I wonder how this picture affects the strategic calculus of the individual players? E.g., -Does Trump perceive the outsized revenue increase for US companies as more important than the price-rise for US-consumers? -Will IRN have quite some staying power?

I just came across the "European State of the Climate 2025 report" that was published two weeks ago. They did a ten-charts summary that unmistakably showed that climate change is increasingly affecting Europe: climate.copernicus.eu/ten-charts-d...

I just came across the "European State of the Climate 2025 report" that was published two weeks ago. They did a ten-charts summary that unmistakably showed that climate change is increasingly affecting Europe: climate.copernicus.eu/ten-charts-d...

The new @iea.org oil market report is freely available now! (🙏↓) Even their currently rather optimistic-looking base case ("assuming the conflict ends by early June") sees "markets severely undersupplied through the end of 3Q26"

OPEC also released its monthly oil report today: www.opec.org/monthly-oil-... They manage to not mention Iran and Hormuz in the text once. They seem to have settled on the word "disruption". This might tell something about a political nature of the report. The numbers are still interesting. 1/5

Critical Minerals: Big, data rich discussion on Gallium by @csis.org. But the gap between sizeable policy attention and limited market value still puzzles me. [EU data imply imports 2025 were worth €8mn] Appears not to be an economics, but a defence issue. www.csis.org/analysis/us-...

So far - European air traffic levels seem to be very close to last years values. [cool @eurocontrol.bsky.social data page: www.eurocontrol.int/Economics/Da... ]

RAP and Agora (Energiewende) are merging.

Kazakhstan is increasingly exiting the Russian electricity orbit. For now, it plans to stop power imports from RU next year and is procuring Chinese instead of Russian technology. At the same time cutting lines to RU or building lines to CHN seem not on the agenda. www.n-tv.de/politik/Kasa...

Kerosene Crunch: Despite a significant rise in US Kerosene imports closing the April gap, supply levels remain inadequate for the seasonal travel surge, according to Bloomberg data. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

China's oil imports fell almost 30% in April, to the lowest level in a decade, a dramatic drop well highlighted by @javierblas.bsky.social. He tries to find a "big" explanation and comes up short - likely because there isn't one: there drop is rather a result of multiple adjustments.

1/ Published today in @natcomms.nature.com: our analysis on long-duration electricity storage needs for coping with #Dunkelflaute events in 🇪🇺 . Joint work with my stellar @diw.de colleagues @kittelmartin.bsky.social (lead) and @aroth.bsky.social 🎉https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72681-5

Tom argues, that it does not make econ sense that 1) the new DE heating law would allow for biomethane usage in heating (a baseload that could be cost-effectively replaced by heat pumps etc) 2) while the DE power plant strategy requirs to set up a costly new H2 infrastructure for peak plants

One reading: -SWE gov't wants to built 4 nuclear plants, likely requiring state support -This electricity would help also neighbours' industries that only pay the variable price ->state tries to constrain exports to keep benefit at home [but note: this will make any nuclear subsidies more costly]

US crude oil and product net exports steeply increased in the past month!

Do we have an oil supply crisis in the EU? 1/3 Official data sources cannot tell us, yet, as they lag the decisive months? On May 8th this is what we know: - Jodi: Feb26 - BAFA: Dec25 - Eurostat: Jan26 - IEA: Jan26

German Antitrust authority worries that government plans for auctioning for new gas plants are not sufficiently pro-competitive.

Ukrainian day-ahead market price caps driving electricity trading: - Following the increase price caps in mid-January 2026, imports rose sharply - Imports declined again after price caps were again reduced on 1 April, despite continued system stress. greendealukraina.org/gd-tracker/f...

India’s economy expanded 7.5% in 2025, but India’s fossil CO2 emissions rose by just 1.1%—far lower than the 4.1% average over the previous decade. What is going on? www.ecpulse.in/snapshots/ap... 1/

New @nberpubs: "The Value of Reliable Statistics" www.nber.org/papers/w3513... "preserving trust in the integrity and quality of official statistics generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the agency’s budget"

EU gasoline retail prices increased by 15% on average since the beginning of the year - as wholesale gasoline futures prices doubled. Thereby, prices in Italy and Spain increased only 5% (due to expensive tax cuts); while prices in Sweden and Belgium increased by 25% and more, acc. to DG ENER data.

It has been a solid week of European natural gas filling. Daily rates are 0.26 pp / day, continuing at this pace would see storages reach 80% by 1 November (the EU agreed target).

Yesterday's COM proposals on simplification: Merge LULUCF-Regulation and ESR commission.europa.eu/document/dow...

Closure of Hormuz-Strait now already lasts two month.

New Bruegel Tracker of national fiscal measures to confront the 2026 energy crisis.

