oil Archives

Friday

April 17, 2026

Europe has squandered its energy security

“Europe is desperate for Energy, and yet the United Kingdom refuses to open North Sea Oil, one of the greatest fields in the World.” Donald Trump said this month on Truth Social. It is, to use the President’s phrase, “Tragic!!!” But the necessity of oil hasn’t always been recognized. Back in 2008, while running for the White House, Barack Obama declared that one of the major challenges facing the US is “what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.” His solution was to switch America to renewables. In that address, known as the “New Energy For America” speech, Obama said, “We simply cannot pretend, as Senator McCain does,

Wednesday

April 8, 2026

Matthew Lynn

We’re stuck at the worst possible oil price

A ceasefire has been agreed with Iran. The Straits of Hormuz will reopen. And the oil market will get back to normal very quickly. By Wednesday morning, it looked as if the energy crisis was over. Finance ministers will be breathing a sigh of relief as the crisis abates. But hold on. In reality, the truce is fragile, and huge amounts of supply have been taken out of the market. So long as that remains true, the price of oil, and with it the global economy, will remain stuck. The average price of $90 to $100 a barrel is not what anyone really thinks a barrel of oil is worth

Thursday

March 26, 2026

Alexander Kolyandr

Why Ukraine’s Russian oil strikes are backfiring

Every drone Ukraine fires at a Russian oil terminal is meant to defund Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Right now, each one may be doing the opposite. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil export infrastructure are intended to starve Moscow of the budget revenues that fund its war machine. The logic is straightforward: disrupt exports, reduce revenues, constrain the war effort. Kyiv has been explicit about this: Ukrainian officials consistently frame attacks on oil terminals as direct hits on Russia’s war chest, treating every barrel that cannot be shipped as a ruble that cannot be spent on missiles or mobilization. Reuters puts the scale of that disruption in stark terms – at least

Monday

March 16, 2026

Eliot Wilson

Should NATO help America defend the Strait of Hormuz?

As soon as Operation Epic Fury, America’s latest campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, got underway on the last day of February, political, military and economic minds around the world should have turned their attention to the Strait of Hormuz. The waterway provided the only shipping route from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the open seas beyond. That has long made the strait the dagger Iran holds at the throat of the world. At its narrowest, it is less than 25 miles across, and Iran controls the northern shore; to the south is the Musandam Peninsula, shared by the United Arab Emirates and an exclave

Tuesday

March 10, 2026

Alexander Kolyandr

The Iran war is just what Putin’s depleted coffers need

Of all the parties watching the chaos in the Middle East unfold, one should be rubbing its hands together with particular satisfaction. Russia has not fired a shot in this conflict, lost no allies it cannot afford to lose and has so far gained rather a lot, with more to come. A cynic might call it the perfect war for Vladimir Putin. Moscow’s public reaction has been characteristically theatrical. The Foreign Ministry denounced American and Israeli actions as a “reckless step” and a “dangerous adventure.” Things have gone no further. There has been no announcement of political or military support for Iran from the Kremlin – nor is there likely

Saturday

February 7, 2026

Andrew Collingwood

Was the raid on Venezuela real?

From the very start, there was something weird about Operation Absolute Resolve. The official story went something like this: after a whirlwind air attack, which included the use of suicide drones for the first time, special operators from the US Army’s renowned but shadowy SFOD-D unit (“Delta Force”) were helicoptered into the Fuerte Tiuna military complex in the south of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. They defeated the local garrison, used “massive blowtorches” to breach heavy metal doors in a fortress-like residential site within the base, captured the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, then spirited them back to the helicopters and flew them out to face charges

Thursday

January 8, 2026

Ross Clark

What Trump should learn from the British empire

One remarkable thing about Donald Trump’s adventure in Venezuela is just how old-fashioned it is. It is a world away from George W. Bush’s neoconservative efforts at nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little attempt to justify the arrest of Nicolás Maduro in terms of the human rights of Venezuelan citizens. Little attention appears to have been paid as to how the country will now be governed. Nor have we heard much more about the drugs crimes of Maduro, other than the admission that he perhaps isn’t, after all, quite the lynchpin of an international criminal racket (for all his other offenses against his own people). With the seizure

Tuesday

January 6, 2026

James Gray

Why would anyone want to rule Greenland?

It was the Viking, Erik the Red who, in AD 986, first saw Greenland’s potential. He wanted to colonize his newly-discovered island, and in a blatant piece of tenth-century spin-doctoring hit on a wizard wheeze to encourage other Norse people to come to this bleak, icy and remote corner of the unknown world: “In the summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found, which he called Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there if it had a favorable name.“ More than a thousand years later, President Donald Trump is proposing something similar. “It’s a large real estate deal. Owning Greenland is vital for US security…