Category: News

A group of major international corporations has urged governments to speed up the electrification of business to reduce reliance on “volatile fuel markets”, Reuters reported today, citing a letter penned by the heads of the companies. “Continued reliance on volatile fuel markets exposes economies to disruptions that drive price spikes, destabilise supply chains and delay investment,” the companies wrote in the letter. The group wrote. There were 112 signatories to the letter, including Ikea, Nestle, Volvo Cars, Nikon, Iberdrola,…

Two and a half years ago, NVIDIA was a $300 billion gaming chip company. Today it’s the most valuable company in history at over $4 trillion. Investors who saw what was coming and got positioned early made generational money. A $10,000 stake in NVIDIA at the start of 2023 is worth more than $130,000 today. The trade looks obvious in hindsight, but very few investors caught it in real time. Demand for AI compute had exploded, the supply of high-end chips couldn’t catch up, and NVIDIA happened to be the only company on earth capable of making what…

The blockading of the Strait of Hormuz was something that was never going to happen—until it did, paralyzing a fifth of global LNG and crude oil flows and causing quite a bit of economic pain to both producers and consumers of energy commodities. Now, they are taking care to never let a disruption of that scale happen again. The most immediate response to Iran’s closure of the strait was switching to alternative pipeline routes for those that had them. Saudi Arabia demonstrated foresight with its East-West pipeline that it used to reroute…

In the early 2020s, there was great enthusiasm around the development of the small modular reactor (SMR), which was expected to support a nuclear renaissance. However, after supply chain disruptions, technical difficulties, and other challenges, it is unclear whether SMR development is progressing as expected. Nevertheless, some companies continue to invest heavily in the technology, hoping it will help drive innovation and expansion in the nuclear power sector. SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors with a power capacity of up to 300 MW(e) per unit,…

Equinor and its partners are investing more than NOK 4 billion ($390 million) to expand the Troll field, a giant North Sea asset that supplies around 10% of Europe’s natural gas and contains 40% of Norway’s remaining gas reserves. The project is expected to unlock around 11 billion cubic meters of natural gas, equivalent to roughly 69 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), further strengthening one of Europe’s most important sources of energy. Known as TWIN (Troll West Increased Gas Recovery North), the development will consist of two new wells…

The leaders of the G7 have created a strategic alliance on critical minerals in a coordinated effort to break China’s oversized control of the metals and minerals and rare earth elements crucial to the defense, automotive, and clean energy industries. At the G7 summit in Evian, France, the leaders of G7 issued a declaration in which the nations committed “to coordinating efforts within the G7 and with partner countries to establish and develop the necessary processing and industrial capacities for diversification of our critical minerals…

While ships are beginning to trickle through the Strait of Hormuz after months of near-total closure, it will be a very long time before the effects of this year’s energy crisis fade from the global economy – if they ever do. This latest round of turmoil in global oil and gas markets has catalyzed clean energy adoption to a degree that may permanently alter the global energy landscape, as well as the way that we conceive of energy security and geopolitical strategy. It is extremely telling that, against the backdrop of the United States…

Nobody, especially not Iraq, wants to be caught relying on Hormuz ever again. Iraq is preparing to export crude oil and naphtha through Syria’s Mediterranean port of Baniyas, expanding an emergency workaround that emerged after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted the country’s primary export routes and left storage tanks filling up. According to Reuters, Iraqi officials say the strategy will remain in place even after shipping through Hormuz returns to normal. That alone says plenty. Iraq normally exports around 3.6 million barrels of…

The data centre industry has taken off in the last few years, as tech companies look to develop the massive computing power needed to run complex operations, such as artificial intelligence. Thousands of data centres are being developed on land, but now, some countries are looking to establish innovative models in alternative locations, such as underwater. In May, China launched the world’s first wind-powered underwater data centre off the coast of Shanghai, with an investment of around $238 million. The 24 MW-capacity Shanghai Lingang undersea…