Tag: oil

EU Commandos Board 6th Russian ‘Shadow Fleet’ Tanker After Putin Threatened Reverse Action

Another Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker has been boarded by European forces – and this time the provocative action took place in Mediterranean waters. In a Monday post on X, Kaja Kallas announced the action by troops under the EU’s Operation Irini. They boarded the MV Sun tanker for “flag verification,” following suspicions that the vessel was in violation of international law.

“Illegal oil sales from shadow fleet ships are a critical lifeline for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and we’ll continue to cut them off,” Kallas wrote of what marks the sixth shadow fleet ship to be boarded in recent months. Most of these have happened in northern European waters, with Mediterranean incidents being more rare.

It was specifically the Italian Defense Ministry that carried out the EU action, with Italian navy’s Thaon di Revel ship conducting the boarding which occurred to the west of the island of Pantelleria as the targeted vessel was progressing from the port of Cotonou in Benin to Istanbul.

Russian President Vladimir Putin just a little over two weeks ago threatened to do the same in reverse, after the past year saw several examples of EU intercept action, sometimes involving French or Swedish commandos descending onto a tanker’s deck from helicopters and arresting crew members. The seized vessels are then typically taken to nearby European ports.

The latest European Union sanctions package passed last month stipulates that EU members can sell the oil or any seized cargo obtained from these ‘shadow fleet’ vessels.

Putin has reiterated Kremlin outrage at this scheme, condemning it as “piracy and banditry”. This also after Sweden has lately declared its intent to hand seized Russian grain over to Ukraine.

“We will be forced to respond in kind,” Putin said in mid-August. Russian forces will act “wherever we ourselves deem necessary and appropriate — anywhere,” he added.

Keep reading

Trump Says Iran’s Oil Hub Kharg Island Is Being Blown “TO SMITHEREENS”

President Trump issued a stunning message Sunday night indicating that Iran’s most important oil-export hub was under devastating attack.

“Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT,” Trump announced on Truth Social.

Trump’s post included a dramatic AI-generated video depicting explosions across the island.

Neither the White House nor the Department of War had publicly confirmed a new attack on Kharg Island’s oil facilities. Reuters reported that Iranian state media had also issued no immediate response.

Keep reading

US Looks To Revive ‘Prize Courts’ For Iranian Oil Seizures

The US government is exploring an unusual legal route for dealing with Iranian oil and ships captured as part of its blockade: bringing back a wartime maritime system that has barely been used for generations, according to Bloomberg.

The Justice Department, working with the Pentagon, is preparing to use prize law, which historically allowed courts to decide whether vessels and cargo captured during armed conflict could legally become property of the United States. The mechanism was once commonplace in naval warfare but largely disappeared from American practice after the 19th century and has been dormant since World War II.

The appeal for the administration is largely practical. At present, the government generally relies on civil forfeiture to take ownership of vessels accused of sanctions violations or other offenses. Those cases can become complicated and slow, particularly when shipping companies, creditors, terrorism victims or other parties assert competing rights to the ship or its cargo. A prize proceeding could potentially narrow those disputes and allow captured oil to be sold more quickly, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury.

Bloomberg writes that Houston is being considered as a central venue for these cases. The Southern District of Texas has jurisdiction over a major port and sits alongside the country’s largest concentration of petrochemical infrastructure, giving it the capacity to receive and store substantial quantities of crude. US Attorney Aaron Reitz, whose office is working with DOJ officials in Washington, said the department is “now reviving” prize courts, describing the concept as an “ancient body of maritime law.”

The effort comes as Washington looks for additional ways to put economic pressure on Iran. US forces have already intercepted Iranian-owned or Iran-linked vessels since the blockade was imposed in April. Using prize law could turn those captures into a more direct financial tool: ships and oil deemed lawful prizes could be liquidated, potentially generating revenue while depriving Iran of valuable exports.

Supporters also see a strategic purpose beyond the money. Reviving the system would reinforce the message that the US considers the blockade a serious wartime measure rather than simply another sanctions regime. It could also make it more difficult for neutral commercial vessels to continue transporting goods that Washington believes support Iran.

But there is considerable uncertainty over how a centuries-old framework would operate under modern international law. “This really is a historical area of law that is not tested in modern times,” maritime attorney Allison Luzwick said. Courts could be asked to determine whether the current conflict provides sufficient legal grounds for invoking prize authority at all, particularly given questions surrounding congressional authorization for the hostilities.