Caution - Mind the Step In European gas markets, buyers and sellers are currently agreeing to transact at 45€/MWh flat through to the end of the upcoming heating season. However, for delivery after March '27, sellers are finding it difficult to find buyers willing to pay more than 35€/MWh.

I think a currently underdiscussed risk for Europe is a Cat 4/5 hurricane making landfall in Louisiana this autumn and knocking out LNG exports for several weeks (as seen with Hurricane Laura in 2020), while supply from Qatar may still be unavailable.

As EU natural gas demand picked up again after 2024 - its reliance on LNG imports reached new records.

☢️ Eine Sperrzone, die zum Kriegsgebiet wurde: 40 Jahre nach der Reaktorkatastrophe steht Tschornobyl auch heute für eine nukleare Bedrohung, die durch Russlands Krieg zunimmt. Schaut euch an, was unser ARD Kyjiw-Team um Susanne Petersohn dort erlebt hat: youtu.be/Jja_btXKihs?...

As EU natural gas demand picked up again after 2024 - its reliance on LNG imports reached new records.

„Russian central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina said a day later that ‚external conditions are now getting worse on an almost constant basis — for both exports and imports‘”. …allowing 🇪🇺 and 🇺🇸 to save a lot of money by keeping the pressure up.

Huan Huu Nguyen, Duc Huu Nguyen, Vu Minh Ngo (2026) Fossil-fuel subsidies and energy-firm outcomes in the European Union: Economic and environmental performance [I did not check the methodology] www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Yesterday, @bmcwilliams.bsky.social and @keliauskaite.bsky.social added new functionality to our @bruegel.org gas tracker to better show how good MSs are at refilling storages. [Some of the data is now automatically updating every day. And our download-data is updated (typically) by Wednesday.]

I am worried that strategic oil stocks are described as supply management tool. In a geopolitically volatile situation where mayor oil suppliers are key players (that might want to blackmail us); and where our import routes become vulnerable, "strategic" should be defined in an existential way. 2/2

EU gas import quantities look notably unaffected by the global energy crisis for now.

#AccelerateEU righly wants to improve coordination of gas storage filling. Given the discussion on national strategic gas storage (esp. in Germany) it would be useful to also discuss coordination of non-market storages. 1/2

" Southern California cities get, on average, 20-25% of their water from the Colorado River. Farms in California’s Imperial Valley depend entirely on the river to grow crops" www.latimes.com/environment/...

Seems like something is happening in this area

The most frustrating aspect of all this is, that we have no firm data basis to discuss this: -EC says, nothing to worry about - IEA says, we only have six weeks of jet fuel left

Could a more strategic, multi-year approach to Ukraine’s energy system eventually prove more cost-effective than the current cycle of annual patches? www.linkedin.com/posts/green-...

Spannende ökonomische Fragen zur neuen 12-Uhr-Regel bei Spritpreisen, aber die Forschung muss draußen bleiben.⛽️📉 Das Bundeskartellamt ist nur verpflichtet Daten an Apps weiterzugeben. Die Apps würden für die öff. Daten jetzt sicher Geld wollen oder ans BKartA verweisen. #Transparenz #EconTwitter

There is possibly good commercial reasons (eg, to fill empty flights that are anyway scheduled) but it still sounds surreal.

Very useful comparative oil shock data viz.

Boring! The Pharaohs managed a powerful fusion reactor in space already thousands of years ago.

For me, the most interesting statistics is the change in oil production by OPEC (here my calculation of monthly percentage changes based on secondary sources). It shows were the pain might be felt most (but remember that oil prices at the same time increased by maybe 40%):

New steel value chain in the making? Iron ore from AUSTRALIA; Energy from the SUN + desali'd water from the OCEAN (that will largely circulate in a closed loop) -> to produce Hydrogen in NAMIBIA -> to produce DRI for GERMANY In April first 80t produced (later 15kt/a) www.heise.de/news/Stahlpr...

New steel value chain in the making? Iron ore from AUSTRALIA; Energy from the SUN + desali'd water from the OCEAN (that will largely circulate in a closed loop) -> to produce Hydrogen in NAMIBIA -> to produce DRI for GERMANY In April first 80t produced (later 15kt/a) www.heise.de/news/Stahlpr...

Today OPEC released its Monthly Oil Market Report MOMR: - Very cautious language - “Iran” and “Hormuz” not mentioned at all in the text - A lot of analysis still reflects data till February – which for oil-related numbers was a different regime - Still some numbers I found interesting:

DE temporarily cuts gasoline & diesel taxes: -expensive -not really progressive -mutes oil-saving incentives -encourages other countries to do the same -resulting lack of demand response leads to higher oil prices Why are more sophisticated solutions deemed infeasible, politically/administratively?