Russell Hardy did not wake up on October 6 and decide to scare a room full of energy executives. He runs Vitol, the biggest independent oil trader on the planet, and he was describing what his people are actually seeing when they try to move barrels. The seven-month war involving the United States, Israel, and […]
Continue Reading
A worldwide diesel crunch, driven by wartime disruptions, is giving fresh political momentum to Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras and its long-debated push for greater domestic refining. The same supply tightness is exposing the United States’ own refining constraints—constraints that have accumulated for decades and are heavily concentrated in states with stricter environmental rules. In […]
Continue Reading
Global electricity demand is growing faster than the grids that have to carry it. The constraint is no longer just generation. It is the hardware that steps voltage up and down—large power transformers and the related substation gear—and the industrial base that used to build them. The International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2026 report puts global […]
Continue Reading
A diesel export ban is the kind of policy that polls well and trades poorly. With the AAA national average at about $6.53 a gallon as of September 22, 2026 — a record — and California well above $8, the political impulse is obvious: keep more barrels at home. That impulse misunderstands how U.S. refining […]
Continue Reading
The 7-1-1 Board of Supervisors vote directs staff to draft a resolution for a later October vote, with a proposed retroactive effective date of September 15. Officials emphasized it is not a legal moratorium under Virginia’s Dillon Rule, but a temporary pause on board-level reviews while Phase 2 data-center standards are completed. Board Chair Phyllis […]
Continue Reading
Commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR fell 640,000 barrels to 423.4 million barrels. That was a third consecutive weekly draw, but smaller than Wall Street expected. Analysts in a Wall Street Journal survey had looked for a 1.4 million-barrel decline. Commercial crude is now about 1% above the five-year average for this time of […]
Continue Reading
The U.S. Energy Information Administration just raised its 2027 U.S. crude oil production forecast to a record 14.3 million barrels per day. On paper, that looks like good news for American energy security. In the real market of September 2026, it is only half the story. Oil prices are back above $100 a barrel this […]
Continue Reading
America needs every reliable megawatt it can get. Restarting a proven nuclear plant is one of the fastest ways to put firm, around-the-clock power back on the grid. The U.S. Department of Energy has closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Linn County, […]
Continue Reading
Physical tightness, high product cracks, and China’s selective rebound in buying are supporting prices, but inventories, China’s still-subdued import volumes, and the existing backwardation already price in a good deal of risk. What the OilPrice article and related reporting show The Sept. 7 OilPrice piece (and the overlapping Bloomberg coverage it draws on) reports that […]
Continue Reading
The Crude Truth about the Pain at the Pump ENB Pub Note: This article first ran on The Crude Truth Substack, and we recommend subscribing! Americans heading out for Labor Day weekend are paying the highest holiday-weekend gasoline prices on record. AAA’s national regular average closed Friday at $4.1474 a gallon — the first Labor Day […]
Continue Reading