Tag: Iran

Missing Magmatic Arc Unearthed: Geologists Reveal Hidden Late Cretaceous Volcanic Belt in Northwestern Iran

Geologists from an international team led by Istanbul Technical University (ITU) have identified evidence of a previously unrecognized Late Cretaceous continental magmatic arc in northwestern Iran, named the Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc.

The discovery of the previously unrecognized Late Cretaceous Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc in northwestern Iran is significant because it fills a major gap in the tectonic and magmatic history of the Arabia- Eurasia collision zone and revises models of Neo- Tethyan subduction.

An illustrated geological map depicting the Hidden Cretaceous Magmatic Arc in northwestern Iran, showcasing ancient volcanic activity, basaltic outcrops, and the effects of tectonic movement on the landscape.
AI generated by Grok

Geologists from an international team led by Istanbul Technical University (ITU) have identified evidence of a previously unrecognized Late Cretaceous continental magmatic arc in northwestern Iran, named the Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc.

This arc was active roughly 101- 97 million years ago during Neo-Tethyan subduction. It had been largely obscured by later tectonic overprinting, erosion, and basin burial.

The findings, published in Geoscience Frontiers (open access), come from integrating new zircon U- Pb geochronology, Lu- Hf isotopic data, and whole- rock geochemistry on volcanic and plutonic rocks from the Misho, Sufian, Moro, Amand, Vanyar, and Iskandar regions.

Key results

  • Ages of ~101- 97 Ma for gabbros and granodiorites.
  • εHf(t) values ranging from +9.8 to −7.2, indicating mixed mantle and crustal sources.
  • Arc- like geochemical signatures (LREE enrichment and subduction- related anomalies).
  • Magmatic evolution from juvenile tholeiitic to enriched shoshonitic compositions, linked to increasing crustal assimilation and slab rollback.
  • Structural alignment along the Siah Cheshmeh- Khoy- Misho- Tabriz Fault (SKMT), interpreted as a possible concealed suture related to arc migration and back-arc basin development.

The system is distinct from the better- known Sanandaj- Sirjan and Urumieh- Dokhtar magmatic belts and was later overprinted by Eocene Urumieh- Dokhtar magmatism. Corresponding author Dr. Ali Mohammadi (ITU) noted that the magmatic history of northwestern Iran is more complex than previously recognized.

Authors include Ali Mohammadi, Hadi Shafaii Moghadam, Amaneh Kaveh- Firouz, Anna Lechmann, Fulong Cai, and Lin Ding (affiliations involving ITU, Damghan University, ETH Zurich, and others). Supplementary data (zircon images, geochemical tables, etc.) are available via Mendeley Data.

This discovery fills a gap in the tectonic evolution of the Arabia- Eurasia collision zone and highlights how continental arcs can be cryptically preserved despite later deformation. Note that separate recent work has addressed a broader “missing” Late Cretaceous arc in Iran (e.g., via detrital zircons in the Makran), proposing removal by subduction erosion or strike- slip displacement; the ITU- led study specifically documents preserved remnants in the northwest.

A landscape view featuring Miocene sandstone and basalt formations, with labeled geological features.
Field photographs of sampled outcrops: (a) Sufian Late Cretaceous basalt; (b) Moro Late Cretaceous gabbro; (c) Amand Late Cretaceous gabbro and Late Devonian granite; (d) Vanyar Late Cretaceous basalt; (e) Iskandar Late Cretaceous granodiorite. Credit: Geoscience Frontiers (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102205

The discovery of the previously unrecognized Late Cretaceous Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc in northwestern Iran is significant because it fills a major gap in the tectonic and magmatic history of the Arabia- Eurasia collision zone and revises models of Neo- Tethyan subduction.

Key aspects of its importance

Completes the magmatic record: Iran’s well-documented magmatic belts have long focused on the Jurassic- Cretaceous Sanandaj- Sirjan Magmatic Arc and the Cenozoic Urumieh- Dokhtar Magmatic Arc. This work shows that northwestern Iran also preserves remnants of a distinct, short- lived continental arc active ~101- 97 million years ago. It demonstrates that the region’s magmatic evolution was more complex and continuous than previously recognized.

Evidence of a “missing” or cryptic arc: The arc was largely obscured by later deformation, erosion, and burial. Identifying it through zircon U- Pb ages, Hf isotopes, and geochemistry highlights how continental arcs can leave only cryptic traces yet still record critical phases of subduction. This has broader implications for reconstructing ancient convergent margins worldwide where similar overprinting may hide important geological events.

Constraints on Neo- Tethyan subduction dynamics: The rocks record a transient flare-up during Neo-Tethys Ocean subduction beneath the Iranian margin. Magmatism evolved from juvenile tholeiitic (mantle-dominated) to enriched shoshonitic compositions, tracking increasing crustal assimilation and slab rollback. Structural links to the Siah Cheshmeh- Khoy- Misho- Tabriz Fault (SKMT) suggest this fault marks a concealed suture that accommodated arc migration and back- arc basin development.

Refines regional tectonic models: The findings link Late Cretaceous arc activity to later Eocene overprinting by the Urumieh- Dokhtar system. They improve understanding of crustal growth, arc migration, and the transition from subduction to collision in the Arabia- Eurasia zone- one of the world’s major active collision belts.

In short, the discovery provides direct geological evidence for a missing piece of Iran’s subduction history, improves reconstructions of Neo- Tethyan plate interactions, and underscores that even heavily overprinted regions can preserve critical records of Earth’s tectonic evolution when examined with modern geochronological and isotopic tools.

Diagram illustrating geological changes in the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone and Neo-Tethys Ocean from the Late Jurassic to the Eocene, including oceanic rifting, subduction, and magmatic arc development.
1-s2.0-S1674987125002105-ga1_lrg.jpg (2081×886)
The missing late Cretaceous magmatic arc in the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone (NW Iran): constraints from zircon geochronology, Hf isotopes, and geochemistry – ScienceDirect

The missing late Cretaceous magmatic arc in the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone (NW Iran): constraints from zircon geochronology, Hf isotopes, and geochemistry

It is published under a Creative Commons license (open access).

Core findings (from the abstract and highlights)

The study documents a previously unrecognized Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc in northwestern Iran that was active ~101- 97 million years ago. This Late Cretaceous continental arc is distinct from the better-known Sanandaj- Sirjan and Urumieh- Dokhtar belts. It was largely hidden by later tectonic overprinting, erosion, and burial, then partly overprinted by Eocene Urumieh- Dokhtar magmatism.

Key evidence comes from volcanic and plutonic rocks in the Misho, Sufian, Moro, Amand, Vanyar, and Iskandar regions:

  • Zircon U-Pb ages of ~101- 97 Ma for gabbros and granodiorites.
  • εHf(t) values ranging from +9.8 to -7.2 (mixed juvenile mantle and crustal sources).
  • Arc- like geochemical signatures (LREE enrichment, subduction- related anomalies).
  • Magmatic evolution from juvenile tholeiitic to enriched shoshonitic compositions, linked to crustal assimilation and slab rollback.
  • Spatial association with the Siah Cheshmeh- Khoy- Misho- Tabriz Fault (SKMT), interpreted as a possible concealed suture that accommodated arc migration and back- arc basin development.

Significance (as stated in the paper)

The results fill a gap in the Neo-Tethyan subduction history of the Arabia- Eurasia collision zone. They demonstrate cryptic preservation of continental arcs and refine models of arc migration, crustal growth, and the transition between major magmatic belts in NW Iran.

Supplementary data (zircon CL images, geochemical tables, isotopic data, sample locations, etc.) are available with the paper.

