Global insurers had just shaken off the ESG push from earlier this decade when the Middle East conflict upended oil and gas upstream project coverage. The world’s lowest-cost oil and gas producing region became a war zone at the end of February, with war-risk premiums and oil and gas drilling and construction projects facing either delays or significant cost inflation.   Five months of uncertainties about new oil and gas projects in the Middle East have prompted insurance giants to turn to underwriting drilling and project construction…

The best performing asset class of this decade is also the most under owned. Since October 2020, when we first called for a decades-long super-cycle in commodities, the broad commodity indices like the S&P GSCI are up 200 per cent; gold 140 per cent. This year commodities are up 37 per cent with petroleum up 81 per cent. The bottlenecks rotated – gold, copper, silver, coffee, cocoa, oil and most recently diesel. But not the trend. In contrast, crypto indices are up 157 per cent, the Nasdaq 145 per cent and the S&P 500 117 per cent.…

Kazakhstan should, in theory, be one of the major beneficiaries of Russia’s growing isolation from global energy markets. Its crude is unsanctioned and European refiners need alternatives to Russian barrels. Yet instead of gaining a clear geopolitical advantage, Kazakhstan has found itself exposed to many of the same risks as its northern neighbour: attacks on export infrastructure, disruptions inside Russia and repeated operational failures at its own largest fields. The roots of that vulnerability lie partly in geography and partly in the…

There is major potential to develop hybrid renewable energy projects on existing hydropower sites, according to a new report by the think tank Ember Energy. We often think of renewable energy projects as standalone operations rather than resources that can be combined to produce higher clean energy output. However, there could be great potential for hybrid projects, as energy companies look to maximise and stabilise their energy production. According to a report published this week by Ember, 25 GW of wind and solar can be added to existing hydropower…

India expects to build domestically five small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2033, India’s Atomic Energy Minister, Jitendra Singh, has said. The five SMRs would be part of India’s push to accelerate nuclear power capacity installations over the next two decades, the minister told lawmakers in a written reply to questions as carried by local media. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), India’s premier nuclear research facility under the Department of Atomic Energy, is currently developing a 220-MW Bharat Small Modular Reactor,…

Brent crude has broken back above $100 a barrel for the first time in nearly two months as escalating attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea deepen concerns that the Middle East supply crisis is spreading beyond the Strait of Hormuz. As of mid-morning Thursday, front-month Brent for September delivery was trading at $100.69 a barrel, up more than 7% on the day after touching an intraday high of $101.01. WTI was also sharply higher, with the entire Brent forward curve moving higher as traders priced in a greater risk of prolonged supply disruptions.…

July 23, 2026 LNG Headlines

Commodity traders are having the rug pulled out from under one of their biggest paydays yet as refiners start bypassing oil and traders and buying Venezuelan crude directly, according to Reuters. Refiners and major oil-producing firms are rapidly gaining market share in Venezuelan crude by locking in direct supply contracts with state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), bypassing the global middlemen and commodity trading houses such as Trafigura and Vitol that previously dominated the space. Six months after traders reopened Venezuela’s…

The regional price of natural gas produced in the Permian, the top U.S. oil basin, was negative for most of the first half of the year. Rising associated gas output from oil-targeting wells has had nowhere to go. Producers had to either flare the gas, within allowed limits, or pay to get rid of what many Permian players see as an undesirable by-product of the valuable crude. For years, the key constraint to local gas prices has been the insufficient pipeline takeaway capacity, which hasn’t grown in lockstep with the soaring gas production…