geopolitical contexts and strengthens portfolio resilience. But diversification also means connecting resources, infrastructure, and markets, and capturing synergies across the entire value chain, from upstream production and liquefaction to shipping and trading, supported by risk management capabilities. 

Your Excellency, how is Thailand uniquely positioned to serve as a strategic energy hub for Asia amidst accelerating global energy demand?

As energy demand continues to rise alongside urbanisation and electrification, ensuring secure, reliable, and resilient supply is a shared global priority. Asia is no longer simply part of the global energy story — it is increasingly where the future of energy demand, investment, and infrastructure development is being shaped.

According to the International Energy Agency, Southeast Asia is expected to account for approximately 25% of global energy demand growth through to 2035. Meanwhile, ASEAN is on track to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, creating significant demand for reliable, affordable, and secure energy systems.

Energy security is therefore no longer an isolated challenge that each country can address independently, and Thailand is committed to strengthening supply resilience and accelerating energy delivery both at home and across ASEAN.

How critical is the role of natural gas and LNG in securing the future of energy?

Thailand looks to natural gas and LNG as not only transition fuels, but as strategic foundations of long-term energy security, industrial competitiveness, and regional stability. As economic development continues to transform the ASEAN landscape and fuel increased energy demand, securing reliable LNG supply and strengthening regional infrastructure is now essential to support the growth upon which billions depend.

Through supportive regulation, infrastructure expansion, and strategic regional positioning, Thailand is building an attractive environment for international energy investment. We are also committed to reviewing domestic electricity tariffs and creating a new data centre category to better reflect power costs and create more opportunities for global investors and partners across the energy value chain.

How will Gastech 2026 in Bangkok provide a strategic platform for the global energy industry?

As Asia’s energy demand accelerates, stronger regional cooperation, infrastructure investment, and long-term partnerships are essential to meeting the rapidly evolving needs of billions across the region. Gastech 2026 in Bangkok will provide a strategic platform to convene global energy leaders and help shape the next generation of energy systems that will support long-term energy security, economic growth, and industrial development across Asia.

It will define the region’s collective response to recent disruptions through coordinated long-term investments, cross-border project implementation, and increased regional connectivity. For four days, Thailand will host leading natural gas producers, LNG buyers, low carbon innovators, and investors from across the entire energy value chain, supporting future energy security, economic growth, and long-term resilience.

Your Excellency, as Thailand prepares to host Gastech 2026, what are the country’s key energy priorities you are looking to advance on the global stage?

Gastech 2026 provides Thailand with an opportunity to advance several strategic priorities important to the country’s long-term energy future. These include strengthening LNG supply security and supporting Thailand’s ambition to become a strategic LNG gateway for ASEAN. We are also keen to attract international investment into energy infrastructure, power generation, digitalisation, and future energy technologies.

We will also be showcasing opportunities arising from the 26th Petroleum Bidding Round and highlighting Thailand’s long-term commitment to strengthening domestic energy supply, as well as supporting electrification, grid modernisation, energy storage, and digital technologies that will strengthen system reliability and flexibility.

Advancing carbon capture and storage as part of Thailand’s practical approach to decarbonisation and regional industrial competitiveness is another critical part of our engagements at Gastech, as is accelerating the development of hydrogen and ammonia as future energy solutions that can support long-term energy diversification.

In May 2026, Thailand approved six major projects worth a combined 958 billion baht ($29 billion), led by large-scale data infrastructure expansion including data centre and data hosting services. Launching AixEnergy alongside Gastech 2026 will also convene leaders from the energy and technology sectors to address the growing energy demands associated with AI and digital infrastructure.

The latest investment decisions increase the company's targeted EBITDA growth to 60% by 2030 compared with 2023 levels. As part of this growth, ADNOC Gas said it aims to invest around $28 billion between 2026 and 2030.

Fatema Al Nuaimi, CEO of ADNOC Gas, said, “With the final investment decision and contract awards for the Rich Gas Development Project, we are not only accelerating one of the world's largest gas-processing growth programmes – we are raising our ambition, targeting 60% EBITDA growth by 2030.” 