Title: The missing late Cretaceous magmatic arc in the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone (NW Iran): constraints from zircon geochronology, Hf isotopes, and geochemistry

Journal: Geoscience Frontiers, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2026, Article 102205

DOI: 10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102205

Provided: Istanbul Technical University

Authors: Ali Mohammadi (corresponding), Hadi Shafaii Moghadam, Amaneh Kaveh-Firouz, Anna Lechmann, Fulong Cai, Lin Ding

Abstract

The Late Cretaceous magmatic evolution of northwestern (NW) Iran reveals a previously unrecognized continental arc system, the Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc, herein termed the Azerbaijan Continental Magmatic Arc, which is largely obscured by subsequent tectonic overprinting, erosion, and basin burial. Integration of new zircon U-Pb ages, Lu-Hf isotopic data, and whole-rock geochemical compositions from volcanic and plutonic rocks in the Misho, Sufian, Moro, Amand, Vanyar, and Iskandar regions identifies a subduction-related arc system distinct from the Sanandaj–Sirjan and Urumieh–Dokhtar magmatic belts. The ∼ 101–97 Ma gabbros and granodiorites record εHf(t) values from + 9.8 to −7.2, reflecting variable mantle and crustal inputs. Arc-like trace-element patterns, including LREE enrichment and subduction-related anomalies, together with structural alignments along the Siah Cheshmeh–Khoy–Misho–Tabriz Fault (SKMT), indicate arc magmatism contemporaneous with transpressional deformation. The magmatic series evolved from juvenile tholeiitic to enriched shoshonitic compositions, tracking increasing crustal assimilation and slab rollback. This flare-up event represents a transient phase of Neo-Tethyan subduction, later overprinted by Eocene intrusions of the Urumieh–Dokhtar Magmatic Arc. Collectively, these results highlight the cryptic preservation of continental arcs and propose that the SKMT Fault marks a concealed suture accommodating Late Cretaceous arc migration and back-arc basin development in NW Iran.

Energy Security and Climate Realism Usher in Coal’s Rise

Coal demand remains robust globally despite renewable growth and net-zero ambitions.

While headlines often emphasize a coal phase-out, data through 2025–2026 shows demand holding near record levels, driven by energy security priorities, economic growth in Asia, and pragmatic recognition that intermittent renewables cannot yet fully replace reliable, dispatchable power.

From The CO2 Coalition

By Vijay Jayaraj

Much of the global energy conversation still pretends that coal is on its way out. The pretense may be comforting to activists, investors, and policymakers who built their plans for a transition to so-called clean energy that never acknowledged the limitations of solar and wind power. However, the newest work by Lars Schernikau and Portia Roberts, The Coal Reality That Western Policy Ignores, shows the opposite: Coal is not being replaced, but rather being layered on top of everything else.

The data reveal that global coal consumption is accelerating. The appetite for reliable, baseload power drove usage to an unprecedented high of approximately 9 billion tons in 2025.

This volume represents more coal mined and burned than at any time in history, far outstripping levels recorded before the multi-trillion-dollar Western net-zero campaign. In 2025, China alone brought on-line 80 gigawatts of new coal-fired generation – enough to power 60 million households.

The Iran war’s disruption to supplies of liquefied natural gas has further boosted demand for coal as nations switched fuels for electricity production. This strategic imperative drove a massive surge in coal shipments across the Pacific. Bangladesh, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam immediately increased coal imports to avoid blackouts, with China and India leading the shift.

While alternative energy installations have expanded, coal utilization has grown right alongside them. The two asset classes are not locked in a zero-sum game but are growing to meet a voracious demand for electricity and industrial production.

The world’s proven reserves of coal – deposits that can be extracted economically utilizing current technologies – possess an operational runway of 130 to 150 years at today’s consumption rates. Taking into account remaining geological reserves, Earth holds enough anthracite and bituminous coal for many hundreds of years.

Schernikau and Roberts also remind readers that coal sits at the center of food security. Roughly a quarter of the world depends on fertilizers made with coal-derived ammonia. Abandon coal too quickly and you risk not only blackouts but also food production and, ultimately, lives.

This return to dependable solid fuels coincides with a long-overdue collapse of the pseudoscientific architecture that sustained for decades the narrative of a fabricated climate crisis. For years, scenarios of extreme weather based on flawed climate models were systematically weaponized by activist bureaucrats to demand the dismantling of a hydrocarbon economy.

The most prominent of these fabrications was Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP 8.5), alongside its companion RCP 7.0. The international modeling consensus has formally abandoned these deceptions, confirming that RCP 8.5 is officially “implausible.” The apocalyptic scenarios used to terrorize the public and coerce financial markets were never rooted in real-world data.

The institutional framework designed to starve conventional energy sectors of investment capital is unraveling before our eyes. The corporate campaign for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) compliance has had a severe global retrenchment. Global investment consortia, led by institutional giants like BlackRock, have quietly dismantled or significantly downgraded strict climate mandates. International banking groups and global aviation associations have canceled or rolled back aggressive net-zero timelines.

The fantasy of a rapid, painless transition away from hydrocarbons has run headfirst into physical laws and geopolitical necessities. Weather-dependent power technologies cannot run steel mills, operate heavy manufacturing, or secure domestic food supplies. The climate establishment can keep writing obituaries for coal, but the market keeps resurrecting it because there is no substitute for its scale, reliability, and availability.

Stop pretending that every rise in renewables implies a fall in coal. Stop using extreme scenarios to frighten the public into accepting policy mandates that do not fit the needs of growing economies. And stop telling developing nations that they must sacrifice dependable power in the name of predictive models that no longer command trust.

Originally published at PJ Media, July 15th, 2026.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.

Claim: The Iran War is Worsening the Climate Crisis

More absurdity from the climate change causes everything bad brigade.

The reason Iran has a water crisis while other gulf states and Israel do not, is the current regime doesn’t care enough about water security to fix the problems. Their entire attention has been focussed on self-enrichment and the destruction of Israel and the United States since the Iranian revolution.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by  Eric Worrall

More absurdity from the climate change causes everything bad brigade.

How the Iran War Worsens the Climate Crisis

by Sarah Yerkes and Alejandro Martin Rodriguez
JUL 10, 2026 8:00 PM AET

…

Fears of a reignited conflict are rising, even as the true cost of war is only beginning to be tallied. Alongside the thousands of deaths, the destruction of infrastructure, and the global economic costs, the war is exacerbating existing climate vulnerabilities and exposing the people of the region to an increasingly dangerous and nearly uninhabitable reality.

A combination of conflict and climate change has most acutely affected Iran and the broader Middle East and North Africa. Water is rationed, temperatures are breaking records, and droughts have been increasingly severe. Temperatures in the region are expected to rise by twice the global average during the 21st century. Syria, Libya, and Yemen have already endured civil wars and protracted humanitarian crises. Climate change and conflict share a complex, multidimensional relationship, each capable of exacerbating the other.

…

Beyond targeted attacks on desalination plants, strikes against civilian and industrial infrastructure since war started—including strikes on oil facilities and chemical plants—have polluted the region’s already fragile waterways. As World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned, attacks on petroleum facilities in Iran at the outset of the war, including those targeting the Shahran oil depot and the Shahr-e Rey refinery in Tehran, risked “contaminating food, water, and air,” with potentially severe health consequences for children and the elderly.

The conflict is also deepening these vulnerabilities by diverting governments’ attention, capacity, and funding away from the climate resilience and adaptation investments their populations urgently need. The war has caused at least $58 billion in damage to energy infrastructure across the Gulf, and slashed tourism revenues by around $600 million a day since hostilities began. The result is regional governments left with fewer resources to adapt to the worsening climate crisis, including efforts to combat water scarcity.

…Read more: https://time.com/article/2026/07/10/iran-war-middle-east-water-scarcity-climate-crisis/

Articles like this are a reminder of the profound ignorance of some sectors of the establishment media. They’re talking about Iran like it is a normal country, which takes the needs of their citizens seriously.

The reason Iran has a water crisis while other gulf states and Israel do not, is the current regime doesn’t care enough about water security to fix the problems. Their entire attention has been focussed on self enrichment and the destruction of Israel and the United States since the Iranian revolution.

