International

China’s independent refiners have slashed their processing rates to the lowest level in nearly five years as costs to procure crude soared amid dwindling Russian supply following the latest U.S. sanctions. Crude supply became more expensive for the private Chinese refiners, concentrated in the Shandong province, and dragged refining margins …

Demand for gold reached record highs in 2024 fuelled by “eye-watering” interest from central banks and global investors, a fresh report has said. Total demand reached 4,974 tonnes, and the value of global demand shot up to $382bn, over a year which saw the gold price surge by 26 per …

The Trump administration is looking into ways to cancel federal loans granted by the Department of Energy for transition projects from a $400-billion fund, Bloomberg has reported, citing an unnamed source. According to the report, the new leadership at the Department of Energy would focus its financial firepower on projects …

Despite pressure from President Trump and a recent rise in oil prices, the OPEC+ group has said it won’t change its current plan to begin gradually unwinding the cuts from April. The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), the OPEC+ panel reviewing policy and markets and potentially recommending actions to the …

The U.S. geoscience exploration firm working in South Korea’s East Sea has discovered 14 additional oil and gas prospects in the area, South Korean officials said on Monday. U.S. exploration firm Act-Geo has said in a report to the Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) that it had detected these possible …

On Sunday, Iraq’s parliament voted on a key plan for the compensation of oil companies operating in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region that would speed up the restart of crude oil exports from the region. According to a Bloomberg report, MPs decided to allocate $16 per barrel produced in Kurdistan and …

Canada remained the top crude oil supplier to the United States in January 2025, exporting an average of 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd), according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and analytics firm Kpler. Mexico ranked second with 457,000 bpd, followed by Saudi Arabia at 275,000 …

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Western nations have accused China of supplying Moscow with microchips and other critical dual-use technologies that are “powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression.” In response, Washington and Brussels have hit hundreds of Chinese companies and individuals with sanctions …

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico threaten to disrupt North America’s tightly integrated oil market and push up gasoline prices for American motorists. Trump on Saturday signed orders implementing a levy of 10% on imports of Canadian energy, along with general levies of 25% on …

In October last year, China’s CNOOC reported record oil and gas production from a field called Deep Sea #1. The field was the company’s first ultra-deep project, an example of the pursuit of new, untapped resources that lie deeper under the sea. Yet it’s not only ultradeep offshore drilling that …