Oil swung between gains and losses on the back of the biggest weekly increase since June as attention turned to the wider outlook for supply as the US and China made progress on trade. West Texas Intermediate slipped 0.3% to settle just above $61, extending its decline for a second day. Top Chinese and US negotiators said they came to terms on a range of points, setting the table for President Donald Trump and counterpart Xi Jinping to finalize a deal to ease trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies and crude importers. Still, oil was little changed Monday after adding nearly 7% last week when the US sanctioned Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil to squeeze Russia over its ongoing war in Ukraine. The move added output risks to a market that’s showing signs of entering a surplus. Lukoil announced in a statement that it intends to sell its international assets due to the latest sanctions. “The market is taking a breather here,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial. “While US-China negotiations continue, no real outcome has been agreed as of yet…and the sanctions on Russia may halt some shipments though it’s more likely most of that oil will still find a home.” The Trump administration is seeking to make Russia’s trade harder, costlier and riskier, but without forcing a sudden supply shock that might spike global oil prices, officials familiar with the matter said over the weekend. The measures helped oil rebound from a five-month low last week, but part of the move was likely driven by extreme market positioning. Traders had amassed record bearish wagers on the global Brent benchmark in anticipation of oversupply in the next few months. In the meantime, commodity trading advisers, or CTAs, are set to accelerate

UK energy services provider Petrofac Ltd has applied to enter administration after the company’s latest plans to restructure its balance sheet unexpectedly fell through, putting thousands of jobs at risk. The company has applied to the High Court of England and Wales to appoint administrators, according to a statement on Monday. It comes after European grid operator TenneT canceled Petrofac’s work at a large offshore energy project in the North Sea, rendering the financial restructuring unviable.  The firm employs around 7,300 people globally and has been trying to strike a deal with creditors for over a year, while safeguarding key business deals that could keep the firm afloat. Its collapse would raise the pressure on the UK government to protect British jobs, with the Labour administration already coming under fire for blocking new North Sea oil licenses. The filing from the company, which employs about 2,000 people in the UK, adds to a string of challenges facing the government, including a bruising by-election defeat, pressure to raise taxes in the autumn budget, and ongoing public outrage over troubled utility Thames Water, Britain’s biggest and most indebted water supplier.  A representative for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that Petrofac’s administration is a “product of longstanding issues in their global business,” adding that the UK arm is continuing to operate as normal. “The government will continue to work with the UK company as it focuses on its long-term future,” the spokesperson said.  Meanwhile, alternative restructuring and M&A solutions for the group are still being explored with creditors including its bondholder group, Petrofac said. Key Contract Petrofac’s business with TenneT was particularly crucial given it represents over 80% of revenue in the group’s engineering and construction division, according to court documents filed earlier this year. But since Petrofac was not able to meet

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced two new AMD-accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), one of which will be built at record speeds thanks to a new public-private partnership model. The supercomputers will help expand America’s leadership in scientific computing, strengthen national security, and drive the next generation of Gold Standard Science and innovation. With the new public-private partnership model, the Lux AI cluster, powered by AMD Instinct™ MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC™ CPUs, and AMD Pensando™ advanced networking, will be deployed in early 2026 to expand DOE’s near-term AI capacity and accelerate work on critical national priorities, including fusion, fission, materials discovery, quantum, advanced manufacturing, and grid modernization. Lux will provide a secure, open, and efficient AI software stack to strengthen America’s innovation base and enhance U.S. competitiveness. “Winning the AI race requires new and creative partnerships that will bring together the brightest minds and industries American technology and science has to offer,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “That’s why the Trump administration is announcing the first example of a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships with Lux. We are also announcing, as part of a competitive procurement process, Discovery. Working with AMD and HPE, we’re bringing new capacity online faster than ever before, turning shared innovation into national strength, and proving that America leads when private-public partners build together.” “We are proud and honored to partner with the U.S. Department of Energy and Secretary Wright to accelerate America’s AI compute infrastructure,” said AMD chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. “This partnership exemplifies public-private collaboration at its best. With Discovery and Lux, we are delivering leadership compute systems that combine performance and energy efficiency to advance America’s research priorities and strengthen U.S. leadership in AI, energy, and national security.” DOE