Iran’s water crisis exposes collapse of the regime

Decades of corruption, mismanagement and misplaced nuclear priorities leave Tehran facing rationing, empty reservoirs and potential evacuation

By Ilan Berman – Monday, November 17, 2025

The taps are running dry in Tehran.

Iran’s capital is now experiencing a massive and deepening water shortage. After months of drought and scorching heat, the five reservoirs feeding the city of more than 10 million are mostly empty. Local authorities have been forced to mandate water rationing, and the situation has become so dire that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recently warned that, unless the region experiences rainfall in the coming weeks, the city may need to be evacuated altogether.

…

The reasons have everything to do with the skewed priorities of Iran’s ruling clerical regime. True to their revolutionary pedigree, Iran’s ayatollahs have consistently preferred guns over butter. They have poured billions of dollars into the country’s nuclear program, its burgeoning arsenal of ballistic missiles and its extensive network of terrorist proxies.

What they have not done is make a meaningful, sustained nationwide effort to reverse the country’s worsening water situation. Now that the crisis has truly hit, Iranian officials are predictably trying to deflect the blame onto the Iranian people themselves.

…Read more: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/nov/17/irans-water-crisis-exposes-collapse-regime/

The author of the following article is Nikahang Kowsar, a University of Tehran trained geologist who once stood for election as a reformist candidate for Tehran City Council, but currently lives in exile in the United States.

Grand Theft Hydrology: How Iran’s Water Mafia Engineered a Drought—Then Sent the Bill

Iran’s drought isn’t some angry weather god punishing us with a dry spell.

NIK KOWSAR
MAY 23, 2025

…

Enter the Water Mafia—a term I’ve been using for years, finally getting the attention it deserves after some recent geopolitical truth bombs. Imagine a cozy little cartel of IRGC contractors, consultants with magical impact assessments, ex-revolutionaries rebranded as “hydropolitical visionaries,” and a revolving door of Energy Ministry officials who always seem to retire in Dubai or Vancouver… right around the time the rivers disappear.

These folks don’t manage collapse—they monetize it. Every dried-up wetland, every cracked riverbed, every tanker-truck village is another invoice: signed, sealed, and cashed.

And here’s the real magic: even in wet years, there’s still a crisis. Why? Because they’ve already sucked the aquifers dry—and surprise, they’re not refilling. Iran’s water policy is basically looting the savings account and burning down the vault. What used to be underground reservoirs—nature’s emergency fund—is now either empty or, thanks to land subsidence, permanently damaged. Entire basins have collapsed like a Ponzi scheme in a sandstorm. You can’t store water in a sunken sponge.

…

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just environmental collapse. It’s theft. It’s a crime scene. A slow-motion disaster that was warned1 about, predicted2, entirely preventable, and—most unforgivably—profitable.

…Read more: https://nikkowsar.substack.com/p/grand-theft-hydrology-how-irans-water

The biggest threat to water security in Iran is the Iranian regime. They didn’t have to provoke Israel and the USA into attacking them. They didn’t have to turn a blind eye to corruption, so well connected thieves could loot what public water budget was available. Building more wind turbines in the West will not fix this hideous mess.

The Time article goes on to claim higher CO2 levels will make nations like Iran uninhabitable, but the evidence does not support this assertion.

During the Holocene Optimum, when sea level was significantly higher than today, and temperatures were likely significantly warmer than today, Iran was wet. Large parts of Iran experienced significant monsoonal rainfall.

A Late Pleistocene-Holocene multi-proxy record of climate variability in the Jazmurian playa, southeastern Iran

Author links open overlay panelAlireza Vaezi a, Fereydoun Ghazban a, Vahid Tavakoli b, Joyanto Routh c, Abdolmajid Naderi Beni d, Thomas S. Bianchi e, Jason H. Curtis e, Henrik Kylin c f

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2018.09.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • • Paleoenvironmental changes since the LGM in southeastern Iran were recorded in a sediment core from the Jazmurian playa
  • • The Indian Ocean Summer Monsoon and Mid-Latitude Westerlies impacted the landscape resulting in multiple wet and dry periods
  • • Precipitation changed from a monsoon-dominated regime to one influenced by the Mid-Latitude Westerlies during late-Holocene
  • • Paleoenvironmental changes in the playa are contemporaneous with other global and regional paleoclimatic studies
  • • The study facilitates further linkages between paleoenvironmental changes and advances in the history of human civilization

Abstract

We present a multi-proxy record from a 5-m long sediment core from the Jazmurian playa in southeastern Iran to provide insights into globally-recognized major climatic events since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). In particular, we examined how variability in the Indian Ocean Summer Monsoon (IOSM) and Mid-Latitude Westerlies (MLW) contribute to distinct environmental changes in this arid to hyper-arid region in the interior of West Asia. While interior West Asia showed cold windy conditions during the LGM and post-LGM, southeast Iran experienced quiescent conditions similar to south Asia. The presence of fine-grained sediments, low magnetic susceptibility, and a decrease in aeolian inputs from ca. 21 to 14 cal kyr BP, suggests that effects of both wind and precipitation were minimal during these quiescent conditions. Increased fluvial inputs, coupled with a low abundance of evaporite minerals in Jazmurian sediments, indicated a greater influence of the IOSM between 14 and 13.2 cal kyr BP. In contrast, the Jazmurian playa was dry and dusty between 13.2 and 11.4 cal kyr BP, as reflected by an increase in aeolian sands, and the presence of evaporite minerals. This was followed by a period of strong IOSM activity during the early Holocene, coinciding with higher fluvial input ca. 11.4 cal kyr BP. The early Holocene in southeast Iran was wetter than other analogs in south Asia because of inputs from both IOSM and MWL. Several intense dry periods with sharp increases in aeolian inputs occurred after the early Holocene, due to the southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Precipitation sources changed from a monsoon-dominated regime to one influenced mainly by the MLW during the late-Holocene. These results show that palaeoenvironmental changes in the Jazmurian playa, located at the border of IOSM and MLW zones, were primarily governed by global and regional paleoclimatic changes.

Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018218304358

My point is it’s an oversimplification to suggest warmer temperatures, even if significant further warming occurs, would simply lead to hotter and drier conditions. They could easily lead to wetter conditions, as was the case in the not so distant past.

In summary the most effective short term solution to fixing Iran’s “climate” problems is to get rid of the regime of corrupt incompetents whose maladministration of Iran’s public water systems created this mess. The current Iranian regime has never shown interest in taking water management seriously, and given their track record of using water availability as a coercive political lever, there is no reason to expect they will ever take a serious interest in providing water security for their people.

UAE’s OPEC Exit: Pragmatic Oil Policy, Not ‘Stranded Assets’ Panic

The United Arab Emirates’ announcement on Tuesday that it will leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1st sent shockwaves through the energy world. As the cartel’s third-largest oil producer, with a production capacity approaching five million barrels per day and ambitions to push higher, the UAE was no peripheral player. Abu Dhabi joined OPEC back in 1967 — before the UAE federation existed in its modern form — and the unified UAE carried that legacy for nearly six decades.

From Tilak`s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

The United Arab Emirates’ announcement on Tuesday that it will leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1st sent shockwaves through the energy world. As the cartel’s third-largest oil producer, with a production capacity approaching five million barrels per day and ambitions to push higher, the UAE was no peripheral player. Abu Dhabi joined OPEC back in 1967 — before the UAE federation existed in its modern form — and the unified UAE carried that legacy for nearly six decades.

The exit decision was framed by Emirati officials as a “policy-driven evolution” in pursuit of “long-term strategic and economic vision”. Within hours, a familiar trope emerged among media commentators: the UAE, fearing the inexorable global march towards Net Zero, is racing to avoid ‘stranded assets’. Oil will be left in the ground, you see, because electric vehicles in China and Europe’s Green Deal will soon render the black stuff obsolete.

Watch out for stranded assets!

