The U.S. oil industry saw its latest announcement of a big merger this week after ConocoPhillips said it had agreed to buy Marathon Oil in an all-stock deal with an enterprise value of $22.5 billion, inclusive of $5.4 billion of net debt.    The rationale behind the latest deal in the shale patch is slightly different from those of the previously announced...

The state of Vermont has just enacted a law that would take on oil companies to require them to pay for damage caused by their emissions, in a first such legislation in a U.S. state.  The bill, S.259, ‘An act relating to climate change cost recovery,’ became law without the signature of Vermont’s Republican Governor Philip B. Scott.  The law stipulates...

No country in the world formally recognizes the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan, where the extremist group seized power in 2021. But some countries operate embassies in Kabul and have accepted diplomats appointed by the Taliban, which controls Afghan missions in some 14 nations in the region. Russia is the latest country that is set to expand diplomatic...

A potential EU tariff of 20% on China-made electric vehicles would cost China $3.8 billion worth of EV exports to the bloc, but it would also cost EU end-consumers “noticeably higher prices,” Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy said in an analysis on Friday. The EU launched in October 2023 anti-subsidy investigations into EU imports of EVs...

Via Metal Miner India’s steel industry currently finds itself in a stressful predicament. Already reeling from cheap steel imports, the country is now even more worried about a surge of Chinese imports following the imposition of fresh tariffs on Chinese steel by U.S. President Joe Biden. Alongside the U.S., India and many other countries around the...

Africa’s top oil producer, Nigeria, needs annual investments of $25 billion to reach and keep its output at around 2 million barrels per day (bpd), Nigerian oil industry executive Austin Avuru said this week. “We need to invest $25 billion annually to stabilize production at 2 million barrels per day,” said Avuru, who is executive chairman of AA Holdings....