Falling
** Oil prices fell on Thursday as Saudi Arabia’s efforts to reroute crude exports through Oman eased fears about a supply disruption caused by drone attacks on the kingdom’s East-West pipeline last week.
Scrambling
** According to XS.com’s head of business development Peter Massabni, the kingdom’s scramble to open up alternative export channels has calmed market anxieties over whether lost barrels can be recovered. He cautioned, however, that the outlook depends heavily on how the broader conflict in the Middle East develops.
Iran
**Iran likely intends to target the control systems U.S. energy companies use to monitor their storage tanks, potentially resulting in physical damage or the spilling of fuel or chemicals, according to an intelligence bulletin reviewed by ABC News.
Sweden
** Google is backing the buildout of a novel green-steel mill in Sweden as the tech giant grapples with rising greenhouse gas emissions from its AI expansion.
Ukraine
** Thursday night, Ukraine hit an oil refinery near Moscow, damaging a processing plant co-owned by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, as Russia prepares to extend its ban on diesel exports through the end of October. In a sign that Ukraine and Russia have not agreed on any partial truce not to strike energy infrastructure, Ukraine’s forces hit with drones the refinery in Yaroslavl, while Russia attacked infrastructure in Kyiv.
Russia
** Just days after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reaffirmed an intention to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian natural gas imports, Russia’s provider, Gazprom Armenia, has taken the seemingly punitive step of announcing a prolonged cutoff of supplies.
U.S. energy
** The U.S. House has cleared a procedural path toward a final vote on sweeping Russia and Iran sanctions legislation that would give President Donald Trump authority to impose tariffs of up to 100% on major buyers of Russian energy.
** Average U.S. residential electricity prices are expected to rise about 5% this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, though the increase varies by region and the role of AI-driven demand in the increase is hotly debated.
** The electric co-ops represented under the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (NRECA) are now encouraging the administration to finish removing all remaining restrictions on new natural gas plants. NRECA CEO Jim Matheson issued a statement Monday in response to the EPA’s final decision. NRECA previously sued the Obama administration in 2015 over its initial clean energy rules and challenged them in court.
** Houston-based Caturus LLC Monday announced it plans to add five production trains at the company’s Commonwealth LNG export facility in Cameron Parish, potentially pushing the facility’s yearly output from 9.5 million tons to 17.25 million tons per annum.
** A map created by Newsweek shows the states boasting the most coal plants as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its repeal of a major Biden-era climate rule that limits greenhouse gas emissions from coal and natural gas power plants on Monday.