The stranded assets narrative is the climate alarmists’ weapon of choice. In behavioural economics, the tenet of loss aversion suggests that the fear of a tangible loss is far more effective than hope for putative gains in shaping actions. For over two decades, climate activists and financial pundits have argued that fossil fuels — coal mines, oil and gas fields, pipelines, refineries — would soon suffer the fate of the buggy whip on the eve of the automobile age. The energy transition, they insisted, would ‘strand’ trillions of dollars in hydrocarbon assets as the world turns away from carbon-intensive fuels.

Climate activists have long claimed that technological progress in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies combined with climate policies pursued by governments around the world will lead to substantial falls in demand for fossil fuels. A Financial Times column in 2020, for instance, claimed that the pursuit of climate change policies would “evaporate” a third of the current value of the big oil and gas companies. If countries met their Paris Agreement commitments and kept to the “no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels” target, 50% of all coal, oil and gas resources would be “stranded” and, by definition, have zero value. If the stricter 1.5°C maximum is aimed for, then 80% of the world’s fossil fuels would be stranded.

Citing ‘consensus science’ (an oxymoron), climate change models purportedly linking carbon dioxide emissions with ‘climate risk’ are used to calculate the necessary cuts in oil, gas and coal production. Hence BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and an early purveyor of the ESG movement, warned over a decade ago that “the majority of fossil fuel reserves will need to be left in the ground” if global warming is not to exceed 2°C. Along the same lines, consultants for the OECD asserted that “vast quantities of resource reserves will need to remain underground in order to stabilise the climate”.

Turning to UAE’s decision to exit OPEC this week, an Oxford don in “energy systems” captured the climate-focused zeitgeist in a commentary published on Wednesday. He argued that as China electrifies transport, demand for oil will “plateau”, and the UAE — already ahead of the Saudis with its 2050 Net Zero target versus Riyadh’s 2060 — is wisely sidestepping the risk of unsellable reserves. This, we are told, explains why the Gulf heavyweight is ditching the cartel’s quotas for production flexibility. The UAE can then, in this narrative, produce oil as rapidly as possible before it goes out of fashion.

A Middle East expert from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston commented in Channel News Asia on Thursday that the UAE’s decision to exit “reflects a desire to monetise its reserves and move the oil to market to avoid the risk of stranded assets should global demand fall in any future transition away from fossil fuels. Shorn of the constraints of OPEC quotas… officials in Abu Dhabi will be able to increase production should it wish to do so once the impasse with Iran is broken and the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens.”

To more conventional oil analysts, the “stranded assets” theme is worn and threadbare. Fatih Birol, Chief Executive of the IEA, published the astonishing Net Zero “roadmap” with much fanfare in May 2021, calling for a global stop to all new investments in fossil fuels since they were going to be “stranded” anyway. It duly attracted its share of derision from Gulf oil producers with skin in the game, as in the case of the Saudi oil minister who called the report a sequel to “La La Land”. There is perhaps no player as big as Saudi Arabia that can claim ‘skin in the game’.

Barclays PLC dropped a bombshell white paper in February titled ‘Transition Realism: A Stranded Asset Perspective on the Energy Transition’. The report pulls no punches. After years of being lectured that fossil fuels are the quintessential stranded assets — trillions in oil, gas and coal reserves doomed to remain unused underground as the world races to Net Zero – we now learn that the real risks now lurk in the renewable sector. “Stranded-asset risk is becoming system wide. … Historically, stranding meant coal plants. Today, renewables facing multi-year interconnection queues, curtailment and congestion risks are increasingly likely to be impaired.”

The question of national interest

The UAE has chafed for years under OPEC quotas that capped its output at around 3.4 million barrels per day while its sustainable capacity sits at 4.8 million and climbing. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has invested heavily to expand, only to be restrained by OPEC quotas under Saudi-led discipline.

The Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have compounded the frustration. UAE exports able to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint via the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline have a capacity to transport 1.5-1.8 million barrels of oil per day. By exiting OPEC, the UAE gains the freedom to ramp up on its own terms, redirect capital to secure export routes and align more closely with the US whose shale revolution has already done more to erode cartel power than any UN climate conference ever could. But in the short run, the UAE is constrained by the pipeline capacity until the Strait of Hormuz is released from blockades.

Climate zealots cannot see a sovereign nation’s rational self-interest without projecting their own apocalyptic fantasies onto it. The UAE is not some farsighted convert to the renewables revolution, nor is Saudi Arabia the dim-witted Arab cousin stubbornly clinging to a dying fossil fuels industry. Both are hard-nosed pragmatists operating in a world where oil demand remains robust, geopolitics trumps virtue-signalling and government promises of distant Net Zero targets are worth about as much as the paper they’re printed on.

The real story, buried beneath the stranded-assets hysteria, is one of production quotas, regional rivalries, wars and blocked maritime chokepoints for oil and gas trade, and the enduring power of market realities over green ideology. US fracking — 13.2 million barrels per day in January 2026, up from 5.4 million in 2010 — has achieved what decades of diplomatic arm-twisting could not. OPEC’s 2014 attempt to flood the market and crush American oil and gas producers backfired spectacularly, forcing US shale to become profitable at $50-$60 per barrel.

This is well below the fiscal break-even oil price for most OPEC members, that is, the price that helps balance government budgets. IMF projections indicate that Saudi Arabia requires roughly $95 per barrel to balance its 2025 budget, while the UAE maintains a lower breakeven around $50 per barrel.

And yet the stranded-assets mantra persists. Even as physical Brent crude spikes above $110 amid the Hormuz disruptions — reminding everyone that energy security is not a luxury but a necessity — the Oxford academic and his ilk insist the UAE is acting on long-term demand decline. Never mind that China’s electrification is built on a coal-fired grid that shows no sign of rapid decarbonisation. Government pledges 25 or 30 years out are worth less than used Tesla batteries.

The UAE, sitting atop some of the world’s lowest-cost oil reserves, is hardly about to abandon that absolute advantage on the altar of UN target ‘commitments’ for carbon mitigation. Saudi Arabia’s continued commitment to oil is no act of denialism either. Both Gulf powers understand what Western elites refuse to: global fossil fuel demand is not plateauing. The UAE’s exit is about flexibility — production policy, export security, and foreign policy autonomy — not a sudden conversion to the Church of Climate.

The UAE has distanced itself from cartel constraints while deepening US ties, a move accelerated by the Iran war which exposed the limited nature of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council solidarity. UAE Presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said the Gulf states supported each other logistically in the crisis, but he lambasted their political and military response: “The GCC’s stance was the weakest historically, considering the nature of the attack and the threat it posed to everyone.” Riyadh, for its part, retains the swing-producer role and the fiscal buffers to weather volatility. Neither are ‘unenlightened’; both are playing the long game in a multi-polar energy market where US shale, not solar panels, has humbled OPEC+.

Climate delusions vs petrostate statecraft

The broader lesson is one of persistent delusion. Anti-fossil fuel advocates have spent years portraying every market signal — OPEC cuts, price spikes, producer exits — as proof of their eschatology. Qatar left in 2019 for gas focus; Angola in 2024 over quota disputes; Ecuador and others before them. These were pragmatic adjustments, not harbingers of stranded reserves.

The UAE’s departure, the largest and most consequential since the cartel’s founding, weakens OPEC+ materially and reputationally, but it does so because of internal rifts, US supply abundance and regional conflict — not because Abu Dhabi’s planners have swallowed the IEA’s Net Zero Kool-Aid.

As the Hormuz crisis underscores, the world still runs on oil. Brent’s surge to over $110 after UAE’s exit notice was not a panicked farewell to fossil fuels but a reminder of supply vulnerability. The UAE will produce more, invest in bypass infrastructure and contribute to stability “in a measured and responsible manner”, as its statement noted. It appreciates OPEC’s past efforts while moving on. That is statesmanship, not surrender to the green transition fairy tale.

The climate establishment’s inability to see this reveals more about the ideology of its adherents than about Gulf energy strategy. They project their own wishful thinking — EU Net Zero by 2050, China’s miraculous pivot to renewables, an early plateau to global fossil fuel demand — onto rational actors who understand that energy abundance underpins prosperity and security.

