Month: June 2026

Last year, South Korea’s Qcells set the world record for large-area silicon solar cell efficiency, a development that promised to dramatically shrink the size of solar projects and slash costs. Qcells, a subsidiary of South Korea’s giant conglomerate Hanwha Corp, set the world record after achieving 28.6% efficiency by combining a top light-absorbing layer of perovskite with a bottom silicon layer to capture a broader spectrum of sunlight. For some context, high-end commercial solar panels typically operate at 21% to 23% efficiency,…

The issue of energy dependence and its consequences has, in recent months, become a major topic of discussion. The Hormuz crisis has brought energy security to the political agenda with a vengeance amid fuel price caps, rationing, and warnings of severe shortages.  A lot of countries have been used as examples of either low dependence and therefore insulation against shocks, or high dependence that has resulted in a lot of economic pain. In the latter category, Taiwan stands out as a particularly noteworthy case: the nation depends on imports…

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 8.33 million barrels in the week ending June 12. Analysts had expected a 4.5 million draw. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by a rather large 9.119 million barrels. Although inventories have been falling rapidly for the last 2+ months, shedding 52 million barrels over the last nine weeks, US crude inventories are only down 1.4 million barrels so far this year, according to API data. Inventories in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve…

The announcement from Egypt’s petroleum and mineral resources minister Karim Badawi that the country has paid all its outstanding debts to foreign oil firms is as welcome to international oil companies and their governments as it is to the country itself. Egypt has become one of the West’s prime targets in the hunt for replacement gas supplies after the loss of Russian flows following the 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Officially, it holds around 93 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves, but unofficially, it…

In March, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and Elon Musk’s xAI joined President Trump at the White House. Together, they signed a document that will reshape how AI’s biggest companies operate for years to come. They committed, in writing, to pay for every megawatt of new electricity their AI projects will require and to cover all of the grid infrastructure those projects depend on. In short, the seven biggest names in tech told the President they would pay whatever it costs to keep AI running. And Bitzero (NASDAQ: AIBZ)…

What happened today is best described, despite much more dramatic categorizations coming out of Tehran and Washington, is a 60-day ceasefire extension, now reportedly signed by both parties, that reopens the Strait of Hormuz, while the original alleged reason for going to war, the nuclear weapons issue, stays open on the negotiating table. Both sides are buying time in order to get the oil flowing through Hormuz.  So, today’s deal is an oil deal, first and foremost. It’s not a victory for anyone. It’s just bringing things…

In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that prompted the latter to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, most reports dealt with numbers—numbers showing the amount of oil supply lost due to the closure. Those numbers varied by source, but were all above 10 million barrels daily. Now, traders are saying the loss in supply may be much smaller. “After an initial disruption at the onset of the conflict, flows strengthened as alternative logistics scaled up,” analytics provider Kpler explained, as quoted by Reuters,…

Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, wrote on X that the national average price of gasoline has finally slipped below the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level for the first time in many months. Per De Haan: The nation’s average price of gasoline has fallen 9.3 cents over the last week and stands at $3.99 per gallon, according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 12 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country. The national average is down 52.4 cents from a month ago and…

Venezuela’s oil production and exports are set to increase in the coming months as the United States further eases the rules of operating in the world’s biggest crude resource holder after taking control over the industry following the capture of Nicolas Maduro. The rise of Venezuela’s oil supply is good news for South America’s oil producers and sellers, which have stepped up shipments so far this year amid the disruption in the Middle East. It’s also good news for the U.S., whose refineries are taking increased volumes…

Oil prices plunged in early Monday trading in Asia after the U.S. and Iran announced a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz more than 100 days after its closure. At the time of writing, Brent crude had dropped 3.95% to trade at $83.88 per barrel, while WTI had fallen 4.62% to $80.96 per barrel. Oil prices, which peaked in mid-May, have been slowly but surely trending downward in recent weeks on rumors of a deal, even after multiple escalatory strikes. On Sunday night, President Trump declared that a deal with Iran was complete, writing on social…