Keep reading

Trump Strikes “Biggest Oil Deal In History”: US To Take Majority Stake In Over 65BN Barrels Of Venezuela Reserves

President Trump has made it official with a late in the day Friday Truth Social Post, announcing a deal has been struck with Venezuela for a US majority stake in more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, after six months of administration scrambling to control the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

On Truth Social he called it the biggest oil deal in world history which comes “at no cost to” U.S. taxpayers and which more than doubles the US oil reserve.

“This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States,” Trump wrote in the post. Also…

Trump said the Venezuela deal should bring down prices at the pump. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. reached around $4.09 on Friday, a 27% increase year over year, according to AAA.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to deal, following US officials having long hyped Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of ‘talks’ or ‘negotiations’… in reality this is more simply about demands be dictated to the ‘new’ post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Focus on the Strait of Hormuz is shifting to South America late in the week as the Trump administration moves to secure new long-term crude supplies in Venezuela. The U.S. is nearing an agreement that could place 17 Venezuelan oil fields under 100-year leases operated by U.S. oil companies.

According to Bloomberg, sources told the outlet that Caracas has discussed a possible exit from OPEC with U.S. officials. The sources said no final decision has been made, but the discussions come as the U.S. negotiates 100-year leases on several Venezuelan oil fields that require billions of dollars in investment.

Such an exit from OPEC would be symbolic, given that the South American country was one of the organization’s five founding members in 1960 and played a key role in establishing the expanded OPEC+ alliance with Russia in 2016.

More recently, the United Arab Emirates became another producer to announce its departure from OPEC. Venezuela is only considering withdrawal, while Iraq has expressed frustration but has yet to announce a formal exit.

A Venezuelan exit would not result in an immediate surge in crude production because of years of underinvestment, which is why the U.S. is seeking to take a large stake in the nation’s oil fields.

Venezuela currently produces about 1.16 million barrels per day, according to a Bloomberg survey, and is not subject to an active OPEC quota.

For President Trump, a U.S.-Venezuela energy alliance could prove very valuable by weakening OPEC, increasing non-Middle Eastern crude supplies, pressuring oil prices and locking down a massive reserve base in America’s backyard.

Trump Close To ‘Massive’ Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela’s Vast Oil Fields

Amid ongoing global oil supply disruptions due to the Iran war and Hormuz Strait crisis, and also as Ukraine’s war on Russian oil refineries and export terminals heats up, the Trump administration has been scrambling to tap new reliable and long-term energy sources.

Now, nearly eight months since the US miliary raid on Caracas which removed from power and captured socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration is said to be on the brink of a massive deal to gain ownership stake in the countries vast oil resources.

Axios is newly reporting Thursday of ‘negotiations’ (sure) in the works: “The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the world’s largest proven reserves.”

Keep reading

Big Oil Is Seeing Windfall Profits as Trump’s War on Iran Drives Up Prices

While the U.S. war on Iran is broadly unpopular in the U.S, including among a growing number of Donald Trump voters, at least one of the president’s core constituencies is happy: Big Oil.

The war’s straining of the global oil supply chain has delivered windfall profits to major fossil fuel corporations. The top two U.S. oil companies, ExxonMobil and Chevron, recently disclosed an astounding $26.5 billion in net income during the second quarter of 2026. Top independent U.S. oil refiners like Marathon, Valero, and Phillips 66 are seeing similar explosions in profits. Globally, a Guardian study found that eight of the world’s top oil companies took in more than $90 billion, or “more than $700,000 of profit every minute over the spring quarter.”

The word “oil company” might evoke generic imagery of rigs and refineries. But behind these entities are executives, board members, and top investors who are primary beneficiaries of Big Oil’s war profiteering and who hold commanding power within a fossil fuel power structure that stretches well beyond oil company boardrooms and into Wall Street and the corporate establishment more widely.

Big Oil’s War Profits

ExxonMobil and Chevron are the two largest U.S. oil corporations, together worth around $1 trillion. They are massive integrated fossil fuel companies whose operations span the entire chain of oil and gas production, and who have a presence across virtually the entire world.

In July, the two oil juggernauts together reported $26.5 billion in net income during the second quarter of 2026 — April through June of this year — as “they cashed in on surging crude and petrol prices caused by Donald Trump’s Iran war,” wrote the Financial Times.