Al Nuaimi added that these investments will safeguard the UAE’s energy security, while powering its industrial growth and meeting the rising global energy demand.  

EPC contracts for Phase 2 and 3

As part of its growth strategy, ADNOC Gas said it awarded a $3.9 billion EPC contract to Wison Engineering for Phase 2 of the project and a $4.3 billion contract to Tecnimont for Phase 3. The contracts build on Phase 1, announced in June 2025, which focused on expanding processing capacity and improving efficiency across existing assets.

Phase 2 will add a new natural gas processing train at the Habshan facility, increasing processing capacity and supporting the UAE's downstream and petrochemical sectors. Phase 3 will add a new natural gas liquids fractionation train at Ruwais, enabling greater recovery of higher-value liquids from rich gas streams for export. With an additional $5 billion already committed to Phase 1, total investment in the RGD programme now stands at $13.2 billion.

Investing in megaprojects

ADNOC Gas is also investing in the Ruwais LNG megaproject, alongside the Maximising Ethane Recovery and Monetisation (MERAM) and Estidama developments. Together with the RGD programme, the four projects are expected to generate $13.4 billion in In-Country Value (ICV), supporting the UAE's industrial growth and economic diversification goals.

Apart from this, ADNOC Gas is increasing the use of AI and robotics across its operations. Technologies including drones, four-legged inspection robots, and tank-climbing crawlers are being deployed to improve safety and efficiency. The company said some inspections can be completed up to 15 times faster while reducing costs by as much as 75%.

ADNOC Gas also reported that recovery efforts at the Habshan complex following security-related incidents in April are progressing ahead of schedule, with gas supply restored to 85%, surpassing the year-end target announced in May.

Supported by strong operating cash flow, the board approved a quarterly dividend of $940 million payable in September 2026, reaffirming its commitment to annual dividend growth of 5% through 2030. ADNOC Gas expects third-quarter net income of between $600 million and $800 million and forecasts full-year 2026 net income of $3.5 billion to $4 billion if maritime operations and pricing conditions normalise in the final quarter. 

Even if a fresh diplomatic understanding succeeds in restoring oil flows, recent events have demonstrated how fragile such arrangements can prove. The collapse of the June 17 US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding reinforced a broader lesson: resilience cannot depend on the assumption that geopolitical tensions will remain contained.

How should oil supply resilience be defined in the post-war era? That question deserves careful consideration before embracing what may appear, at first glance, to be the obvious solution – or even the complete answer.

Strategic value of bypass pipelines

One clear lesson from the conflict has been the strategic value of bypass pipelines. Their success in preserving export flows has rightly elevated them from contingency assets to strategic priorities. But it would be more prudent to regard them as the starting point of the Gulf’s resilience strategy rather than its endpoint.

Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline and the UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah line allowed millions of barrels per day of crude to continue reaching international markets through the prolonged disruption in Hormuz. With capacities of up to 7 million b/d and 1.8 million b/d respectively, they became the Gulf’s only large-scale bypasses to the Strait. Without them, the global supply shock would have been considerably more severe. It is therefore hardly surprising that expanding such alternatives has become a strategic priority across the region.

Abu Dhabi already has a project underway that will double the capacity of the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline next year. Saudi Arabia is also considering adding another 1-2 million b/d of capacity to its East-West Pipeline and has reportedly discussed allowing neighbouring producers to use the expanded system, potentially transforming it into a regional export corridor.

The Iraq-Syria-Turkey scenario

The ripple effects are spreading beyond the Gulf's two largest exporters. Iraq has revived ambitions to diversify its export routes through Syria while seeking to maximise throughput via the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey. Both projects reflect the same strategic conclusion: dependence on a single maritime chokepoint has become too great a commercial risk.

Yet Iraq’s experience also illustrates that bypasses are easier to envisage than to realise. Political instability in Syria clouds the prospects for a Mediterranean route, while expanding flows through Kirkuk-Ceyhan would require substantial new infrastructure to move crude from Iraq’s giant southern oil fields to the north.