Stranded assets? The only things truly at risk of stranding are the trillions squandered on intermittent renewables that cannot replace hydrocarbons at scale without massive economic losses. The UAE knows this. So does Saudi Arabia. It is high time the West’s virtue-signalling policymakers stopped lecturing them.

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

Chinese-Owned Sanctioned Tanker Tests Trump’s Hormuz Blockade

A U.S.-sanctioned Chinese-owned tanker, the Rich Starry, successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz on April 14, 2026—exiting the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Oman—before making a U-turn and heading back toward the strait on April 15, testing the early hours of President Trump’s naval blockade of Iranian ports.

A U.S.-sanctioned Chinese-owned tanker, the Rich Starry, successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz on April 14, 2026—exiting the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Oman—before making a U-turn and heading back toward the strait on April 15, testing the early hours of President Trump’s naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The Malawi-flagged vessel (owned by Shanghai Xuanrun Shipping Co Ltd and previously known as Full Star) broadcast “Chinese owner and crew” signals during the crossing—a standard safety protocol in tense waters that underscored Beijing’s direct stake.

It carried ~250,000 barrels of methanol loaded at Hamriyah in the UAE and had a Chinese crew. Shipping trackers (Kpler, LSEG, MarineTraffic, Bloomberg) confirmed it as the first sanctioned ship to complete an outbound passage since the blockade began, despite initial hesitation and U-turns by other vessels near Iran’s Qeshm Island.

Trump’s operation, announced to ramp up pressure on Iran amid stalled ceasefire talks, targets vessels entering or exiting Iranian ports or paying tolls to Tehran.

U.S. Central Command initially reported no successful passages in the first day, with several ships turning back after radio warnings.

However, real-time AIS and satellite data revealed gaps: the Rich Starry slipped through on its second attempt, and at least one other sanctioned tanker (e.g., Russia-linked) showed movement.

The 21-mile-wide strait—handling ~20% of global oil trade historically—saw sharply reduced traffic overall, but commercial (non-Iran-bound) vessels continued at lower volumes.

No kinetic interdictions or seizures have been reported; enforcement has relied on warnings and deterrence so far.

By April 15, the Rich Starry reversed course in the Gulf of Oman and was sailing back toward the strait, per updated tracking data.

Analysts note this could reflect caution, mechanical issues, or a deliberate probe of enforcement limits rather than a full breakout.

It did not appear to have loaded Iranian cargo on this leg.

Reactions

China: Strongly criticized the blockade as “dangerous and irresponsible,” stressing the strait’s status as an international waterway. Beijing remains a top buyer of discounted Iranian oil via shadow-fleet tactics.

U.S.: The administration frames it as maximum pressure to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and proxy activities. Trump has floated resumed talks and even suggested opening the strait partly for China’s benefit if Beijing withholds weapons support to Iran.

Markets: Oil prices remain volatile amid fears of broader disruptions, though the Rich Starry’s methanol (not crude) cargo limited immediate shock.

This episode highlights the practical limits of enforcing a blockade in one of the world’s busiest chokepoints: distinguishing shadow-fleet vessels from legitimate traffic, avoiding escalation with major powers like China, and managing electronic interference/AIS spoofing common in the region.

While the U.S. naval presence deters many ships, the Rich Starry’s transit (and quick reversal) shows how ownership signals, false flags, and third-party involvement can complicate real-time interdiction.

It fits a pattern of Iran-China sanctions-evasion networks that have sustained Tehran’s oil revenue despite years of U.S. pressure.

For now, the blockade has reduced Iranian-linked flows without triggering a full maritime crisis, but sustained enforcement risks higher global energy prices, rerouting, or diplomatic fallout.

Trump has signaled flexibility (e.g., potential talks in coming days), while Beijing and Tehran portray the move as ineffective bluster.

The incident is an early, high-profile test of the policy’s teeth—commercial data shows partial success in disruption, yet clear vulnerabilities remain.

Outcomes will hinge on whether the U.S. tightens rules of engagement, diplomacy advances, or more vessels (Chinese, Russian, or Indian-linked) probe the line.

Global energy markets and Gulf security remain on edge.

Shadow fleet tactics:

Shadow fleet tactics (also called “dark fleet”) refer to a sophisticated set of deceptive maritime practices used primarily to transport sanctioned oil and petroleum products from countries like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela to buyers (especially China and India) while evading Western sanctions, price caps, and tracking.

These fleets consist of hundreds of aging tankers (often 15–30+ years old, poorly maintained, and sometimes without proper insurance) operated through opaque networks of shell companies, front owners, and lax “flags of convenience.”

The goal is to keep revenue flowing to sanctioned regimes by concealing the origin, destination, ownership, and cargo of the oil. This generates billions in hard currency for Iran (funding proxies and weapons programs) and Russia (funding its war economy), while allowing buyers like China to purchase discounted crude.

Trump’s Hormuz Ultimatum to Iran: Stop the Tolls or Else – Japan Releases More Oil

Trump posted on Truth Social: “There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait — They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!” He also accused Iran of doing a “very poor job, dishonorable some would say,” of allowing oil to flow freely, despite a fragile recent ceasefire that was supposed to reopen the waterway.

President Trump has issued a sharp warning to Iran over reports that Tehran is charging tolls/fees on oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow chokepoint carrying about 20% of global seaborne oil and significant LNG.

Trump posted on Truth Social: “There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait — They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!” He also accused Iran of doing a “very poor job, dishonorable some would say,” of allowing oil to flow freely, despite a fragile recent ceasefire that was supposed to reopen the waterway.

The strait has been heavily disrupted since the recent US-Iran conflict escalated. Traffic remains largely constrained even after the ceasefire. Iran has reportedly demanded tolls (up to $1–2+ million per ship in some accounts, possibly in crypto or yuan), which the US views as a violation of the ceasefire terms and a threat to freedom of navigation. Trump has floated ideas like a US-Iran “joint venture” on security/tolls in the past, but he’s now drawing a hard line against unilateral Iranian fees.

This matters because any sustained disruption or added costs here ripple globally: higher insurance, rerouting, and crude prices that hit importers hardest.

Compounding the pressure, Japan — which imports over 90% of its oil from the Middle East — is tapping its strategic reserves again. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced plans for an additional ~20 days’ worth of oil release starting as early as May. This follows an earlier massive drawdown (around 45–50+ days equivalent, including ~80 million barrels) that began in March amid the initial disruptions.

Japan has coordinated some of this with the IEA, but the moves signal real concern that Hormuz flows won’t normalize quickly. Refiners are already cutting runs; gasoline and energy prices in Japan (and elsewhere) have spiked.

This is classic energy geopolitics: the world’s most critical oil artery is still not fully open post-conflict, Iran is testing leverage with fees, and Trump is using his trademark blunt style to push back while keeping options open. Japan’s repeated SPR releases act as a short-term buffer but highlight vulnerability — strategic reserves aren’t infinite, and prolonged tightness could keep global oil prices elevated.

The ceasefire looks shaky, with talks ongoing this weekend. Free, unimpeded passage through Hormuz has been a long-standing international norm; turning it into a toll booth sets a dangerous precedent that could encourage other chokepoint nations. Markets are watching closely — any escalation or further delays will feed the current energy crunch.

Trump’s warning is direct: keep the strait open and toll-free, or face consequences. Whether it leads to de-escalation or more friction will shape oil markets (and inflation) in the coming weeks.

Markets are watching every word. If Iran backs off the fees and traffic resumes, relief could come fast. If not, expect more volatility — and more headlines like this.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Trump warns Iran on Hormuz tolls as energy crunch prompts Japan to release more oil

From The BOE Report

By Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump warned Tehran not to charge tolls on ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, as a mounting global energy crisis prompted Japan on Friday to announce a further emergency oil release.

The Iran war has damaged Gulf energy production, stranded tanker traffic, and boosted oil prices by about 50% in the world’s worst energy shock, with Asian buyers among the hardest hit.

