Energy Security Under Fire: Drones, Sanctions, and the New Oil Wars

Kirk Edwards, President of Latigo Petroleum, stops by the Energy News Beat Podcast In this episode of the Energy News Beat Podcast, host Stu Turley sits down with Kirk Edwards, President of Latigo Petroleum, to discuss the critical energy challenges reshaping global markets. From diesel shortages and geopolitical tensions to drone warfare targeting refineries, the […]

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Why Are Global Diesel Prices So High? Exhibit A: Ukraine Drone Hits Novoshakhtinsk Refinery

A Ukrainian drone strike on Friday forced Russia’s Novoshakhtinsk refinery in the Rostov region offline, according to regional governor Yury Slyusar. The plant, which processes about 110,000 barrels per day (roughly 5–5.6 million tons per year), is not one of Russia’s giants. It is, however, a clean illustration of why diesel—the workhorse fuel for trucking, […]

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How the Net Zero Deindustrialization Just Hit Mercedes as They Need $800 Million in Labor Savings

Mercedes-Benz is no longer talking about “transformation.” It is talking about survival in Germany. WirtschaftsWoche, citing three people familiar with the talks, reports that Mercedes wants about €800 million in German labor-cost savings — roughly $911 million at current rates. Options on the table include longer hours without extra pay, cuts to holiday and Christmas […]

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Oracle’s huge data center project declares force majeure. Is this the first warning sign in the data center space?

On Thursday, September 24, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Oracle sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter — the 1,400-acre AI campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico — in an effort to defer payments if the facility misses its planned 2028 in-service date. Shares of Oracle fell about 4–5%. Blue Owl […]

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White House Showing Restraint on a Diesel Export Ban Is the Right Call for American Energy Dominance

The White House’s decision this week to step back from a blunt 90-day diesel export ban is one of the most important energy-security signals of 2026. Record pump prices invited a political shortcut. The administration, led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, instead chose the harder and more honest path: keep the refining system running and […]

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The real story is not that China is “back buying everything.” It is that Beijing throttled demand, shifted suppliers, drew inventories, and is now restocking only where landed cost still works — while $1 million-a-day VLCCs make a return to the old full-cycle buying pattern expensive and unlikely.

That is the argument Javier Blas is making in his September 23 Bloomberg Opinion column, China Isn’t Buying More Oil, It’s Buying From Different Markets (also framed as “Don’t Believe the Hype About China’s Oil Buying”). The global market treated China’s pre-war appetite as a floor. In 2026 it became a valve. The Blas thesis: […]

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Wind Energy Market at a Crossroads

The wind industry is approaching a structural inflection point. Early fleets in Europe and the United Kingdom are aging faster than advertised, composite blade waste is outrunning recycling capacity, and decommissioning liabilities are coming due just as subsidy structures change. Two recent posts by Peter Clack capture the twin problems: rapid performance decay well short […]

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