Even where such projects overcome the formidable hurdles of technical, commercial and political viability, there is a danger in viewing them as the answer to the Gulf’s energy security challenge.

Lengthy diversions

The Houthi campaign against Saudi shipping in recent weeks is a case in point. Backed by Iran, the group declared a maritime blockade on Saudi-linked vessels, demanding that Riyadh cease military operations against Houthi-controlled territory and pay billions of dollars in compensation. The Houthis attacked or threatened tankers transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, forcing Aramco to reroute some crude loaded at Yanbu north through the Suez Canal and Egypt’s SUMED pipeline before reloading it onto tankers in the Mediterranean for Asia-bound voyages. The diversion adds roughly three weeks to the journey while significantly increasing freight costs.

Even that alternative route is not immune from the conflict. On July 29, an unidentified drone struck two gas vessels at Egypt's Mediterranean port of Damietta, igniting fires and marking the first direct attack on Egyptian energy infrastructure during the war. No group claimed responsibility, but the incident underscored how quickly even routes once considered comparatively insulated can become exposed as hostilities widen.

Iranian attacks near Fujairah and even Omani ports well outside Hormuz earlier in the war, together with repeated missile and drone strikes on major energy infrastructure across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, point to the same conclusion. Dispersed pipelines, ports and export terminals reduce dependence on individual routes and chokepoints, but they cannot fully insulate the region’s energy system in an era of long-range missiles and drones. Even when bypasses preserve supply, they rarely preserve efficiency. Every diversion inevitably adds time, cost and complexity to the delivery chain.

Strengthening physical resilience

None of this diminishes the importance of continuing to strengthen physical resilience. More pipeline capacity, greater redundancy in export terminals, additional alternative maritime routes and strategically located oil storages outside the Gulf should all remain priorities. Jointly developed emergency stockpiles closer to major demand centres in South and Southeast Asia could provide an additional layer of insurance, giving both producers and consumers greater flexibility to manage future disruptions.

Yet the Iran war has also exposed the limits of engineering around geopolitical risk. While the region's centuries-old rivalries are unlikely to disappear, Gulf states have a growing strategic interest in strengthening regional mechanisms for dialogue, crisis communication and maritime deconfliction. The more successful those efforts become, the less often the region will need to rely on its contingency infrastructure. Ultimately, there are no bypasses to regional harmony.

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 Issues

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

Extra time was baked into the schedule for engineering at a planned 2.67-gigawatt AI campus in West Texas, 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. "Data centers and the power supply cannot be built independently," he said in a subsequent statement. "The load, generation, storage, controls and grid connection all affect one another. As AI infrastructure scales, the projects that perform best will be the ones that account for those interactions early, rather than trying to solve them after construction."

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.

No injuries were reported, the ministry said in a post on X, without providing details on the cause of the fire. Authorities “are completing necessary procedures to deal with the incident,” it added. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel group subsequently claimed an attack on Jazan, the group’s military spokesperson said in a post, also on X. 

One crude storage tank at the refinery was impacted in the incident, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Large refineries like Jazan have multiple tanks to hold the oil that they ultimately process into fuel products like gasoline and diesel.  

The blaze would be at least the second in the past month at the Aramco facility, after satellite images showed fire at a tank in the 400,000 barrel-a-day complex in late July after the Houthis claimed to have attacked the plant. Jazan is located on the Red Sea in southwest Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis in July said they would blockade Saudi Arabia’s oil flows in response to a Saudi blockade of Yemeni territory. The group has also claimed sporadic attacks on Saudi energy facilities over that period. Aramco said last week that the Houthi threat was yet to materially impact the company’s oil output. 

(Updates with detail of damage in third paragraph.)

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and damage to Gulf refineries, as well as a wave of Ukrainian attacks on Russian plants have severely constrained exports from regions that together accounted for around a third of global diesel exports last year. 

