Oil edged down after its biggest weekly loss in two years as traders speculated on the volume of an expected OPEC+ supply hike and fears of Middle East tensions disrupting global oil flows dissipated. West Texas Intermediate crude shed 0.6% to settle near $65 a barrel, following a 13% slump last week. Key members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are ready to consider another 411,000 barrel-a-day increase for August when they meet Sunday, according to several delegates. It would be the fourth month in a row the group agreed on such a bumper hike, triple the initially planned volumes. “Crude futures continue in a consolidation pattern, seemingly finding equilibrium around the $65 a barrel area,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities. “The real test will be if summer travel demand can take up the extra supplies OPEC will be adding. The wild card again focuses on Iran and their compliance.” Hedge funds piled into bearish bets after a fragile Iran-Israel truce removed a super-sized geopolitical risk premium from the market last week. Though Iran remains skeptical the US-brokered ceasefire will last, US President Donald Trump suggested he might back sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic “if they can be peaceful.” Meanwhile, trend-following commodity trading advisers, which tend to exacerbate price swings, liquidated long positions to sit at 45% net long in WTI on Monday, compared with 55% on June 27, according to data from Bridgeton Research Group. Oil is back near where it was before Israel initially attacked Iran on June 13, with futures on track for a 9% loss this quarter, as focus returns to supply and demand balances. Apart from the potential OPEC+ increase, which may worsen a glut forecast for later this year, investors will

Israeli natural gas flows to Egypt returned to normal levels after a truce with Iran allowed the Jewish state to reopen facilities shuttered by the 12-day conflict. Daily exports have climbed to 1 billion cubic feet per day, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation. That’s up from 260 million cubic feet when Israel’s Leviathan gas field, the country’s biggest, restarted on Wednesday, they said, declining to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak to the media.  The increased flows have let Egyptian authorities resume supplies to some factories that had been halted because of the shortages. Israel temporarily closed two of its three gas fields – Chevron-operated Leviathan and Energean’s Karish – shortly after launching attacks on Iran on June 13. The facilities that provided the bulk of exports to Egypt and Jordan resumed operations last week after a US-brokered ceasefire with the Islamic Republic took hold. The ramped-up supplies are a relief for Cairo, which has swung from a net exporter to importer of natural gas in recent years. As Israel and Iran traded blows, Egypt enacted contingency plans that included seeking alternative fuel purchases, limiting gas to some industries and switching power stations to fuel oil and diesel to maintain electricity output. What do you think? We’d love to hear from you, join the conversation on the Rigzone Energy Network. The Rigzone Energy Network is a new social experience created for you and all energy professionals to Speak Up about our industry, share knowledge, connect with peers and industry insiders and engage in a professional community that will empower your career in energy.

California’s energy market regulator is backing off a plan to place a profit cap on oil refiners in the state.  Siva Gunda, vice chair of the California Energy Commission, said during a Friday briefing that the cap would “serve as a deterrent” to refiners boosting investments in the state. Gunda said the commission wants to increase gasoline supply in California after two refineries announced plans to close in the next year, accounting for about one-fifth of the state’s crude-processing capacity. The recommendation marks a reversal from years of regulatory scrutiny by Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Energy Commission that contributed to plans by Phillips 66 and Valero Energy Corp. to shut their refineries. The closings prompted Newsom to adjust course in April and urge the energy regulator to collaborate with fuel makers to ensure affordable and reliable supply. Gunda wrote in a Friday letter to Newsom that the commission should pause implementation of a profit margin cap and focus on fuel resupply strategies instead. It comes more than two years after Newsom and state lawmakers gave the energy commission authority to determine a profit margin on refiners and impose financial penalties for violations. The state will be looking to increase fuel imports to make up for the loss of refining capacity, Gunda said. In the short term, California gas prices could rise 15 to 30 cents a gallon because of the loss of production, he said. A spokesperson for the energy commission said the estimated price increases would be mitigated by the plan presented on Friday. Californians already pay the highest gasoline prices in the country. Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, said residents want the state to transition away from oil and gas yet they need to prevent cost spikes. “We get it,” he said.

