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Oil Drops Below $67 as Trade War Fears Weigh on Demand

Oil fell as signs that US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war may hamper economic growth contributed to a bearish outlook for global demand. West Texas Intermediate slid 1.7% to settle below $67 a barrel, following a 2.2% jump on Wednesday that was its biggest gain in almost two weeks. Global oil supply is likely […]

Oil fell as signs that US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war may hamper economic growth contributed to a bearish outlook for global demand.

West Texas Intermediate slid 1.7% to settle below $67 a barrel, following a 2.2% jump on Wednesday that was its biggest gain in almost two weeks. Global oil supply is likely to exceed demand by about 600,000 barrels a day this year as tariffs weaken macroeconomic conditions, the International Energy Agency said. US equities also dropped on uncertainty about the effects of the trade war.

Crude has tumbled from its mid-January highs as the Trump administration’s trade policies threaten a wider economic slowdown and reduce the appeal of riskier assets. On the supply side, an OPEC+ plan to boost production and the prospect of Russian barrels returning to the market also are weighing on prices. Oil briefly swooned to intraday lows after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’s ready to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine if it leads to long-lasting peace.

Bearish economic projections like the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s expectation that the US economy will decline at a 1.5% annualized rate this quarter are threatening prices, according to John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital.

“A negative US economic outlook is problematic for this market,” he said. “That’s really why we’re down near the lower end of the range here at $66. If we break that, we are going to go back down into the $50s.”

US wholesale inflation was unchanged in February amid declining trade margins, though details were less favorable for the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.

Top traders echoed expectations of supply outstripping demand at S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference in Houston, warning that prices could slide lower as more barrels come onto the market.

Oil Prices:

  • WTI for April delivery fell 1.7% to settle at $66.55 a barrel in New York.
  • Brent for May settlement slid 1.5% to settle at $69.88 a barrel.

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Nutanix expands beyond HCI

The Pure Storage integration will also be supported within Cisco’s FlashStack offering, creating a “FlashStack with Nutanix” solution with storage provided by Pure, networking capabilities as well as UCS servers from Cisco, and then the common Nutanix Cloud Platform. Cloud Native AOS: Breaking free from hypervisors Another sharp departure from

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IBM introduces new generation of LinuxOne AI mainframe

In addition to generative AI applications, new multiple model AI approaches are engineered to enhance prediction and accuracy in many industry use cases like advanced fraud detection, image processing and retail automation, according to IBM. LinuxONE Emperor 5 also comes with advanced security features specifically designed for the AI threat

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China Teapots Make Rare Murban Oil Purchases

At least two independent Chinese refiners have made a rare foray into the broader international crude market, snapping up cargoes of Middle Eastern oil for delivery next month. Fuhai Group Co. and Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum Group each purchased around 1 million barrels of Abu Dhabi’s Murban crude, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The trades were handled by international and Chinese firms, they added. The current trading cycle is for crude loaded in July, and any cargoes bought now for June is considered prompt. Traders were mixed on the reason behind the purchase, with some pointing to a supply overhang in the Middle Eastern market – meaning cheaper barrels – and others flagging costlier fuel oil. The two refiners didn’t respond to a request for comment. China’s smaller processors, known as teapots, typically opt for discounted crude from Iran and Russia, and often use fuel oil as a feedstock. However, the dirty fuel is trading at an unusual premium to international benchmarks, while a tax crackdown by Beijing has added to costs. “Straight-run fuel oil is simply not an economic feedstock currently,” said June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities in Singapore. “With healthy simple margins, independent refineries in China are taking this opportunity to buy incremental crude to increase run rates.” Around 12 million barrels of heavy fuel oil and residual fuels flowed into China in April, the lowest since September 2023, according to Kpler. Processing rates by teapots in Shandong, meanwhile, have edged higher since the end of February ahead of peak summer demand, OilChem data shows. Fuhai and Yanchang purchased the Murban cargoes at a premium of around $5 a barrel to August ICE Brent futures, traders said. What do you think? We’d love

