President Trump’s Midterm Diesel Probability Forecasting Tool ties record distillate prices directly to Senate control odds less than five weeks before the November 3 vote. Retail on-highway diesel sat at $6.382 per gallon for the week of September 28 (EIA), down only modestly from the $6.529 record the prior week and more than $2.60 above […]
Continue Reading
Tankers are burning in the Strait of Hormuz, visible traffic through the waterway has collapsed to a fraction of normal levels, and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says he is “highly confident” Europe will draw down emergency diesel stocks to ease a global shortage. The combination is keeping a firm geopolitical premium in crude while […]
Continue Reading
A forecast is not a plan. A storage target is not a molecule. And a press release about “diversified supply” does not fill a cavern in Bavaria when the cargo is sitting in the Pacific because Seoul or Dhaka paid more. As of late September 2026, the European Union is heading into the heating season […]
Continue Reading
The official line since the energy crisis has been simple. Families and businesses are exposed because fossil-fuel prices are set internationally. After the latest Middle East shock, ministers said Britain had to “get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster” and that “when global gas prices spike, people here shouldn’t be picking up the tab.” Ofgem and […]
Continue Reading
Diesel prices in the United States have smashed records, topping $6 per gallon nationally and exceeding $7 on the West Coast, while inventories sit well below five-year averages. Truckers, farmers, freight operators, and industrial users feel it first. The pain is global: European and Asian markets have also hit or approached records as middle-distillate supplies […]
Continue Reading
Europe spent a decade congratulating itself for pushing coal to the edge of the power system. Then it priced itself back onto the fuel it spent political capital destroying. Benchmark Dutch TTF gas prices spiked above €80 per megawatt-hour this month, the highest in three years, after the Iran conflict choked LNG shipments through the […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
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 […]
Continue Reading
Ineos, the chemicals giant owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is idling all three of its world-scale acetyls plants in Hull, northern England. The facilities—Europe’s last remaining plants of their kind—produce essential feedstocks for pharmaceuticals, clothing, cosmetics, detergents, construction materials, and military explosives. Two have already stopped production; the third will follow in days. The site […]
Continue Reading
The National Energy System Operator’s figures put transmission investment at about £64 billion through 2030 and another £89 billion after that—more than £150 billion in all. The Guardian’s mapping of official recommendations points to well over 4,000 miles of new power lines by 2041, plus subsea cables and converter stations to move Scottish and offshore […]
Continue Reading