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
+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
Briefing
+4
The damage that doesn’t come back
This week the question changed. Not what is the price of oil, or who absorbs the shortage – but how much damage has already been done, and whether any of it comes back. The answer to the second question is the one that matters most.
Apr 30, 2026
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7 min read
Qatar
+7
The shortage that survives the war
When the ceasefire comes, it will feel like relief. It shouldn’t.
Apr 2, 2026
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15 min read
Shipping
+4
The crisis is pulling the energy system apart
The instinctive read on an energy crisis is straightforward. Supply disrupts, prices spike, the transition slows.
Mar 26, 2026
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8 min read