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All about All-Energy 2025

The All-Energy conference is set to return to Glasgow this month as it aims to top last year’s record-breaking show. The event, hosted by RX, aims to bring people from across the low-carbon energy sector together for one of the biggest dates in the industry’s calendar this year. All-Energy was initially set to be kicked off by first minister John Swinney. However, due to “an urgent matter”, he will no longer be in attendance. In his place, deputy first minister, Kate Forbes, will join the opening session alongside UK energy minister Michael Shanks, GB Energy chairman Juergen Maier and more as they discuss ‘Britain’s Clean Power Mission’ on 14 May. However, Shanks is also not set to appear in Glasgow due to Parliamentary commitments, instead he will dial in live via the internet. © Erikka Askeland/DCT MediaEnergy Minister Michael Shanks in a recorded message for day two of Floating Offshore Wind conference in Aberdeen. Unlike its contemporaries, All-Energy does not set itself a theme for each outing, instead, it continuously focuses on “Clean Power 2030 and after 2030,” an event spokesperson explained. All-Energy is a two-day event, running Wednesday 14 May and Thursday 15 May, taking place at Glasgow’s SEC. The organisers have also arranged an evening networking get-together at Glasgow Science Centre on the first night. The spokesperson told Energy Voice that it is important that the event touches on “topics for everyone and all the sectors we serve”, these include the move towards net zero, a just energy transition, and grid upgrades, among others. Last year’s conference saw All-Energy’s previous attendance record topped by 21% and although the event’s organisers don’t make predictions on head count, it said that signups for the year were “running 16% above this time last year”. The group behind the UK’s largest renewable

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Consultations look to energy market future

Paula Kidd and Philip Reid, Partners CMS discuss two major consultations that are poised to affect the energy industry in the UK.    About partnership content Some Energy Voice online content is funded by outside parties. The revenue from this helps to sustain our independent news gathering. You will always know if you are reading paid-for material as it will be clearly labelled as “Partnership” on the site and on social media channels, This can take two different forms. “Presented by”This means the content has been paid for and produced by the named advertiser. “In partnership with”This means the content has been paid for and approved by the named advertiser but written and edited by our own commercial content team. On March 5, two consultations in relation to the future of the energy market in the UK were launched by the UK Government – Oil and Gas Price Mechanism (the “Fiscal Consultation”) and Building the North Sea’s Energy Future (the “DESNZ Consultation”). These consultations have been seeking input from various stakeholders to develop robust frameworks that support economic growth, job security and environmental sustainability. DESNZ consultation The DESNZ Consultation set out the UK Government’s vision for transforming the North Sea into a leading offshore clean energy industry while continuing to manage the increasingly maturing offshore oil and gas industry. The overarching objective of the consultation was stated to be to ensure long-term jobs, growth and investment in North Sea communities. The consultation initially set out key policy considerations and outlined its plans to invest in various clean energy industries including offshore wind, carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS), and hydrogen. Key initiatives include establishing Great British Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) to drive clean energy jobs and investment, and supporting the development of floating offshore wind, CCUS and hydrogen projects. The

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Hornsea 4 cancellation puts pressure on AR7

The UK government has proposed changes to the way it procures offshore wind as it now needs to claw back capacity after the massive Hornsea 4 project ground to a halt. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) confirmed changes to the way it will run its contracts for difference (CfD) auctions, starting with the upcoming Allocation Round 7 (AR7), expected this year. Under the reforms, the government would no longer set a monetary budget for the various technologies across the auction, such as the £1.5 billion allocated for offshore wind in AR6, at the start of the auction. Instead, the government would publish a “capacity ambition,” stating instead the amount of power it aims to procure. However, it would still publish a budget for the auction after the process has run. In addition, the reforms envision allowing the secretary of state to see the anonymous bids, including price and capacity. They would use this information to determine how much capacity to procure and to set the final budget. AR7 The amendments will also end flexible bidding for fixed-bottom offshore wind applications. According to the proposals, flexible bids are no longer useful if the auction sets the budget after seeing the bids in advance. Finally, the proposed reforms also considered accelerating the offshore wind part of the auction if developers get their bids in on time and there are no appeals. However, the government said that legislation needed to make change could not be delivered before AR7 – though it did not rule it out for subsequent auctions. © Supplied by OrstedOrsted’s Hornsea One wind farm. It added that the government is exploring non-legislative routes to accelerate a fixed-bottom offshore wind auction in time for AR7. In comments to Energy Voice, Aegir Insights market analyst Signe Tellier Christensen

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Grid queue: Lay of the land for renewables developers is still unclear

Renewable energy developments can only export the electricity they produce to the grid if they have a grid connection. This has created a large queue of developers waiting for a connection date for their projects, which can extend to over a decade in the future. This backlog is causing significant uncertainty for developers and strain on some renewable projects preventing their construction from being progressed. Once they are in it, developers rarely leave the queue even if they ultimately decide that their project isn’t viable. As the queue currently operates on a “first come, first served” basis, it means that viable and ready-to-build projects can be delayed longer than necessary. To help address these lengthy delays and enable new clean energy projects to secure grid connections, a new grid queue management system is being developed by the National Energy System Operator (NESO). Expected to be introduced this summer, this new system aims to ease the current bottleneck by allocating “confirmed connection dates, connection points and queue positions” to projects which are deemed viable and ready to progress over those which don’t meet its criteria. One of the biggest changes for developers will be demonstrating they have secured land rights to keep their place in the queue when satisfying the milestones known as “gate 2”. While this new initiative will be welcomed across the renewables sector, it raises several issues for project developers to consider including how they negotiate new land agreements. NESO has been clear that nothing short of a signed option agreement will be required for projects to qualify for a grid position under gate 2 – an exclusivity agreement or heads of terms will no longer suffice. Although NESO is clear that only projects that are demonstrably viable will keep their place in the grid connection queue, how