Europe — which lacks processing capacity and relies most heavily on imports — is the most vulnerable area to a shortfall. Refiners in the US and Asia are running flat out, but with demand set to rise and stockpiles dwindling the situation will intensify in the coming months. Buyers typically stock up on diesel — a workhorse fuel that’s used in transport, industry and heating - before the temperature cools.

To make matters worse, there’s likely to be more consumption of diesel this year by some Asian power generators, who are turning to the fuel as they can’t get enough liquefied natural gas due to the war in the Middle East. Barring a breakthrough in either of the conflicts, Asian and US refiners will also probably cut down on diesel exports as winter approaches to meet growing demand in their own regions.

“Europe has a tremendous diesel problem,” said Eugene Lindell, head of refined products at consultancy FGE NexantECA. “It will get ugly in the sense that you will probably see extremely high flat prices” and this will feed through to freight costs, inflation and political pressure on governments, he said. 

Price gains are already running well ahead of oil. The ICE Futures Europe diesel price, a global benchmark, has risen almost 40% from a low on June 18, while Brent crude has climbed around 5% over the same period. Given diesel’s vital role in transport, construction and industry, there’s set to be a major inflationary impact, which could happen even if oil prices remain relatively stable.

Diesel stockpiles in key importing areas have fallen over the last few months, and are well below seasonal averages. European inventories are down the most, dropping around 30% since the end of March. 

Europe’s supply challenges are also being compounded by sanctions, according to Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. Restrictions on buying Russian refined products remain in place, while tighter European Union sanctions are increasingly limiting imports of fuels refined from Russian crude in third countries, she said. 

US refiners shipped a record amount of distillate fuels, a category dominated by diesel, last week, with much of it going to Europe. That’s unlikely to continue, though, as American demand rises. 

Little Relief Coming

“Gulf Coast refiners can’t keep exporting diesel to Northwest Europe indefinitely. They have their own fish to fry,” said Zameer Yusof, head of clean petroleum products analytics at Kpler. Coming up to the first quarter of next year, they would typically start channeling cargoes toward the East Coast states for the winter heating demand season, he said.

There’s also not likely to be much relief for Europe from Asia. Refiners there will have to meet their own region’s demand and may prioritize making kerosene, a heating fuel for countries including Japan, reducing the amount of diesel they can export, according to June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities.

While most traders say there are signs that Europe will face high diesel prices this winter, there are still several weeks before that buying begins. Much will depend on the temperatures later in the year, as well as whether high processing rates from the world’s oil refiners will be enough to take the sting out of the market between now and then. How much diesel China exports over the next few months will also be critical.

The situation highlights how regions that don’t have enough of their own refining capacity are especially vulnerable to global energy supply shocks. Europe is likely to be particularly hard hit relative to the other two major short markets, Africa and Latin America, which all compete for Atlantic Basin diesel, FGE’s Lindell said. 

“We never fully recovered from refining losses in the Middle East, and have also lost Russian capacity,” Goh said. “The misery of Europe is not an immediate crisis, but one down the line,” she said, referring to the diesel crunch.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Trump announced a plan to impose tariffs and minimum prices on imported polysilicon used in semicondictors and solar panels. The levy comes a week after the Federal Communications Commission tightened curbs on inverters, another vital component of solar-powered energy.

Such protections can encourage the growth of domestic manufacturing — but as multiple economies have found over decades, restrictions often come at a financial and technological cost.

In the near term, curbs will drive up the price of solar panels in the US, a country that already pays more than double the global level thanks to years of tariffs on imports - and where Trump has pursued an anti-renewables policy during his second term.

If domestic manufacturing doesn’t establish a foothold quickly, it could put the US further behind in technological and power terms as the rest of the world presses ahead with cheap Chinese alternatives.

“The US is limiting this source of energy when the country so desperately needs more electricity to scale up high tech and AI,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington DC. “It looks so different from solar markets you’ll see anywhere else in the world.”

Trump’s directive, which takes effect Dec. 4, subjects derivatives including silicon wafers, photovoltaic cells and solar modules to 15% tariffs, and sets minimum price floors for each product that are higher than current costs in the US. 