“There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now.”

“That is not the agreement we have!,” Trump said.

Opening the strait at the southern tip of the Gulf to free hundreds of stranded tankers and other vessels was a condition of the two-week ceasefire announced on April 7 after weeks of attacks that have damaged energy infrastructure across the Gulf.

A spokesperson for Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, Hamid Hosseini, had told the Financial Times newspaper that Iran would demand tolls in cryptocurrency during the ceasefire.

IRAN LAYS OUT NEW ROUTE

On Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also set forth a special route for vessels to follow, warning them to sail through Iranian waters around Larak Island to avoid the risk of naval mines in the usual lanes through the strait, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

The conflict has had a global impact well beyond Gulf economies and tourism, with inflationary energy price rises and damage to supply of liquefied natural gas and aluminium, cooking gas for India, helium for Asia’s chipmakers, diesel for farmers, and jet fuel for airlines.

JAPAN PLANS EMERGENCY RELEASE

Japan plans to release an additional 20 days’ worth of oil reserves from May, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told a cabinet meeting on Friday.

Japan is dependent on the Gulf for some 95% of its oil. Takaichi said by May the country should be able to secure more than half of its imports via routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz, without providing details.

With the Gulf effectively shut, Saudi Arabia is managing to export via the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Japan in May is also set to receive four times the U.S. crude it did a year earlier, a trade and economy ministry document showed on Friday.

GULF PRODUCER PLANS29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html

Saudi overnight updated its production status, with state news agency SPA reporting that Iranian attacks had cut oil production capacity by around 600,000 barrels per day and flows on its East-West Pipeline to Yanbu by about 700,000 bpd.

Top exporter Saudi Aramco has asked its clients to submit nominations for May cargoes loading from Yanbu and Ras Tanura, two sources said, with Ras Tanura loadings dependent on the strait reopening.

Kuwait Petroleum Corp has provided April loading dates on free-on-board basis, two sources said, but these also depend on strait sailings resuming.

Last month, KPC declared force majeure on deliveries in light of the Gulf being closed.

IRANIAN CRUDE AT PREMIUM TO BRENT

Iran’s crude exports remain largely unfettered, with Chinese independent “teapot” refiners, its biggest buyers, paying premiums to Brent for the first time in years.

Iranian oil typically trades at a discount because of sanctions, yet at least two refiners in Dongying, Shandong province, purchased Iranian Light at premiums of $1.50 to $2 a barrel to ICE Brent this week, trade sources said. That compared with a $10 per barrel discount before the conflict.

One source said he believed it was the first time since 2022 that teapots had bought Iranian oil at a premium to Brent.

Brent crude futures were up 1% at just below $97 per barrel as of 1010 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate was up 0.7% at about $98.50.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Jonathan Saul and Ahmad Ghaddar in London; Katya Golubkova and Yuka Obayashi, Kaori Kaneko and Yoshifumi Takemoto in Tokyo; Florence Tan, Siyi Liu and Trixie Yap in Singapore; writing by Jason Neely; editing by Jan Harvey)

Saudi Aramco

Europe’s Hormuz Armageddon

European political and intellectual elites have spent the past few decades pushing the risk of imminent Climate Armageddon. Some of us can still picture the young Joschka Fischer, a Leftist of the Greens party who took oath of office as Environment Minister in the German state of Hesse wearing sneakers and jeans in 1985.

From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

Its Father Jupiter, not Mother Gaia, that the haughty Europeans should have prayed to.

European political and intellectual elites have spent the past few decades pushing the risk of imminent Climate Armageddon. Some of us can still picture the young Joschka Fischer, a Leftist of the Greens party who took oath of office as Environment Minister in the German state of Hesse wearing sneakers and jeans in 1985.

Since then — in the name of Gaia, the Greek Goddess of Earth – they have bludgeoned their citizens and straightjacketed their once mighty corporate titans that dominated the global chemical, automotive and precision engineering industries through most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Germany’s Energiewende, the EU’s Green New Deal and the UK’s Climate Change Act unleashed punitive green mandates and carbon taxes. The Obama and Biden administrations joined Brussels in setting virtuous examples of ‘climate leadership‘, a defining criterion of energy policy in Western Europe and the US with the significant exception of President Trump’s two administrations. China, India and Russia and others in the Global South went along with the virtuous ride, but only so far as necessary to benefit from the promise of climate finance and reparations.

Alas, the Western alliance bet on the wrong god. It’s not Gaia but Neptune, the Roman God of the Seas, that threatens Western Europe with Armageddon right now. Europe’s civilisational threat is not from a ‘climate crisis’ but from a crisis in supplies of essential fossil fuels and collateral products such as fertilisers shipped through the Strait of Hormuz – the very commodities demonised by the Gaia cult. To be fair, it’s not Neptune causing tempests for wind-sailed boats that is at fault. But once Mars, the God of War, invokes his passions over Neptune’s domain, it behoves us to pay attention and understand maritime chokepoints and physical geography.

The unprecedented Strait of Hormuz closure

The Strait of Hormuz, connecting the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world, has always been the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, carrying roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG and delivering cargoes from Middle East producers mainly to Asia, with smaller volumes to Europe, the US and the rest of the world. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz is also affecting about a third of the world’s fertiliser trade, raising prices 30% to 40% and threatening food supply security around the world.

It also accounts for large shares of the global supply of sulphuric acid and helium, which are key to important chemical processes in fertiliser manufacturing, phosphate fertiliser production, metals refining, semiconductor fabrication and medical imaging. The Middle East accounts for 45-50% of global seaborne sulphur trade. Qatar alone supplies around 30-36% of global helium production.

Iranian officials have often made threats to the security of the shipping but the Government has never actually attempted to close the straits. The Strait of Hormuz thus has never been blockaded, although shipping traffic was badly affected during the ‘Tanker War’ phase of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. The spate of tanker attacks and vessel seizures in 2019 heightened the sense of vulnerability of Asian countries to disruptions of their oil and gas supplies from the Middle East. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, for instance, stated in May 2019 after the tanker attacks in the straits that it is a “matter of life and death of our country in terms of energy security”.

The US-Israeli strikes on Iran that began on February 28th triggered an immediate cascade in global energy trade. Lloyds of London withdrew marine insurance, tankers turned away and maritime traffic traversing the strait collapsed by over 90%. Oil prices have surged more than 50% and the International Energy Agency and other analysts quantified the shock at 11-15 million barrels per day or roughly 10-15% of global supply. Analysts now forecast Brent between $150 and $200 under sustained disruption, especially if Kharg Island is hit. The energy arithmetic is merciless. Between 10-15% of world oil supply has effectively gone offline. Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant, the world’s largest gas liquefaction plant, with a capacity of 77 million tons per annum, lost 17% of its LNG capacity after an Iranian counterstrike, with repairs projected to take five years and costing $20 billion in lost revenue.

If there is no resolution to the war within the next few weeks, what could be a temporary and costly disruption to global energy and fertiliser trade would turn into a structural rupture in the fabric of the global economy with catastrophic impacts on people’s livelihoods around the world. The short-term pain will be manageable except for the most vulnerable countries, particularly some of the net energy-importing countries in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, which are already showing signs of stress .

But a longer-term scenario for the closure of the strait is catastrophic. As always, when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. The worst of its impact will fall on the most vulnerable in the poorer developing countries, dropping back into poverty and deprivation as energy and food prices soar. In the developed world, it is Western Europe and UK – already struggling with green policy-induced de-industrialisation, high energy prices and deficit financing of overly-generous social welfare states – that face devastation.

Having already literally burned their energy bridge with Russia (in the form of cheap piped natural gas via Nord Stream), they will now have to compete with rich Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea for spot LNG cargoes, facing eye-watering prices for all those without long term LNG supply contracts.

The collapse of the old energy order?