Comparisons with last year provide a metric for measuring these enormous returns. In 2025, ExxonMobil reported second-quarter total earnings of $7.08 billion. In 2026, by comparison, that number leapt to $14.53 billion — more than a 105 percent increase, and “its best quarterly profit since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in oil prices,” according to the Financial Times.

In 2025, Chevron reported second-quarter earnings of $2.49 billion. In 2026, that number skyrocketed nearly four times — 384.7 percent — to $12.07 billion, which is Chevron’s largest quarterly haul ever.

The two corporations’ share prices have also soared compared to last year. On August 10, 2026, ExxonMobil’s share price closed at $159.79 — a 51 percent increase from its closing price of $105.83 on August 11, 2025. Similarly, Chevron’s share price closed at $194.91 on August 10, 2026 — a 27 percent increase from its closing of $153.45 on August 11, 2025.

Keep reading

Climate Doomer Adam McKay Dismisses Questions About His 2nd Home in Ireland While Warning ‘Billions Will Die’ Because of Oil

Filmmaker Adam McKay, a DSA member and hardcore climate doomsayer, has finally addressed — indirectly, at least — the issue of his hypocritical campaign to kill the oil industry while jetting between homes in Los Angeles and Ireland.

Four years ago, Breitbart became the first news outlet to connect the dots between McKay’s frenzied climate warnings (e.g. the satirical Netflix film Don’t Look Up) and a flattering profile in Architectural Digest about his “quiet and relaxing” getaway home on 12 acres in Ireland. In the time since, the Anchorman director has ignored questions about why he won’t sacrifice the luxurious estate — and the 10,000-mile round trip that requires a considerable amount of jet fuel — while screaming at the world to “just stop oil.”

This week, however, McKay appears to have vented some of his frustrations about these “queries,” while massively downplaying the scale of his own carbon sins, in an essay for Current Affairs. The editorial, titled “The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate,” presents a grim thesis: “Thinking we have time left to address climate change… is driving us toward full social collapse.”

And his rage is not directed at fascist chuds who stubbornly believe there isn’t enough evidence to demonstrate that human industry is the one and only determinative variable in global climate variations. The filmmaker is shaming liberal social climbers — “the ruling class, mainstream news media, and corporations” — for believing that the government must only take action that’s palatable to voters, setting far-off targets like “Net Zero by 2050.”

McKay’s warning does highlight an inconsistency in these left-wing, respectability-politics yuppies: if they really think global warming is an existential threat, they’d better act like it:

[I]f our institutions, news and elected officials continue to feed and water the oil company-conceived mega-falsehood that climate breakdown is something just “our great-grandkids need to worry about,” human civilization as we know it will collapse and billions could die. And we’re not talking about the far distant future. We are talking about collapse within years, not centuries. For real. [emphasis added]

On this point, credit the man for consistency. It’s been 20 years since Al Gore’s 10-year countdown to an irreversible “tipping point” for the fate of the planet. It’s been seven since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 12-year countdown to the world’s end. The climate “crisis” looks more and more like a grift when the deadline for urgent action keeps getting pushed back.

Oh wait, never mind; McKay did the same thing.

Keep reading

Global Diesel Crunch Deepens As Record US Distillate Exports Race To Supply-Starved Europe

US distillate exports surged to a record last week as global supplies tightened. Disruptions across the Gulf area and various surrounding maritime chokepoints, as well as Ukrainian one-way attack drone strikes that have paralyzed portions of Russia’s energy infrastructure, have been a major boon for US refiners and export terminals along the Gulf of America.

To begin the week, Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg TV, “The situation in Russia is really one thing that worries us a lot.”

Dart warned, “I’d say on the oil side, as I mentioned before, diesel, I think is the oil product that is most vulnerable right now, not just because you have your seasonal demand strength ahead just in the winter, but on the supply side. And to your point in the beginning, it’s not just that you run war, it’s what’s happening to the Russian refineries as well. And Russia is usually a pretty big exporter of diesel. And now they have restricted it.”

Last month, Goldman analyst Daan Struyven warned that “Diesel is at the epicenter of the supply squeeze.” 

As global supplies dwindle, US energy exporters on the Gulf of America emerged as the winners, shipping a record 1.9 million barrels to overseas customers last week.

