India’s crude oil import bill has soared since the Iran war choked Middle Eastern oil supply, raised benchmark crude prices, quadrupled freight rates, and boosted insurance on a single Strait of Hormuz voyage to never-before-seen highs. India has been paying elevated prices to import Middle Eastern crude not only because of the spike in oil prices, but also due to the surging costs to bring supply from the nearest region from which it can import crude.    The freight rates on the key route from Ras Tanura on Saudi Arabia’s…

Japan expects its oil imports next month to be lower than this month’s but has no plans to release additional crude from storage, the country’s economy minister said. Oil imports next month are seen at 80% of the average monthly for 2025, Ryosei Akazawa said, as quoted by Reuters. The report noted that the August import rate had been 100% of the 2025 monthly total. The change is prompted by the redirection of tanker traffic from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to the Suez Canal, as Yemeni Houthis threaten attacks on vessels in the Red Sea…

JP Morgan and Santander will lead a fundraising operation for Argentina LNG, Bloomberg has reported, citing unnamed sources who said the total could reach $15 billion. One of these told the publication the companies involved in the project aimed to make a final investment decision by November. The Argentina LNG project is a partnership between Italy’s Eni, Argentinian state energy major YPF, and Emirati XRG. The facility is to be built on Argentina’s Atlantic coast and have an annual production capacity of 12 million tons of liquefied…

Iran threatened an aggressive response to the latest U.S. sanctions announced on Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with a top government official noting Tehran was “fully prepared for the U.S. sanctions.” “Naturally, the enemies intend to launch an economic terrorist attack on us, but we also have our own tools and know how to play the game,” Iran’s economy minister Ali Madanizadeh said, as quoted by Reuters earlier today. “Our defense is no longer so defensive; the enemies should wait for an attack.”…

Trump’s “economic D-Day” against Iran is built around one of Washington’s most powerful weapons: access to the U.S. financial system. The problem is that the deeper Washington pushes into Iran’s remaining trade, the bigger the targets become. China buys more than 80% of Iran’s seaborne crude. Iraq relies on Iranian gas for as much as 40% of its electricity generation. Turkey imported 4.5 bcm of Iranian gas in the first half of this year, while India still maintains a heavily one-sided trade relationship with…

More than half a year after the U.S. captured and extracted Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, the biggest American oil firms haven’t returned to operating oilfields in the world’s largest oil reserves holder. Chevron, which has operated in Venezuela throughout Maduro’s reign, is extracting and exporting oil to the U.S., but neither ExxonMobil nor ConocoPhillips have returned as negotiations led by Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA are not progressing as fast as the U.S. Administration probably thought in January when it extracted…

The United States is forging ahead with its critical minerals ambitions, investing billions in securing non-Chinese supply, while in Europe, the central EU government “hesitate, over-administrate, talk and lose time.” The EU was already behind the U.S. on critical minerals. Now, it has fallen further behind, which means a lot more work would need to be done to catch up. The quote above comes from the head of a Europe-wide organization representing critical minerals companies. Bernd Schaefer spoke to the Financial Times this month, lamenting…

The fertilizer crisis is usually framed as a natural gas problem. When gas prices rise, ammonia costs rise, fertilizer plants reduce production, and farmers become exposed to a global commodity chain they cannot control. That diagnosis is correct but incomplete. Across Europe, thousands of anaerobic digesters are already producing a methane-rich gas close to the farms and food industries that consume fertilizer. Most sites burn it in a combined heat and power unit, upgrade it to biomethane, or flare a small surplus. Very few ask a more disruptive…

Yemen's Houthis on Monday targeted the Saudi oil tanker Amzan in the Red Sea off Yanbu with a ballistic missile and drones, the Iran-aligned militant group announced. Soon after initial reports emerged, Saudi Arabia confirmed the attack, with Saudi shipping company Bahri stating that its Amzan vessel was involved in a hostile incident in regional waters. Yahya Saree, the military spokesman for the Houthi rebels in Yemen, described that the attacks were carried out using ballistic missiles and drones and were executed as part of the…