Utility regulators from about 35 states are urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to sharply limit a 0.5% return on equity incentive the agency gives to utilities that join regional transmission organizations. “The time has come for the Commission to eliminate its policy of granting the RTO Participation Adder in perpetuity, if not to eliminate this incentive altogether,” the Organization of PJM States, the Organization of MISO States, the New England States Committee on Electricity and the Southwest Power Pool Regional State Committee said in a Friday letter to FERC. The state regulators and others contends the RTO incentive adds millions to ratepayer costs to encourage behavior — being an RTO member — that they would likely do anyway. In 2021, FERC proposed limiting its ROE adder to three years. FERC Chairman Mark Christie supports the proposal as well as limiting other incentives aimed at encouraging utilities to build transmission lines. However, it appears he has been unable to convince a majority of FERC commissioners to reduce those incentives. Christie’s term ends today, although he plans to stay at the agency until at least FERC’s next open meeting on July 24. Limiting the ROE incentive could reduce utility income. Public Service Enterprise Group, for example, estimates that removing the incentive would cut annual net income and cash inflows by about $40 million for its Public Service Electric & Gas subsidiary, according to a Feb. 25 filing at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The utility earned about $1.5 billion in 2024. Ending the incentive would reduce American Electric Power’s pretax income by $35 million to $50 million a year, the utility company said in its 2023 annual report with the SEC. In April, WIRES, a transmission-focused trade group, the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, and GridWise Alliance, a

Dive Brief: Keeping electricity affordable for consumers is a “formidable challenge” amid projections of declining generation capacity reserves and persistent uncertainty around the scale and pace of future load growth, ICF International Vice President of Energy Markets Maria Scheller said Thursday.  Meanwhile, broad policy uncertainty and an increasingly shaky regulatory environment give utilities and capital markets pause about expensive new infrastructure investments that could become stranded assets, Scheller said in a webinar on ICF’s “Powering the Future: Addressing Surging U.S. Electricity Demand” report. Policy conversations around import tariffs, federal energy tax credits and permitting reform are unfolding as the balance of electricity demand shifts from residential and business consumers to technology and industrial customers, which tend to require around-the-clock power, Scheller added. Dive Insight: The coming shift in U.S. electricity consumption represents less of a new paradigm than a return to the industrial-driven demand the country saw from the 1950s into the 1980s, after which deindustrialization and consumer-centric trends like the widespread adoption of air conditioning, electric resistance heating and personal computing shifted the balance toward the residential segment, Scheller said. The shift is important because unlike residential loads, which show considerable seasonal and intraday variation, industrial loads are flatter, less weather-dependent and more sensitive to voltage fluctuations, Scheller said. By 2035, ICF expects nearly 40% of total U.S. load will have a “flat, power-quality-sensitive profile,” and that overall load will grow faster than peak load, she said. In 2030, ICF projects more than 3% annual power consumption growth, compared with less than 2% annual peak load growth, according to a webinar slide. That’s not to say residential demand won’t also grow in the next few years as consumers electrify home heating and buy more electric vehicles — only that data centers and other industrial demand will “dwarf” it, Scheller

Edwin Lyman is director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. A White House executive order issued last month targeting the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees the safety and security of U.S. commercial nuclear facilities and materials, as well as the possibly illegal firing earlier this month of Commissioner Christopher Hanson by President Donald Trump, are raising serious concerns about the agency’s effectiveness as a regulator going forward. While I’ve often been a critic of the NRC for taking actions favoring the nuclear industry at the expense of public health and safety, preserving the NRC in its current form is the best hope for heading off a U.S. nuclear plant disaster like the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns in Japan. My long-standing beef with the NRC has primarily been with its political leadership, not with the rank-and-file staff of highly knowledgeable inspectors, analysts and researchers committed to helping ensure that nuclear power remains safe and secure. These professionals are well aware how quickly things can go south at a nuclear power plant without rigorous oversight. They know from experience what obscure corners to look in and what questions to ask. And they can tell — and are not afraid to push back — when they are getting sold snake oil by fly-by-night startups looking to make easy money by capitalizing on the current nuclear power craze. Technical rigor and expert judgment form the bedrock of this work. But when staff are compelled to sweep legitimate safety concerns under the rug in the interest of political expediency, many will leave rather than compromise their scientific integrity. So there is little wonder that a wave of experienced personnel is headed out the door in the wake of the executive order on NRC “reform,”