Shipments have exceeded 1.5 million barrels a day for five consecutive weeks, with recent cargoes heading to northwestern European ports – the epicenter of a global diesel shortage caused by Gulf area refinery disruptions through Hormuz and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refining capacity.

Keep reading

Trump demands oil companies lower gas prices for American consumers

President Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to criticize Chevron CEO Mike Wirth following a television interview in which the executive touted his company’s success.

On Monday, the president argued that in the interview with Fox Business, Wirth failed to credit the administration’s efforts to assist oil companies, which the president said provided necessary strength and stability to the U.S. energy sector.

“The only thing he conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!” Trump wrote.

Trump pointed to Chevron’s operations in Venezuela as an example of the administration’s influence, before calling on oil executives across the industry to lower fuel prices for consumers immediately.

“Get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!” the president stated.

Keep reading

War With Iran: A Double-Edged Sword for the US Economy and Agriculture

The sharp swings in oil prices following the latest round of attacks and negotiations over safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that wars do not always reveal themselves first on the battlefield. Sometimes, their earliest signs appear on gas-station price boards, in transportation bills, and on the balance sheets of farmers standing thousands of miles from the front lines. Now that the confrontation between the United States and Iran has moved beyond pressure and deterrence and turned into direct military conflict, the issue is no longer limited to security calculations. It is about the real costs of war – costs increasingly borne by American farmers, truck drivers, and consumers.

The economic effects of this war are being transmitted through channels that are highly sensitive for Washington politically: energy markets, inflation, supply chains, and, above all, agriculture. A war that Trump justifies in the language of national security and displays of strength could, in practice, become a self-inflicted shock to the U.S. economy. That is the central contradiction: the most direct pressure is falling on the very social and economic constituency Trump has repeatedly claimed to defend – the American farm belt.

The Energy Shock, From Hormuz to American Farms

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption passes, now lies at the center of the conflict. Repeated surges and declines in oil prices show that even news of a temporary pause – or the possibility of renewed escalation – can shake the energy market. Higher fuel prices feed directly into transportation, production, and consumer-goods costs, adding to inflationary pressure. This also leaves monetary policymakers caught between controlling inflation and preventing a further slowdown in economic growth.

Market instability and direct military expenditures are rising as well. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that the true cost of military conflict often extends far beyond initial estimates. Brown University’s Costs of War Project has placed the cost of the post-9/11 wars at approximately $8 trillion. A war with Iran, particularly if it becomes prolonged or expands geographically, could generate new and uncertain financial commitments. Yet one of its deepest and least visible consequences may be felt not on Wall Street, but on American farms.

Modern American agriculture is intensely dependent on energy. Diesel powers farm machinery; natural gas is a primary input in the production of nitrogen fertilizers; and gasoline and transportation fuels move crops from farms to markets. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has repeatedly shown that higher energy prices increase production costs and reduce farm income, ultimately affecting food prices.

The pressure is even more severe in the fertilizer market. The production of ammonia and urea is directly dependent on natural gas, while disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has constrained global supplies of raw materials and fertilizer. During the first weeks of the war, urea prices nearly doubled, leaving American farmers to confront fuel-price increases and supply shortages at the same time. Under such conditions, corn production, which requires more nitrogen fertilizer, becomes especially vulnerable. Farmers may be forced to choose among reducing planted acreage, switching crops, or accepting substantially higher costs.

Keep reading

US Oil & Gas Association Drops in On Hunter Biden with Epic Takedown

The US Oil & Gas Association dropped in on Hunter Biden in an epic takedown after the former ‘Burisma executive’ trashed President Trump.

Hunter Biden on Friday went after Chevron and accused President Trump of ‘making big oil great again.’

“Chevron just posted $12 billion in profit. Up 400% in a year. Their biggest quarter ever. Exxon made $14.5 billion. You paid for all of it at the pump,” Hunter Biden said.

“Say what you want about Trump. He’s making something great again. And who’s more deserving than Big Oil,” Hunter said.

The US Oil & Gas Association slammed Hunter Biden and mocked him for his previous “work” in foreign oil.

Hunter Biden was paid more than $80,000 per month to sit on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, despite having zero knowledge in the field. Hunter Biden enjoyed this lucrative gig while his then-US Vice President dad Joe Biden was tasked to handle Ukraine.

Keep reading