Iran issued an evacuation warning for several oil facilities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, saying they would be targeted by strikes "in the coming hours", Iranian state media reported on Wednesday. The warning was directed at Saudi Arabia's Samref Refinery and Jubail Petrochemical Complex, the United Arab Emirates' Al Hosn Gas Field, and Qatar's Mesaieed Petrochemical Complex, Mesaieed Holding Company and Ras Laffan Refinery. "These centres have become direct and legitimate [Read more]

A U.S. plan to help control global oil prices with a swap of millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve depends on energy companies returning oil back to the facility with high premiums in the form of additional barrels, which some traders said could deter participation. The exchange is part of a wider agreement by countries in the International Energy Agency to release 400 million barrels of crude from reserves in an effort to tame prices that have risen during the [Read more]

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are betting the oil-price shock sparked by the Iran crisis will be too short-lived to hurt them politically in November, but traders and industry analysts see signs that U.S. pump prices will stay painfully high long after any diplomatic breakthrough. Oil prices have surged as the conflict disrupted global supply. U.S. crude topped $100 a barrel for the first time since the 2022 Russia-Ukraine shock. U.S. diesel climbed above $5 a gallon, its [Read more]

Central banks have good reason to sit up and take notice of how this month's oil shock is hitting inflation expectations. Yet financial market pricing shows a split picture so far. It looks like a one-two punch: a near-term cost-of-living burst that subsides again over the longer term. The core debate in a week packed with major monetary policy meetings is whether an inflation spurt warrants interest rate rises - or whether central banks should treat the Iran-related energy supply shock as [Read more]

Markets on edge about the Iran-war-driven oil shock are extrapolating today's stress far into the future - and may thus be badly misjudging how dovish the Federal Reserve will be this year. The oil price spike, which sent Brent crude into triple digits last week, has increased U.S. inflation risks and reduced market expectations for Fed policy easing just as the Federal Open Market Committee was getting set to meet on March 17-18. Going into 2026, money markets priced two to three interest [Read more]

BP on Tuesday said itwill lock out approximately 800 United Steelworkers members from its 440,000 barrel-per-day Whiting, Indiana, refinery starting at 12:00 a.m. on March 19, citing a breakdown in negotiations over a new labor agreement. The British oil major ended its 24-hour rolling contract extension and issued a lockout notice after the union rejected proposals that BP considers essential for the facility's long-term sustainability. Maintenance employees were told not to report after [Read more]

With much of the world's focus this year fixed on U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial foreign policy agenda, many may have missed China's quiet - but significant - economic renaissance. The U.S. president was originally scheduled to meet China's President Xi Jinping for a summit in Beijing on March 31-April 2, but Trump on Monday confirmed that he has requested a delay of around a month, citing the need to be in Washington to prosecute the war on Iran. Beijing hasn't officially [Read more]