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Business leaders and SNP call on Starmer to visit Aberdeen amid North Sea job losses

Aberdeen business leaders and the SNP are calling on the Prime Minister to visit the north-east of Scotland as they blamed Labour policies for yet more job losses in the oil and gas sector. On Wednesday, Harbour Energy announced that it would cut 250 jobs from its onshore operations, accounting for a 25% reduction in headcount. The UK’s largest producer of oil and gas has claimed that the hostile fiscal policy facing oil and gas businesses prompted the decision as it slows investment in the country, opting to allocate funds overseas. On the day of this announcement, Aberdeen South MP and SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn brought the news to the attention of prime minister Sir Keir Starmer. © BloombergEmissions from chimneys at the British Steel Ltd. plant in Scunthorpe, UK. He asked Starmer to “explain to my constituents why he is willing to move heaven and earth to save jobs in Scunthorpe while destroying jobs in Scotland.” The SNP leader was referring to the government’s recent move to nationalise British Steel. The UK government took control of the British steel company from its Chinese owner, Jingye Group, after losses from its steelmaking operations forced it to the brink. Now the SNP MP, alongside his colleagues in Westminster and Holyrood, has written to the Labour Party leader, inviting him to see the impacts his government’s energy policy is having on Aberdeen and its people. “We are writing to you as the local MPs and MSPs for Aberdeen, to invite you to urgently visit Aberdeen to meet with local representatives, businesses, trade unions and workers to hear about the damaging impact that Labour government policies are having on Scottish energy jobs – and to discuss the urgent investment needed to protect jobs and deliver prosperity,” the letter reads. ‘Haemorrhaging investment in

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Tech CEOs warn Senate: Outdated US power grid threatens AI ambitions

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Networking errors pose threat to data center reliability

Still, IT and networking issues increased in 2024, according to Uptime Institute. The analysis attributed the rise in outages due to increased IT and network complexity, specifically, change management and misconfigurations. “Particularly with distributed services, cloud services, we find that cascading failures often occur when networking equipment is replicated across an entire network,” Lawrence explained. “Sometimes the failure of one forces traffic to move in one direction, overloading capacity at another data center.” The most common causes of major network-related outages were cited as: Configuration/change management failure: 50% Third-party network provider failure: 34% Hardware failure: 31% Firmware/software error: 26% Line breakages: 17% Malicious cyberattack: 17% Network overload/congestion failure: 13% Corrupted firewall/routing tables issues: 8% Weather-related incident: 7% Configuration/change management issues also attributed for 62% of the most common causes of major IT system-/software-related outages. Change-related disruptions consistently are responsible for software-related outages. Human error continues to be one of the “most persistent challenges in data center operations,” according to Uptime’s analysis. The report found that the biggest cause of these failures is data center staff failing to follow established procedures, which has increased by about 10 percentage points compared to 2023. “These are things that were 100% under our control. I mean, we can’t control when the UPS module fails because it was either poorly manufactured, it had a flaw, or something else. This is 100% under our control,” Brown said. The most common causes of major human error-related outages were reported as:

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Liquid cooling technologies: reducing data center environmental impact

“Highly optimized cold-plate or one-phase immersion cooling technologies can perform on par with two-phase immersion, making all three liquid-cooling technologies desirable options,” the researchers wrote. Factors to consider There are numerous factors to consider when adopting liquid cooling technologies, according to Microsoft’s researchers. First, they advise performing a full environmental, health, and safety analysis, and end-to-end life cycle impact analysis. “Analyzing the full data center ecosystem to include systems interactions across software, chip, server, rack, tank, and cooling fluids allows decision makers to understand where savings in environmental impacts can be made,” they wrote. It is also important to engage with fluid vendors and regulators early, to understand chemical composition, disposal methods, and compliance risks. And associated socioeconomic, community, and business impacts are equally critical to assess. More specific environmental considerations include ozone depletion and global warming potential; the researchers emphasized that operators should only use fluids with low to zero ozone depletion potential (ODP) values, and not hydrofluorocarbons or carbon dioxide. It is also critical to analyze a fluid’s viscosity (thickness or stickiness), flammability, and overall volatility. And operators should only use fluids with minimal bioaccumulation (the buildup of chemicals in lifeforms, typically in fish) and terrestrial and aquatic toxicity. Finally, once up and running, data center operators should monitor server lifespan and failure rates, tracking performance uptime and adjusting IT refresh rates accordingly.

