For years, Saudi Arabia's strategic answer to any disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has been remarkably straightforward. If volumes via the Persian Gulf were threatened, the answer was to pump west through the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Markets have always seen this as reassuring, while strengthening Saudi energy security and reducing dependence on Hormuz. Current developments in the Red Sea, especially Bab El Mandab, however, have exposed a critical weakness in that assumption. The East-West Pipeline is not solving the total…

Russia's largest Black Sea oil export terminal has effectively gone offline just days after drone attacks shut down the neighboring Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, tightening another artery that moves crude onto the global market. The Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk hasn’t loaded a crude tanker since July 21, according to Bloomberg. Sheskharis exported an average of about 650,000 barrels per day during the first half of the year. Losing those barrels, even temporarily, comes on top of the disruption at CPC, which normally handles…

As the price of gold has hovered around $4,000 an ounce in recent weeks, the men in the small-scale mines north of the village of Soykechar in Uzbekistan have watched every bounce and slide. They pull up apps on their phones that show various price points. The local TV stations announce the price. And, by word of mouth, they know the quote on the black market. “We are trying to make better lives, and we can buy good clothes for the children, better food, and we can go to private hospitals,” said Doniyor, the 34-year-old machinery manager…

The world isn't just staring down another weather event. It's staring down a weather event colliding with a supply-driven oil shock. JPMorgan warned Friday that a "super" El Niño combined with higher energy prices from the Middle East conflict could slow the decline in global inflation next year, adding roughly 0.3 percentage points to headline inflation worldwide. The bank puts the odds of the current El Niño strengthening into a "very strong" or "super" event at 81% by the end of the year, with a 97% probability conditions persist…

The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States fell this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, bringing the total rig count in the US to 587, up 45 from this same time last year. The number of active oil rigs fell by 2, reaching 450 during the latest reporting period, according to the data. This is 35 above this same time last year. The number of gas rigs rose by 1 and now stand at 127, which is 5 more than this time last year. Miscellaneous rigs stayed at 10. The latest EIA data showed…

Saudi Arabia, which at the start of the Iran war redirected virtually all crude exports through its East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, has seen crude exports from Yanbu crumble by 41% to about 2.39 million barrels per day (bpd) by June, from a peak of 4.07 million bpd in March, Wood Mackenzie vessel tracking and cargo data showed. Despite the near-total concentration of exports through Yanbu, volumes have declined steadily from the March peak, according to WoodMac's tracking data. By June, Yanbu loadings had fallen to around 2.39 million…

The dual disruption of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb is tightening global oil flows, raising transport costs and fueling expectations of $100 oil. Friday, July 24, 2026 The double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb has turbo-boosted oil prices this week, with both ICE Brent and WTI gaining $10 per barrel on the week. Whilst technically the Bab el-Mandeb could be bypassed through the Suez Canal, resulting in longer routes and higher costs, the dramatic decline in transits via the Hormuz should be of particular worry to the oil markets.…

Global liquefied natural gas exports grew by about 1.2 trillion cubic feet in 2025. The United States supplied approximately 1.10 trillion cubic feet of that increase. Put another way, roughly 93% of the world’s additional LNG came from the United States. The scale of that contribution is even more striking considering where the industry stood a decade ago. In 2015, the United States exported less than 0.03 trillion cubic feet of LNG. By 2025, exports had reached 5.2 trillion cubic feet, making the United States the world’s largest…

Indian refiners are in search of crude supply from as far as Angola in Africa and Venezuela in South America as their term supplies from the Middle East are trapped again and unable to reach India as planned. Some of the biggest state-held refiners in India, the world’s third-largest crude oil importer, are looking for and testing new crude grades, to offset part of the supply lost to the Middle East conflict, senior refinery executives told Indian outlet Economic Times. “We diversified our crude sourcing outside of the Strait of Hormuz,…

July 24, 2026 LNG Headlines