Prediction markets now put the probability of the U.S. striking Iran before June this year at 71 percent. That’s what Erik Meyersson, Chief EM Strategist at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB), said in a report sent to Rigzone by the SEB team on Friday. “Brent crude futures rose above $70 per barrel yesterday (it now stands at $69.8), indicative of a substantial risk premium,” he noted. In the report, Meyersson warned that “another war including a naval intervention may bring greater risks of an event in the Strait of Hormuz”. “Given the limitations to [a] direct U.S. military strike, a likely scenario is that the U.S. seeks to start with a naval intervention to intercede Iran’s shadow fleet and sanctioned oil exports,” he said. “This also implies a higher chance of a risk event involving the Strait of Hormuz than last year’s war,” he warned. “The Polymarket estimate of the probability that Iran may attempt to close the Strait is 31 percent, compared to 24 percent on June 11th last year. The oil VIX index is at 55.4 percent, compared to 43.2 percent last year,” he added. “Even the Brent oil price is now on par with the level prevailing just before the June war, despite starting from a lower baseline,” Meyersson continued. “The Brent futures curve has seen a larger shift upwards relative to the period preceding last year’s war. This is the case for both the front-month and 12-year contract,” he went on to state. In a Rystad Energy market update sent to Rigzone just before 3pm GMT time on January 29, Rystad noted that oil prices had “risen sharply to $71.50 per barrel over the past few hours, their highest level since late September 2025, driven by mounting market speculation of an imminent U.S. military strike on Iran”.

TotalEnergies SE said Thursday the under-construction Mozambique LNG is back in full gear after a security-related force majeure declaration that had been in place for about five years. The relaunch comes amid a new legal challenge in France accusing the French energy giant of “complicity in war crimes” over the alleged 2021 killing by Mozambican armed forces of dozens of civilians at the project site in Cabo Delgado province’s Afungi peninsula. TotalEnergies has denied any wrongdoing. And on November 7, 2025 the company and its Mozambique LNG partners lifted the freeze declaration announced April 26, 2021. Operator TotalEnergies said that in a meeting Thursday in Afungi, Mozambican President Daniel Chapo confirmed to TotalEnergies chair and chief executive Patrick Pouyanné “all measures taken to address the security and the continued cooperation with Rwanda”. “Construction activities have now restarted both offshore and onshore at Afungi site, with over 4,000 workers currently mobilized of which over 3,000 are Mozambican nationals”, TotalEnergies said in an online statement. “First LNG is expected in 2029 as the project progress is currently at 40 percent – almost all engineering and procurement of main equipment have been executed during the force majeure period”. Mozambique LNG is designed to develop about 65 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas deposits in the northern coast of the Eastern African country to deliver an initial 13 million metric tons per annum (MMtpa) of liquefied natural gas. The partners plan to expand that to up to 43 MMtpa according to the project website. Chapo was quoted in Thursday’s statement as saying, “It will have a direct and significant impact on job creation, both in construction phase and in the operational phase, stimulating the national labor market and promoting the capacity-building of Mozambican manpower”. “At the same time, it consolidates Mozambique’s positioning as a regional

Ukraine is ready to halt strikes on energy infrastructure if Russia agrees to abide by a US proposal for a weeklong truce, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. “If Russia does not strike our energy infrastructure – generation facilities or any other energy assets – we will not strike theirs,” Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv late Thursday. “We want to end the war and we are ready for de-escalation steps.” US President Donald Trump said earlier at the White House that he’d asked Russian leader Vladimir Putin “not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that.” So far, the Kremlin hasn’t confirmed an agreement to halt missile and drone attacks that have devastated energy infrastructure in Ukraine, causing power and heating outages during an extreme winter cold snap. Temperatures are forecast to drop below minus 20C (minus 4F) at night, adding to wartime hardships for the weary population with many buildings in Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine plunged into cold and darkness during protracted blackouts. With the frontline in eastern and southern Ukraine shifting only gradually as the war nears its fourth full year, Russia has sought to break morale among Ukrainians by stepping up attacks on civilian infrastructure. Ukraine has responded by waging a campaign to strike Russia’s oil refineries and other infrastructure, aiming to undermine its ability to fund the war with income from energy sales. Trump’s proposal for an energy truce to allow greater space for negotiations aimed at ending the war is “an opportunity rather than an agreement,” Zelenskiy said. “Whether it will work or not, and what exactly will work, I cannot say at this point.” Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine overnight, launching one ballistic missile and 111 combat drones, Ukraine’s Air Force said on Telegram. Still, the scale was far

Brent crude futures settled above $70 a barrel for the first time since July after US President Donald Trump warned Iran to make a nuclear deal or face military strikes. The global oil benchmark rose 3.4% on Thursday, marking a third straight day of gains, while US counterpart West Texas Intermediate topped $65. Oil prices climbed amid the renewed risk of conflict that could disrupt crude exports out of Iran or ripple effects across global markets if a critical shipping route is blocked. Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday that US ships he ordered to the region were ready to fulfill their mission “with speed and violence, if necessary.” The commodity rallied even higher after the Associated Press reported that Iran issued a warning to ships at sea that it planned to run a drill next week that would include live firing in the Strait of Hormuz, citing two Pakistani security officials and the EOS Risk Group. The report stoked fears of a potential closure of the narrow passage that separates Iran and the Arabian peninsula, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes. Iran itself accounts for about 3% of global supply, producing roughly 3.3 million barrels per day. Crude has rallied so far in 2026, countering expectations for a market pressured by significant oversupply. Instead, geopolitical tensions from Iran to Venezuela and major supply disruption in Kazakhstan have helped to bolster prices. Prices eased off intraday highs Thursday after equities weakened and the dollar briefly surged, before paring gains, making commodities priced in the currency less attractive. Oil has been trading more closely in tandem with the US dollar amid concerns over currency debasement. Trump’s latest threats have injected a risk premium into prices. Bullish call options have been more expensive than bearish

Venezuela’s interim leader is playing to three different audiences with her plans for Venezuela’s oil sector: foreign investors, the Donald Trump administration, and her own socialist supporters. None of them is happy with it.  Under pressure from Washington, acting President Delcy Rodríguez is seeking to revive the nation’s energy industry by opening it to foreign oil companies. The plans have sparked a backlash from across the political spectrum.   Some of Rodríguez’s allies in congress and the labor unions see her hydrocarbons law as a betrayal of her mentor, former President Hugo Chávez, who increased state control over the sector. At the same time, some international lawyers say it fails to provide adequate safeguards for investors in a country where they don’t have clear legal protection. And the Trump administration says it doesn’t go far enough in opening up the industry to private capital.   The law has put Rodríguez in a rare political bind in a country where the ruling party is accustomed to imposing its policies on the nation without significant resistance. Now the government is instead being forced to make difficult tradeoffs to balance demands from competing interests. Socialist advocacy group Plataforma Ciudadana en Defensa de la Constitución attacked the reform as a “sell-out,” and a demonstration “of the submissive attitude of certain national elites.” The reform “dismantles sovereignty control over the trading of our resources,” said former national assembly energy committee head William Rodríguez. He called it a measure “to increase the profits of the oppressor’s multinational corporations.” But the multinational corporations aren’t wild about it either.  “This is a band-aid approach to a law, not a integral approach,” Miami-based arbitrator and energy specialist Elisabeth Eljuri said. “Partial reforms like this one do not represent the needed legal framework for international investment.”  The law seeks to entice foreign

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