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Cisco unveils prototype quantum networking chip

Clock synchronization allows for coordinated time-dependent communications between end points that might be cloud databases or in large global databases that could be sitting across the country or across the world, he said. “We saw recently when we were visiting Lawrence Berkeley Labs where they have all of these data sources such as radio telescopes, optical telescopes, satellites, the James Webb platform. All of these end points are taking snapshots of a piece of space, and they need to synchronize those snapshots to the picosecond level, because you want to detect things like meteorites, something that is moving faster than the rotational speed of planet Earth. So the only way you can detect that quickly is if you synchronize these snapshots at the picosecond level,” Pandey said. For security use cases, the chip can ensure that if an eavesdropper tries to intercept the quantum signals carrying the key, they will likely disturb the state of the qubits, and this disturbance can be detected by the legitimate communicating parties and the link will be dropped, protecting the sender’s data. This feature is typically implemented in a Quantum Key Distribution system. Location information can serve as a critical credential for systems to authenticate control access, Pandey said. The prototype quantum entanglement chip is just part of the research Cisco is doing to accelerate practical quantum computing and the development of future quantum data centers.  The quantum data center that Cisco envisions would have the capability to execute numerous quantum circuits, feature dynamic network interconnection, and utilize various entanglement generation protocols. The idea is to build a network connecting a large number of smaller processors in a controlled environment, the data center warehouse, and provide them as a service to a larger user base, according to Cisco.  The challenges for quantum data center network fabric

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Zyxel launches 100GbE switch for enterprise networks

Port specifications include: 48 SFP28 ports supporting dual-rate 10GbE/25GbE connectivity 8 QSFP28 ports supporting 100GbE connections Console port for direct management access Layer 3 routing capabilities include static routing with support for access control lists (ACLs) and VLAN segmentation. The switch implements IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging, port isolation, and port mirroring for traffic analysis. For link aggregation, the switch supports IEEE 802.3ad for increased throughput and redundancy between switches or servers. Target applications and use cases The CX4800-56F targets multiple deployment scenarios where high-capacity backbone connectivity and flexible port configurations are required. “This will be for service providers initially or large deployments where they need a high capacity backbone to deliver a primarily 10G access layer to the end point,” explains Nguyen. “Now with Wi-Fi 7, more 10G/25G capable POE switches are being powered up and need interconnectivity without the bottleneck. We see this for data centers, campus, MDU (Multi-Dwelling Unit) buildings or community deployments.” Management is handled through Zyxel’s NebulaFlex Pro technology, which supports both standalone configuration and cloud management via the Nebula Control Center (NCC). The switch includes a one-year professional pack license providing IGMP technology and network analytics features. The SFP28 ports maintain backward compatibility between 10G and 25G standards, enabling phased migration paths for organizations transitioning between these speeds.

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Engineers rush to master new skills for AI-driven data centers

According to the Uptime Institute survey, 57% of data centers are increasing salary spending. Data center job roles that saw the highest increases were in operations management – 49% of data center operators said they saw highest increases in this category – followed by junior and mid-level operations staff at 45%, and senior management and strategy at 35%. Other job categories that saw salary growth were electrical, at 32% and mechanical, at 23%. Organizations are also paying premiums on top of salaries for particular skills and certifications. Foote Partners tracks pay premiums for more than 1,300 certified and non-certified skills for IT jobs in general. The company doesn’t segment the data based on whether the jobs themselves are data center jobs, but it does track 60 skills and certifications related to data center management, including skills such as storage area networking, LAN, and AIOps, and 24 data center-related certificates from Cisco, Juniper, VMware and other organizations. “Five of the eight data center-related skills recording market value gains in cash pay premiums in the last twelve months are all AI-related skills,” says David Foote, chief analyst at Foote Partners. “In fact, they are all among the highest-paying skills for all 723 non-certified skills we report.” These skills bring in 16% to 22% of base salary, he says. AIOps, for example, saw an 11% increase in market value over the past year, now bringing in a premium of 20% over base salary, according to Foote data. MLOps now brings in a 22% premium. “Again, these AI skills have many uses of which the data center is only one,” Foote adds. The percentage increase in the specific subset of these skills in data centers jobs may vary. The Uptime Institute survey suggests that the higher pay is motivating workers to stay in the

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Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs).  In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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