U.S. electric utilities are entering a five-year capital expenditure “super-cycle” as they build out transmission and generation networks to meet new demand from data centers, Morningstar DBRS said in a Monday research note. “Investment in electricity infrastructure is projected to be $1.4 trillion from 2025 to 2030, double the amount invested in the prior 10 years,” the firm said. And based on data from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., Morningstar said many regions can expect load growth to increase from previously estimated 6.1% to around 11.6% over the next decade. “The challenges posed by the rapid buildout of data centers are overlaid on existing concerns for most utilities, including decarbonization and guaranteeing the reliability of grid infrastructure while increasing the contribution of renewable power,” Morningstar said. “The projected surge in demand provides opportunities for utilities that must be counterbalanced with structural changes and regulatory support for utilities and rate payers.” “We anticipate that regulated utilities with supportive regulatory commissions, solid credit ratings, and access to capital markets will deploy the needed capex to take advantage of the data center boom,” Bukola Folashakin, Morningstar assistant vice president of corporate ratings, said in a statement. “We expect this capex investment in turn to make such utility locations attractive for more data center construction, potentially creating a cycle of increased revenue for as long as data centers remain economically viable.” Some states — Morningstar named California, Texas, and Louisiana — will see elevated risks of resource inadequacy next year that “in extreme conditions, could trigger electricity shortfalls,” according to the note. Morningstar’s analysis mirror’s recent capital expenditure estimates from the Edison Electric Institute, which expects U.S electricity generation to grow “for the foreseeable future.” The group, which represents investor-owned utilities, said generation rose 3% in 2024 and generation investments as a share of

Dive Brief: The retail price of electricity for residential customers was up 6.1% in August over the same month last year, reaching an average of 17.62 cents/kWh, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s monthly update on electricity released Friday.  Total net generation and retail sales were down slightly, by 0.8% and 0.5% respectively, which experts attributed to a mild summer in much of the eastern part of the country. Nationally, there were 9.1% fewer cooling days this August compared to August 2024, though parts of the West saw between 5% and 50% more.  Natural gas prices were up 47.4% to just over $3/MMBtu, per Henry Hub, and natural gas consumption fell 5.6%.  Dive Insight: Aaron Denman, who heads Bain & Company’s Americas utilities and renewables practice, said the reasons behind the rise in prices are complicated and nuanced, and vary depending on region. “I think if you look at aggregate headline numbers, it’s hard to blame data centers for much of the increase, and I think part of that is just because it’s still such a small percentage of the overall load,” Denman said. “But I think when you get into specific regions, they’re so large, they’re so meaningful, that you can start to see some of that impact.” He said Bain’s projections put data centers at about 40% to 60% of new load growth in the coming years, with manufacturing and electrification making up most of the remainder. He said the longterm fundamentals remain strong for load growth, despite some recent negative economic data. U.S. factory activity shrank in September for a seventh consecutive month, according to Bloomberg. “This [much] load growth, this fast, is going to put upward pressure on residential prices,” Denman said. “We’re going to need to see creative solutions to minimize the impact on particularly residential

In its latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released on October 7, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed that world petroleum and other liquid fuels production outweighed consumption in the first, second, and third quarters of this year. According to the STEO, in the third quarter, production averaged 107.43 million barrels per day and consumption averaged 104.83 million barrels per day. In the second quarter, production came in at 105.06 million barrels per day and consumption was 104.05 million barrels per day, and in the first quarter, production averaged 103.62 million barrels per day and consumption was 102.33 million barrels per day, the STEO highlighted. The last time consumption came in higher than demand was in the third quarter of 2024, according to the STEO, which showed that, in that quarter, production averaged 103.09 million barrels per day and consumption averaged 103.45 million barrels per day. In the first quarter of last year, production was 102.60 million barrels per day and consumption was 101.79 million barrels per day, in the second quarter of 2024 production was 103.23 million barrels per day and consumption was 102.93 million barrels per day, and in the fourth quarter of last year production was 103.83 million barrels per day and consumption was 103.46 million barrels per day, the STEO showed. Looking ahead, the STEO projected that production will average 107.31 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of this year. The EIA forecast in the STEO that consumption will come in at 104.72 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter. In its latest STEO, the EIA projected that production will average 106.39 million barrels per day in the first quarter of next year, 106.97 million barrels per day in the second quarter, 107.55 million barrels per day in the third