Briefing
The Briefing focuses on one major shift shaping the global energy system each week. Not just what’s happening, but why it matters, and how it fits into the bigger picture.
Briefing
+3
The oil shock nobody is drilling for
The worst supply disruption in history has sent tanker owners on a record ordering spree. The companies that find and produce the next decade’s oil are taking the cash instead. That may suit their shareholders – and leave the oil market less forgiving of the next shock.
Oct 15, 2026
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6 min read
Briefing
+4
Iran doesn’t need to close Hormuz. It just needs to keep it expensive
Gulf oil is flowing again at close to pre-war rates, while attacks on tankers are running at their highest pace of the war. The two belong together. This crisis is increasingly about the cost of moving oil rather than finding the barrels – and that changes where the money is being made this winter, and what happens when the risk premium disappears.
Oct 8, 2026
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5 min read
Briefing
+4
Europe is at the back of the queue
Saudi Arabia has cut European crude allocations to zero for October. Russia has shut most of its diesel exports. And Trump now wants to stop America’s. As energy markets fragment, geography and domestic politics increasingly decide where scarce barrels go – and Europe is finding out how exposed that leaves it.
Sep 24, 2026
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6 min read
Briefing
+4
Europe’s winter now depends on Asia blinking first
European gas hit its highest since early 2023 this week, storage is the thinnest it has been since records began, and Europe is finally doing what it spent all summer avoiding: paying up. With new supply constrained, getting through winter increasingly depends on prices rising high enough to push enough Asian buyers out of the market.
Sep 3, 2026
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4 min read
Briefing
+4
The market is running out of workarounds
A tanker carrying Saudi crude to China is sailing in the wrong direction. At the same time, traffic through Hormuz has fallen sharply again, Black Sea oil loadings have stopped and damaged Russian refineries are supplying less fuel. The market is pricing what happens when several buffers come under pressure at once.
Jul 23, 2026
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8 min read
Shipping
+6
Neither Open Nor Closed
The market thinks Hormuz has reopened. It has – but not quite in the way the screen price suggests. The Strait now works less like a switch and more like a conditional corridor: usable, contested, insured uneasily and vulnerable to events far beyond the waterway itself.
Jun 25, 2026
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4 min read
Fujairah
+4
The long way round
The world found a route around the Middle East shipping crisis. Now that route is creating a fuel crisis of its own.
Jun 11, 2026
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5 min read
Briefing
+3
The two-speed energy crisis
The Hormuz shock is what Aramco’s CEO has called the largest energy supply shock the world has ever experienced. But it isn’t hitting a 1970s economy. Large parts of global demand now run on electrons, not barrels – and that changes who feels the crisis, how quickly and how deeply.
May 21, 2026
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6 min read
Briefing
+7
The shortage that survives the war
Perhaps the most important statement made about the global oil market in ten weeks wasn’t a diplomatic announcement, a military briefing or a Brent futures move. It was an earnings call.
May 14, 2026
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5 min read
