One year after the signing of a provisional peace deal in Washington, DC, American, Armenian, and Azerbaijani officials continue to exude optimism about the potential for stability and prosperity in the South Caucasus. But movement toward implementing the joint declaration has been halting.  On August 8, the one-year anniversary of the declaration’s signing by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement reaffirming Washington’s commitment…

Iran said Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed unless the United States ends the war and meets Tehran’s conditions, raising the bar for a deal that would restore more oil traffic through the key waterway. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Washington must end the conflict and unfreeze Iranian funds held overseas before Tehran will agree to reopen the strait. Iran has also delivered additional conditions to the United States through mediators, Rezaei said in comments carried by…

As nations race to cut import exposure to geopolitical tensions, China is building the world’s only large-scale coal-to-gas (CTG) industry as a strategic buffer against supply shocks. No other country has developed synthetic gas from coal at any meaningful scale. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, covering 2026 to 2030, strengthens CTG’s role in its domestic supply architecture, signaling a move from consideration to active execution. Rystad Energy estimates China’s CTG capacity is on track to reach 9.4 billion cubic meters (Bcm)…

Libya’s National Oil Corporation may declare force majeure on exports from the Zawya oil terminal as a result of drone attacks on the facility. The Zawya terminal has a daily capacity of 120,000 barrels, sourced from the country’s largest oil field, Sharara, which can produce up to 300,000 barrels daily, Reuters noted in a report on the possibility of a force majeure declaration. According to reports, a drone strike had destroyed a storage tank and another drone had targeted an oil blending facility at the Zawya terminal. The tank,…

Crude oil prices moved higher today as the chances of a lasting peace between the United States and Iran shriveled following Iran’s release of six conditions earlier this week and President Trump’s unsurprising reaction to them. At the time of writing, Brent crude traded at $87.72 per barrel, and West Texas Intermediate was trading at $82.13 per barrel, after President Trump demanded that Iran pay reparations to the U.S. for war-related damages. “We're going to ask for money for the damage they've done over a 50-year period,”…

The latest Bloomberg data show that shipping transits through the Strait of Hormuz remained largely disrupted Monday morning, even as Iran and Oman reportedly moved closer to a deal. Brent crude futures traded near $85 a barrel as markets priced in the possibility that a deal to reopen the maritime chokepoint could be imminent. Yet global supply-chain stress remains near its highest level since the pandemic, and any normalization could take months, even if shipping traffic resumes. UBS senior international economist Pierre Lafourcade highlighted…

Over the past couple of years, Colombia’s clean energy transition has shifted into overdrive under President Gustavo Petro’s "Just Energy Transition" agenda, with the country pivoting away from fossil fuels towards wind and solar energy. Petro, Colombia’s first ever left-wing president, instituted a strict ban on signing new oil, gas and coal exploration contracts while securing multi-billion-dollar international funding partnerships for clean energy projects. This strategy helped Colombia’s renewable energy capacity to…

As peace in the Persian Gulf remains elusive and Ukrainian drones keep raining on Russian refineries, a global fuel crisis is looming larger by the day as demand is set to increase in the coming months, especially for diesel. Shortages are already reality in some parts of the world. In Southeast Asia, Reuters reported last week, palm oil farmers are seeing diesel supply shortages and spiking prices. In the United States, diesel fuel exports hit an all-time high in the first week of August, running at an average daily rate of 1.9 million barrels.…