Oil prices are unsteady after the war between the U.S. and Iran resumed this week. The latest fighting and attacks The worry is that a continuation of the war will block the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the delivery of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide, reported the Associated Press.
War resumes
** The US and Iran have traded strikes for a second night, as observers report a “dramatic” drop in the number of ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz. The US says it hit 90 military targets, some near the Strait. Iran says 14 people have been killed in the past two days. State media also reported that targets near the Bushehr nuclear power plant were hit in the afternoon.
Bridge hit
** The US military struck a railway bridge in north-eastern Iran overnight, Iranian state media reported early on Thursday. Several projectiles hit the bridge in Golestan province, state broadcaster IRIB said on social media platform X. Press TV, a broadcaster aligned with Iran’s leadership, said it was the first attack in the region since a ceasefire took effect in April.
Canadian pipelines
** Canada is fast-tracking a new West Coast oil pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia as a public-private partnership, aiming to boost crude exports to Asia via a southern route that avoids major Indigenous and regulatory obstacles. The project could cost $35–43 billion and carry up to 1 million barrels per day, while Alberta and Ontario are also exploring a separate 3,300-km pipeline to move 500,000 bpd of crude east to Sarnia.
Russia’s ban
** Russia has banned diesel exports after a series of Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries triggered widespread fuel shortages across the country. The Kremlin announced the emergency measure in a meeting on Wednesday, admitting that the situation regarding supplies remained fragile.
US Energy
** Chevron and Exxon are expected to report their best quarter since 2022 this month, as the war that the United States and Israel started against Iran on February 28 drove much tighter oil and gas supply. This could be a problem for President Trump who has already slammed Big Oil for keeping prices at the pump too high.
** Large companies that right now depend heavily on the grid are making behind-the-scenes moves that are key to understanding what’s about to happen next. Microsoft just signed a 20-year deal to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, a facility that has been offline since 2019. Amazon paid $650 million for a single data center campus to co-locate directly with the Susquehanna nuclear station in Pennsylvania. Google signed agreements with Kairos Power for small modular reactors. Meta has issued a request for proposals seeking up to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity.
** Eleven years after Hawaii’s governor at the time signed the nation’s first legal commitment to run an entire state’s grid system on 100% renewable electricity, the current Governor admits the state made a mistake. Gov. Josdh Green is throwing his support behind a $2 billion project to import natural gas from Japan and construct a floating liquefied-natural-gas import terminal called Longboard LNG.
** The $66.8 billion deal NextEra Energy proposed last month to buy Dominion Energy and create the largest regulated electric utility in the US would consolidate too much power into too few hands, said Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats. King, who is the ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources, urged FERC not to approve the purchase, according to Reuters.
