Tag: Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline

John Kerry: ‘I Feel Deeply Frustrated’

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When former Secretary of State John Kerry stepped into a newly created post as America’s top climate diplomat in 2021, the reputation of the United States abroad was, in his words, “in the crapper,” and the pathway to meeting the world’s climate goals looked, to most, very narrow. Kerry, now 80, is stepping down this week to take a role on the Biden re-election campaign. In the last three years, the climate landscape has changed in two big and contradictory ways: The goal the world set in Paris in 2015…

U.S. Campaign to Isolate Russia Shows Limits After 2 Years of War

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The Biden administration and European allies call President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a tyrant and a war criminal. But he enjoys a standing invitation to the halls of power in Brazil. The president of Brazil says that Ukraine and Russia are both to blame for the war that began with the Russian military’s invasion. And his nation’s purchases of Russian energy and fertilizer have soared, pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy. The views of the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, encapsulate the global bind in which…

Why Volkswagen Is Hiring 3,000 Engineers in China

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A bright orange robot, 10 feet tall, looms over Volkswagen’s new electric car assembly line in central China. It was imported from Germany. The factory’s other 1,074 robots were made in Shanghai. Volkswagen used to import shock absorbers from Central Europe for cars it makes at Chinese factories. Now it buys them from a company in China for 40 percent less. After relying for decades on engineers in Germany to design cars for the Chinese market, Volkswagen has begun hiring for a team of nearly 3,000 Chinese engineers, which will…

Tiny Electric Vehicles Pack a Bigger Climate Punch Than Cars

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In Darbhanga, a new acid-battery rickshaw, like the one Mr. Rai drives, sells for around 175,000 rupees, or $2,100. That’s half the price of a new rickshaw powered by natural gas. Charging the battery costs 20 rupees (25 cents), one-fourth of the price of filling a gas tank. The rebates seem to be working. Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company, is converting its three-wheeled cargo vehicles from gas to electric. Food delivery services are going electric as quickly as possible. Chetan Maini, whose company Sun Mobility builds charging infrastructure, said business…

China’s Economic Stake in the Middle East: Its Thirst for Oil

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China has cast itself as a neutral geopolitical player in the Middle East. It brokered a deal in March to help Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations. And in the days since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, China has tried to keep its distance, with a government spokesman calling the country “a common friend of both Israel and Palestine.” Yet China’s stakes in the Middle East are high, particularly if the war now being fought in Israel and Gaza were to broaden through the region. One big reason: Oil. No…

Fragile Global Economy Faces New Crisis in Israel-Gaza War

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The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the pace of the global economic recovery is slowing, a warning that came as a new war in the Middle East threatened to upend a world economy already reeling from several years of overlapping crises. The eruption of fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, which could sow disruption across the region, reflects how challenging it has become to shield economies from increasingly frequent and unpredictable global shocks. The conflict has cast a cloud over a gathering of top economic policymakers…

Diesel Prices Could Keep Inflation High

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Inflation has been easing around the world. But what happens next could depend partly on the cost of diesel, a wild card that few analysts have been able to predict well. Higher gasoline prices — lit up on giant signs on streets and highways — are typically the most visible, visceral reminder of inflation to consumers. But analysts say diesel can have a bigger impact on inflation because the fuel powers trucks, industrial machinery and agricultural equipment. The prices of heating oil and jet fuel are also closely connected to…

$100 Oil Could Scramble the Fed’s Efforts to Ease Inflation

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What rising oil prices mean for the Fed Crude oil has slipped below the 10-month high it hit on Tuesday. But analysts say the monthslong rally that has sent prices close to $100 a barrel isn’t over, posing a big risk for global growth and complicating central bankers’ efforts to tame inflation. Expect Jay Powell to field plenty of questions about oil prices at his news conference on Wednesday. The crude rally has become a wild card for the Fed chair and other policymakers grappling with high inflation. The Fed…

U.S. Seized Iranian Oil Over Smuggling Incident That Escalated Tensions in Gulf

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The United States government has seized nearly one million barrels of Iranian crude oil that it says was being smuggled to China in violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran, after it raised the threat of prosecution to get the tanker brought to American waters, newly unsealed court papers show. The seizure of the oil from the vessel, the M/T Suez Rajan, is part of a larger and shadowy conflict with Iran. After the tanker began to steam toward the United States last spring, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps seized two oil…

When Great Power Conflict and Climate Action Collide

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Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ The global decarbonization effort is colliding headfirst with the realities of great power politics. China currently controls more than 75 percent of the world’s electric vehicle battery and solar photovoltaic manufacturing supply chains. It also processes the bulk of the so-called critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt and graphite, that are essential to building out clean energy technologies. There is no clean energy revolution without China. What would happen if China decided to weaponize its clean energy resources in the same way Russia recently weaponized…