Europe Dodges a Rhine Crisis for the Worst Possible Reason

The Rhine has slightly risen from its mid-August record low (when Kaub’s water level gauge – at the river’s decisive chokepoint – was below 10 cm), but the relief is mostly optical. Barges still cannot carry normal loads through it, leaving the industrial corridor from Rotterdam and Antwerp to southern Germany, eastern France and Switzerland short of transport capacity. The immediate result is expensive freight, constrained chemical production and uneven fuel supply. However, the more troubling conclusion is that Europe…

2026/8/23
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The Gas Turbine Shortage Just Became AI’s Biggest Constraint

Order a heavy-duty gas turbine from GE Vernova today and it won’t arrive until 2031. That’s the company’s actual production schedule, confirmed on its July 22 earnings call, and it’s the fact sitting underneath every AI data center power plan announced in the last two years. It comes up far less often than the announcements do. Goldman Sachs put hard numbers on the demand side in May. U.S. data center power demand climbs from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 41 GW this year and 66 GW in 2027. Year-over-year capacity additions accelerate…

2026/8/23
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Clean Energy Spending Tracking Toward Record $180 Billion in 2026

Donald Trump is accidentally overseeing a massive buildout of the country’s renewable energy capacity and infrastructure. Not only are investments in renewable technologies soaring to new highs, the national energy grid is rapidly transforming to accommodate an increasingly solar- and wind-powered energy mix.  Despite massive rollbacks of Biden- and Obama-era clean energy incentives and financial supports, investment in clean energy tech keeps soaring to new heights, buoyed by market forces far outside of the federal government’s…

2026/8/23
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Every Chokepoint That Isn't Hormuz

For six months the entire conversation about oil logistics has been about one strait, and you can hardly blame anyone for that. Hormuz has been effectively closed since late February, when the war between Iran and the U.S. and Israel started, and the EIA reckons only 4.9 million barrels a day of crude and liquids made it through in the second quarter. In the last quarter of 2025 that number was 21.6 million. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said in June that management of the strait “will never return to the way it was before the…

2026/8/23
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IEA: Southeast Asia Needs Grid Investment to Nearly Quadruple by 2050

Southeast Asia needs to invest heavily in upgrading and modernising its transmission networks if countries across the region hope to deploy larger quantities of renewable energy over the next decade. With investment in green energy growing ever higher, the grid systems in countries such as Indonesia, India, and Vietnam simply cannot keep up with capacity growth, creating a bottleneck in power distribution. Upgrading and expanding transmission networks would respond to the growth in regional power demand while reducing dependence on fossil fuels. …

2026/8/22
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The Race to Unlock the World’s Hidden Hydrogen Reserves

Countries around the globe are racing to become the world’s first geologic hydrogen hotspot. A few years ago, the United States Department of Energy released a bombshell report that estimated that there are trillions of metric tons of natural hydrogen deposits sitting in underground pockets around the world – and that a considerable amount of that could be extracted for industrial use. Energy companies around the world have been eagerly exploring for the most ideal locations to put that theory to the test – and they’re zeroing…

2026/8/22
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Iraq Wants to Double Oil Output—and Needs OPEC to Get Out of the Way

Iraq wants to more than double its oil production within six years. First, it needs OPEC to let it. Baghdad is targeting output of between 8 million and 10 million barrels per day, up from roughly 4 million bpd before the Iran war, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said Friday. Iraq dispatched its oil and finance ministers to Saudi Arabia the same day to make the case for a higher OPEC production quota. OPEC+ has hired DeGolyer and MacNaughton to independently assess the maximum sustainable production capacity of most members, including Iraq. The consultancy…

2026/8/22
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China Challenges Russia’s Arms Dominance in Central Asia

China is challenging Russia’s stranglehold on Central Asia’s arms market. Uzbekistan appears to have taken delivery of four PRC-made ChengduJ-10CE multi-role combat aircraft, according to multiple reports, one of which includes a photo of one of the fighters supposedly acquired by the Uzbek Air Force.  Tashkent reportedly has an agreement with Beijing to receive a total of 24 fighters. Uzbek and Chinese officials have yet to confirm the initial delivery. If accurate, the deal signals a significant expansion of China’s military…

2026/8/22
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Tankers Wait a Month as Venezuela Hits an Oil Export Ceiling

Venezuela has plenty of oil buyers again. What it does not have is enough functioning port infrastructure to get them their crude. Tankers are waiting as long as 30 days to load Venezuelan oil as aging terminals, power outages and crude-quality problems create a de facto ceiling on exports, according to Reuters. That ceiling appears to be around 1.25 million barrels per day. PDVSA and its partners have been unable to push exports meaningfully above that level in recent months despite rising production, inventory drawdowns and strong demand for…

2026/8/22
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US Oil Drillers See Pullback as Oil Prices Rise

The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States fell this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, with the total rig count in the US falling to 588, up 50 from this same time last year. The number of active oil rigs fell by 3, sinking to 452 during the latest reporting period, according to the data. This is 41 above this same time last year. The number of gas rigs fell by 1 to 127, which is 5 more than this time last year. Miscellaneous rigs fell by 1 to 9. The latest EIA data showed that…

2026/8/22
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