Brent crude settled at $109.86 per barrel on Friday, October 16, after touching $110 intraday—the highest since May—while WTI closed at $101.41. The move capped a week of gains driven by persistent supply risks from the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict (now approaching eight months), Russian-Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure, Houthi activity, and a sharp acceleration in […]
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ExxonMobil’s preliminary third-quarter update has put refining front and center for investors. Higher refining margins are expected to add roughly $4.5 billion to downstream earnings compared with the second quarter—on top of the $4.1 billion the company already generated from refining in Q2. That surge comes even as upstream earnings face an estimated $1.3 billion […]
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On Thursday, the International Energy Agency agreed to accelerate the release of more than 20 million barrels of diesel, with no timeline. By our math, that is about 17 hours of world demand, or five days of U.S. use. Emergency barrels help, but they do not build refineries. – The key is whether they actually […]
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The summer of 2026 tested the U.S. electric grid with record heat and rising demand. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Hourly Electric Grid Monitor (based on Form EIA-930 data), three major regional transmission organizations (RTOs) set new peak hourly load records.Eia PJM (serving roughly 65–67 million people across all or parts of 13 […]
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Europe’s remaining coal plants are generating unexpected profits while Asia burns more coal to fill an LNG gap created by Middle East disruptions. Global demand is heading for a record high in 2026. The rebound is real but uneven, largely temporary in the West, and more structural in Asia—until nuclear and cleaner alternatives scale meaningfully. […]
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Morgan Stanley is leading an equity and debt fundraising for America First Refining’s planned $4 billion oil refinery at the Port of Brownsville, Texas—the first major new U.S. oil refinery in roughly half a century—according to the company. Chief Commercial Officer Tom Ramsey said at a Crude Oil Quality Association conference in Galveston on October […]
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California’s Cap-and-Invest and Low Carbon Fuel Standard added about 47 cents a gallon in July (CEC). Washington’s carbon auction and clean-fuel rules add roughly 36–74 cents. The federal RFS is a separate 1-to-45-cent fight over gross credits versus net pump pass-through. We map the published estimates, keep taxes and refinery closures in their own buckets, […]
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The September 2026 Consumer Price Index delivered a clear message: energy prices—especially gasoline and diesel—drove the latest inflation jump. Headline CPI rose 0.6% month-over-month and accelerated to 3.7% year-over-year, up from 3.4% in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Bls Gasoline prices surged 9.1% in a single month and accounted for more than half […]
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Houston-based Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) delivered its customary pre-earnings operational and realizations snapshot on October 13, 2026, via an 8-K filing of “Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Considerations.” As Reese Energy Consulting noted in a LinkedIn post the same day, it functions as the trailer before the full movie—the formal Q3 results scheduled for after-market close […]
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If you live in one of the 13 states or D.C. served by PJM, data centers are already on your power bill. The grid’s own market monitor puts their added capacity cost at $29.4 billion over four auctions. On Friday evening, federal regulators threw out most of PJM’s plan to make new data centers bring […]
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