Just over 80 years ago, in 1945, Franklin Roosevelt sealed the foundational bargain with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud aboard a US Navy destroyer in the Red Sea: American military protection for the House of Saud in exchange for secure Arabian oil flows to Western markets and the recycling of petrodollars into US Treasuries.

That pact, which underwrote Bretton Woods long after Nixon abandoned gold convertibility in 1971, is under increasing stress. The crossing of the global financial Rubicon occurred when the collective Western alliance expropriated half of the Russian Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves held offshore – which had totalled some $630 billion – and blocked key Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payments system in 2022 upon the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. For developing countries such as Brazil, India, China and South Africa among others in the BRICS+ bloc, they see an imperative to ensure they do not become the next victims of a globalising West wielding its dominance in international financial institutions. Today, for many leaders in the Global South, the “rules based international order” continually proclaimed by Western leaders might appear as cruel deception.

The petrodollar is fraying at the edges as Tehran’s gunboats, drones and missiles effectively convert the waterway into an IRGC-operated toll booth. Some 26 ships have been granted safe passage through the Strait by the IRGC, paying a reported $2 million per tanker fee predominantly in petroyuan, crypto or gold. According to Pepe Escobar writing for the financial blog ZeroHedge, IRGC-linked brokers run background checks on vessel ownership, flag, cargo and crew and approved tankers receive VHF clearance through a narrow five-mile corridor between Qeshm and Larak island. Each transaction bypasses SWIFT and trade sanctions simultaneously. What years of BRICS declarations could not achieve, a de facto chokepoint has delivered under fire. Multipolarity is being born in the Persian Gulf (and in Ukraine’s Eastern provinces), not in conference rooms.

Western Europe’s energy karma

Europe is the first developed regional energy domino to fall. For two decades the continent has pursued an ideological energy experiment: Energiewende, nuclear phase-outs, punitive carbon pricing and ever-escalating Net Zero targets that deliberately sever its access to affordable, dispatchable hydrocarbons. The latest EU Parliament commitment to 90% CO2 cuts by 2040 is merely the latest chapter in that self-harm. The result, even before Hormuz, was Europe’s industrial base hollowing out, households paying the highest electricity prices on earth and an economy dependent on expensive spot market LNG cargoes (relative to long term LNG sales contracts). With a history of banning fracking, shutting down nuclear and coal power plants and marginalising the full potential of North Sea resources (with the non-EU exception of Norway), the EU and UK face their energy karma. Haughty Europeans are paying the price for their own energy folly.

Now the bill is due in full. Asia is already rationing, since 80% of the oil and 90% of the natural gas that normally flowed through the strait went east to Asia. Countries there are now rationing fuel, ordering workers to stay home two to three days a week and desperately shifting back to coal for power generation. Rich Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore can still compete for remaining cargoes. Poorer ones — India foremost among the large developing countries — have already begun rationing petrochemicals and LPG. China has ordered its top refiners to suspend exports of diesel and gasoline, prioritising domestic demand and drawing down on its massive crude oil reserves. Japan, Korea and India have already announced a return to coal to offset the loss of 10-15 million barrels per day from global oil markets. Sub-Saharan Africa, lacking the financial firepower, slides toward energy shortages and the civil strife that follows.

The broader strategic shift is now unmistakable. The United States, the world’s largest oil producer and a net exporter of refined products, retains strategic depth; Europe possesses no such buffer. Washington retains leverage: shale output may have plateaued, but the US can still calibrate exports to shield domestic gasoline prices ahead of US mid-term elections. Geopolitically, Europe’s humiliation is total. Europe’s sanctions on Russia — intended to cripple Moscow — have boomeranged into a structural energy crisis for UK and Western Europe. The same policymakers bet the continent’s future on intermittent renewables now confront the logical endpoint of their strategy. Its leaders have burned every bridge to Moscow. Russia continues exporting oil as the US temporarily lifted sanctions in mid-March to alleviate the price impact on global oil markets.

The trillions of dollars spent globally subsidising renewables and EVs over the past two decade now stands exposed as the most expensive strategic misallocation in modern history. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has shown that access to affordable, abundant supplies of oil and gas remain critical to national survival. The green transition was never a transition. It was a self-imposed vulnerability that has left Europe strategically naked in a multipolar energy contest.

The physics of hydrocarbons

European policymakers speak of rationing, rolling blackouts and tighter border controls as though these can substitute for energy realism. They cannot. The rational course — lift sanctions on Russia, negotiate seriously over Ukraine, abandon the Net Zero dogma — is politically radioactive precisely because it requires admitting that their energy policy is Lysenkoism reborn. Yet the alternative is civilisational erosion: de-industrialisation, supply-chain collapse and the permanent loss of strategic autonomy.

History is rarely kind to civilisations that mistake ideology for physics. The Strait of Hormuz has delivered a corrective lesson written in energy geopolitics. Fossil fuels do not negotiate with virtue signals. Supply chains do not run on Brussels’s green slogans. And the haughty European ruling class that alienated hydrocarbon suppliers while betting the continent’s future on intermittent wind and solar is discovering the limits of its own propaganda. Europe’s Hormuz Armageddon is not merely an energy crisis. It is the moment the post-war geopolitical illusion ends — and the real multipolar world, cold, hard and unforgiving, begins.

A version of this article was first published in the Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2026/04/02/europes-hormuz-armageddon/)

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former (cancelled) contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

The word “nuclear” in Iran, what is the issue?

All the drama currently unfolding in Iran is reaching a crossroads, or maybe a fork in the road, or, more likely, a spaghetti junction on the freeway.

From CFACT

By Kelvin Kemm

All the drama currently unfolding in Iran is reaching a crossroads, or maybe a fork in the road, or, more likely, a spaghetti junction on the freeway.

There certainly is turmoil and a tangle of events unfolding, with many Middle Eastern countries now getting involved, intentionally or unintentionally. Of course, with the effectiveness of modern communications platforms, there’s a torrent of news, but sadly, certain people are becoming more and more skilled at presenting fake news. So one has to carefully examine the news items to see if they are intentionally misleading, placed by some government or formal organization, or possibly placed by some person having fun operating from a basement at home.

Anyway, all in all, what has repeatedly emerged from the Iran drama is the word “nuclear.”

So the U.S. used big bunker-busting bombs to disrupt nuclear “things.” So one has to ask, “Why did they do this? What “things,” and what for? What is the nuclear fuss?”

Another term linked to nuclear in Iran has been “enriched.” So what is this?

Well, let me explain. Way back, a century ago, physicists started to realize that scientific theory said that there was, in principle, a huge amount of energy locked up inside the nucleus of an atom.

The calculations said that if you break a nucleus in half, so to speak, then the energy would come out. But atoms are very small, so the energy would be very little. However, if you can get millions of atoms to do this in rapid succession, that would add up to a huge amount. Imagine a dramatic break at the start of a game of snooker, in which the white ball causes balls to fly off all over the table. Physicists call that a chain reaction when it happens to atoms. One atom splitting, when it is given a good chop, is called fission. The atom which is easiest to fission is uranium because it is the largest naturally occurring atom and is on the verge of splitting anyway.

During World War II, under the Manhattan Project, the first atomic bombs, as they were called then, were developed. The term “atomic” is actually wrong. Instead, today we use the correct term and refer to nuclear weapons.

They used uranium. That is a big snag.

There are two different isotopes of uranium. An isotope is a nucleus which is slightly different to its sibling by having one, two, or three neutrons extra. Two different isotopes behave exactly the same as each other chemically. So you can’t separate them chemically, like separating a mixture of sugar and salt by dissolving them differently. The only difference with isotopes is the weight of a couple of neutrons — in other words, incredibly small.

The snag is that uranium comes in two isotopes. There is U-235, and the other is U-238. When you dig uranium out of the ground, it comes out as 99.3% U-238 and only 0.7% of U-235. But it is the U-235 which will go bang in a nuclear weapon. So natural uranium will not work in a nuclear weapon. Ideally, you need pure U-235 to make a good bang.

So scientists have to take the natural uranium and remove U-238 atoms, one by one, and put them aside.

