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A U.S. military helicopter fired at the rudder of a Panama-flagged ship after its crew ignored warnings from personnel working to enforce a naval blockade on Iranian ports, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing a U.S. official. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the incident, the report said, adding that the ship appeared to be trying to transfer its crew to another civilian vessel after the attack. British maritime risk management group Vanguard and a [Read more]

Ukrainian forces have stepped up strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and other sites in what Kyiv says is an effort to deprive Russia of resources to fund its military. Following is a summary of the attacks — starting with the most recent — and their impact: ORSK The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it had attacked Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in the Russian city of Orsk, the second-largest city in the Orenburg region and an important industrial hub. The refinery's design [Read more]

Phillips 66, Kinder Morgan and HF Sinclair said on Tuesday they have decided to proceed with the proposed $5 billion Western Gateway Pipeline system and finalized a joint venture agreement for the same. Phillips 66 will own 49.9% of the venture, Kinder Morgan 35.1% and HF Sinclair 15%. Companies have been racing to build a major new fuel pipeline to the U.S. West Coast ahead of planned refinery closures in California, a relatively isolated fuel market with limited links to major refining [Read more]

Gasoline at $38 a gallon sold from cramped apartments. Diesel hawked on Instagram by a celebrity model to a reggaeton soundtrack. Six decades after Fidel Castro’s revolution, all of a sudden, capitalist cracks are appearing in Cuba’s communist energy sector. Under Washington’s crippling oil embargo against Cuba, an exception that allows U.S. firms to export fuel to private Cuban businesses has kickstarted a chaotic black market and pried the lid off an energy sector tightly controlled by the [Read more]

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to six on Monday, compared with a 10-day average of about 11 vessels, shipping data showed, amid fading hopes of a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran. Four commodity vessels, including two empty oil product tankers, entered the waterway, data from Kpler showed on Tuesday as of 0420 GMT. Two vessels — a small tanker laden with liquefied petroleum gas and another carrying residual fuels — exited the Strait, the data showed. In pre-war days, [Read more]

TORONTO - Canada’s main stock index climbed on Monday, helped by gains in the energy sector, while U.S. markets were negative. The S&P/TSX composite index was up 77.10 points at 36,458.33. Oil prices rose on uncertainty about when the Strait of Hormuz could reopen and get the global flow of crude going again. “That's really the main story of the market today: it's the oil price and how it feeds into inflation expectations and how it feeds into interest rates over the medium and longer [Read more]