For example, the new minimum price for imported solar modules will be 38 cents per watt. That compares to 27 cents per watt for modules currently shipped to the US, according to BloombergNEF, while the global average is 11 cents. 

Trump, who has pushed the revival of US industry since his first term in office, is also offering a carrot, however. If companies commit to starting construction of US factories to build the solar products by Jan. 20, 2029, they can avoid the higher costs.

“America cannot be reliant on foreign countries for the polysilicon that’s the key base material underpinning semiconductor and solar-power supply chains,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. 

“President Trump pledged to safeguard our national and economic security, and in addition to reshoring critical manufacturing back to the United States, the Trump administration remains focused on unleashing America’s already-abundant sources of reliable and affordable energy for families and businesses, from natural gas to coal,” Desai said. 

Advocates for reshoring — effectively bringing home US manufacturing capability — have feted the news. According to Jon Toomey, president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, global import barriers can put an end to circumvention, when companies set up facilities in third-party countries to avoid tariffs. 

The directive also applies all parts of the supply chain, which should help solve the problem of investing in downstream assembly plants only to find they are still dependent on other countries for upstream inputs.

“For the first time, the United States is protecting the entire solar supply chain with a single action,” Toomey said.

In the solar supply chain, ultra-refined polysilicon is shaped into rectangular ingots, which are in turn sliced into ultra-thin squares known as wafers. Those wafers are wired into cells and pieced together to form solar panels.

Building a complete chain from the ground up could have enormous benefits for the US, JPMorgan analysts including Mark Strouse said in a research note. It could “reduce pricing, reduce geopolitical risks, and improve long-term investor sentiment for the space.”

Green technology has been at the heart of global efforts to boost industrialization, including in the US. But the clean-energy race, accelerating along with the scramble for computing power, has increased the divide between the US and economies open to using Chinese technology — with one side benefiting from rock-bottom prices and existing, advanced technology, and the other seeking to build its own.

As recently as 2012, the US was the world’s largest producer of polysilicon. That year, President Barack Obama kicked off a tariff war over solar products that saw Beijing slap duties on US production. China revved up its domestic industry in response and now controls more than 95% of global output of the material.

The US has made some strides in recent years, and the country now has the world’s third-largest capacity for assembling solar modules. Still, it remains reliant on overseas suppliers for cells, wafers and polysilicon, meaning it could struggle to catch up even if US solar manufacturing gains a foothold, according to Youru Tan, a BloombergNEF solar analyst in Hong Kong.

“US production is much more expensive than China,” Tan said. “Plus, most US factories rely on equipment from China.”

Investors in new factories will have to weigh the support offered from Trump’s new directive against messages that have created uncertainty around long-term appetite for clean energy. 

So far in his second term, Trump’s policy moves also including ending tax credits for solar installations, eroding federal policies encouraging emission-free power and green energy permitting delays have done more to hold back the deployment of US renewables. 

And if the manufacturing boom fails to materialize, US solar developers will be hit by a steep hike in module prices, which will amount to about a 12% hike to the overall cost of solar systems, according to Guggenheim Securities analysts. The question of who ends up absorbing the increased costs, whether it’s developer profit margins or higher power tariffs, remains open. 

The AI boom should help users cope with short-term risks. Rising demand and higher-than-normal prices for competing sources of power will counter the extra cost, according to JPMorgan. Even while paying more than the rest of the world, solar remains among the cheapest options for electricity in the US, according to BloombergNEF data.

That doesn’t account for the opportunity cost of not embracing cut-price modules. Countries from Nigeria to Pakistan have taken advantage to radically reshape their undersupplied power grids in a matter of months. Sales of solar panels to the Philippines are booming. Even Europe, which is battling Chinese trade negotiators over other areas of clean tech like EVs and wind power, has all but waved the white flag when it comes to solar.

“Solar is arguably the fastest energy you can deploy, and in a free and open market it’s one of cheapest power sources,” said Asia Society Policy Institute’s Li. “The US is not going to enjoy those two advantages.”

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.