That process is called enrichment. It is incredibly difficult to do.

Actually, fabricating a nuclear weapon is not too difficult. The really difficult process is producing the enriched uranium. For a weapon, you need to enrich to 90%.

After scientists saw the big nuclear explosions during WW II, they said something like; ‘Gee whizz, look at that blast, I wonder if we can do that slowly, and extract the energy gently?’ The answer was yes. That is called a nuclear reactor.

You don’t want a bang in a reactor. It turned out that you only need an enrichment of about 5% for a conventional nuclear reactor. For a modern Small Modular Reactor, you need about 10% enrichment, or maybe 15%.

As a result, some years ago, international nuclear authorities got together and decided that an enrichment level below 20% is considered commercial, but above 20% is going towards the military. No country needs to go above 20% if it has peaceful nuclear intentions.

Over the last few years, it was determined that Iran had enriched quite a significant quantity of uranium up to about 60%. People asked why. When no acceptable answer was provided, it was worrying.

So the U.S. decided to destroy the 60% enriched material, or at least to bury it under tons of rubble.

So that is why the word “nuclear” has been a significant feature in the Middle Eastern drama.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Kelvin Kemm

Dr Kelvin Kemm is a South African nuclear physicist and has been a CFACT Senior Advisor for over two decades. He is Chairman of Stratek Holdings, a nuclear project management company, and is past Chairman of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa).He has given both Congressional and Senate briefings in Washington DC. He has been guest speaker at over 20 US universities, and most recently gave a guest presentation in New York City. He has presented evidence to the Legislature of the State of Maine concerning nuclear power.

University of Arizona speech & don’t tap into depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In Episode 545 of District of Conservation, Gabriella recaps her trip to Arizona and discusses the impact of U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran and domestic energy prices. Tune in to learn more!

From CFACT

By Gabriella Hoffman

“Even if Trump had the funds to fill up the SPR, barrels can only be added at a rate of ~3 million barrels / month. Given that it currently has 415 million barrels, it would take 7–8 years to fill the SPR up to its 714 million-barrel capacity. Some say it could be done a little faster, but the fact remains it cannot be done overnight, and Trump couldn’t have done it during his 13 months in office so far.” – Chris Martz

In Episode 545 of District of Conservation, Gabriella recaps her trip to Arizona and discusses the impact of U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran and domestic energy prices. Tune in to learn more!

Listen on Apple Podcasts

EP 579: BAAJA Blast: Permitting Reform or Bust – District of Conservation

In Episode 579 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the permitting reform bill – aka BAAJA – that is gaining traction in Congress now. The Senate will hold a cloture vote starting at 3:30pm ET in a motion to proceed. Gabriella discusses the status quo without permitting reform, how BAAJA is good for the environment and affordability. Tune in!SHOW NOTESBipartisan Policy Center: BAAJA ExplainerEstimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
  1. EP 579: BAAJA Blast: Permitting Reform or Bust
  2. EP 578: Midterms, CO Amendment 83, Disneyland Goes Electric
  3. EP 577: Kaylyn Glenn – Florida Gladeswoman & Conservationist
  4. EP 576: Chiricahua National Park & Energy Security Index
  5. EP 575: Menhaden Madness (ft. Whit Fosburgh, Forage Fish Campaign)

Iran Nearly Crippled Global Energy, But Trump Found A New Weapon

As energy markets reel from the U.S.’ war with Iran, the Trump administration is racing against time to insulate Americans from any more pain at the pump.

From Watts Up With That?

From THE DAILY CALLER

Daily Caller News Foundation

Benjamin Roberts
Associate Editor

As energy markets reel from the U.S.’ war with Iran, the Trump administration is racing against time to insulate Americans from any more pain at the pump.

The war began early Saturday when U.S. and Israeli forces launched a massive wave of air strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini and struck over 1,000 military installations. Iran retaliated with both conventional missile attacks and drone strikes, taking major energy facilities offline in the Arab Gulf. Brent crude, the oil blend used as an international benchmark for pricing, has risen to over $80/barrel, raising U.S. gas prices by roughly 20 cents/gallon.

“The price for crude oil is set on a global commodity trading market that is reflected mainly in the Brent crude price. All contracts for sale of crude globally work back from that index price,” industry veteran David Blackmon told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Every $10 increase in Brent crude translates to a roughly 24-cent spike in U.S. gas prices, according to S&P Global. If Brent hits $100/barrel, consumers could fork over nearly $4/gallon at the gas station.

The White House did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. (RELATED: How Rubio Prepared Congress For US Campaign Against Iran)

Iran Lashes Out

The Iranian military took Saudi Aramco oil refineries and Qatar’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility offline with drone attacks after Operation Epic Fury, multiple outlets reported.  In an attempt to disrupt shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran also conducted drone attacks on oil tankers. Global markets and American prices reacted instantly. (RELATED: Trump Says US Decapitated Iran Leadership As They Ate Breakfast)

Iranian strikes punished the U.S.’s Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies, crippling energy production and disrupting exports. The GCC is responsible for nearly 30% of global oil exports.

Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura Refinery partially suspended its operations after an Iranian drone attack on Monday, and the Gulf’s premier LNG producer QatarEnergy was also shut down. The United Arab Emirate’s Fujairah Oil Industry Zone caught fire after Iranian strikes on Tuesday, delaying tanker refueling and introducing further uncertainty.

Additionally, maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz fell to almost zero after a number of Iranian attacks on civilian vessels, according to Joint Maritime Information Center transit advisories.

Initial effects on the U.S. energy market from Iranian strikes and subsequent GCC refinery closures were minimal, but continue to worsen.

Since Operation Epic Fury began, U.S. gas prices have risen from $2.98 to $3.19/gallon, according to AAA. Though a swell for President Trump’s second term, it remains substantially lower than Biden-era highs of over $5.

That prices have only risen modestly so far is partially attributable to the U.S.’ reduced reliance on foreign oil. U.S.’ domestic crude production rose by 50%, net imports declined by 65%, and the GCC’s share of U.S. imports even fell to less than 8% since 2014, the American Petroleum Institute found. But global markets still determine American pricing.

The Strait-Jacket Of Hormuz

Prices could climb higher if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t freely navigable, and maritime insurers’ risk-aversion is keeping ships at port.

“Right now, the stoppage in tanker movements through the Strait of Hormuz is strictly an insurance issue. Insurers are demanding higher war risk premiums from the shipping companies, and those will be negotiated in the coming days,” Blackmon said.

Approximately 25% of the “global seaborne oil trade” transits through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

If negotiations between war risk insurers and shipping companies are resolved within “7-10 days, then the rise in gas prices at the pump will likely remain modest,” according to Blackmon. The industry veteran sees continued insurance withdrawal and Iranian destruction of  “significant critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar” as “a combination that would send oil prices – and thus, gasoline prices – soaring.” (RELATED: Iran War Reportedly Leaves Oil Tankers Stranded Amid Global Shipping Crisis)

On Tuesday, President Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) would provide political risk insurance and even U.S. Navy escorts for merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

The DFC offer “will not resolve the insurance issue for the shippers on a permanent basis – they will still need to work out long-term coverage for their cargoes with major insurance carriers like Lloyd’s of London,” according to Blackmon.

That being said, as a stop-gap measure, the “combination of U.S. DFC coverage and even escort by U.S. Naval vessels through the Strait could provide enough comfort to shippers to get tanker traffic moving through the Strait again,” Blackmon continued.

If the Strait “is effectively closed short term, meaning days or weeks, then I would expect a minimal disruption to the price of oil,” Republican Alabama Senate Candidate and U.S. Naval Reserve Officer Morgan Murphy told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Should it be closed on a protracted basis, weeks or months, then oil prices would potentially climb to levels unseen in years.”

Activity in the Strait is still down 90% since Iran began its campaign to close the shipping route. Murphy noted that the U.S. Navy “has a long and glorious history of keeping sea lanes open.”

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