Oil edged higher after a volatile session as President Donald Trump fanned speculation that the US may join the Middle East conflict. West Texas Intermediate rose 0.4% to settle above $75 a barrel, the highest closing price since January. Markets swung between gains and losses in a $3 range amid sharp reactions to developments in the Israel-Iran conflict. “Implied volatility continues to climb, signaling that underlying market anxiety remains elevated — even if that’s not fully reflected in price action,” said Rebecca Babin, a senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth Group. Trump said Iran squandered the chance to make a deal over its nuclear enrichment, but declined to say whether the US plans to join Israel’s offensive aimed at destroying the program. “I may do it. I may not do it,” Trump told reporters Wednesday at the White House when asked if he is moving closer to bombing Iran. “I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Earlier, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country won’t surrender to Israel after Trump called for the Islamic Republic’s capitulation as the conflict enters its fifth day. Trump had demanded Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and warned of a possible strike against its leader in social media posts Tuesday. The US is also moving more military assets into the region, including the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group, which is sailing there ahead of schedule. The oil market’s main concerns are flows from Iran and the threat to vessel traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a quarter of the world’s crude shipments flow. Early data from TankerTrackers.com Inc. show that Iran increased its exports significantly since the attacks began, and there has been no major disruption to the strait. The risks to prices have permeated the oil derivatives

The Department of Energy’s May order directing Consumers Energy to delay retiring a 1,560-MW, coal-fired power plant in Michigan was illegal and based on a nonexistent emergency, Earthjustice and other groups said in a rehearing request filed on Wednesday at DOE. “The order represents an effort to replace the market- and state-led planning process provided by statute with an ill-advised and misinformed exercise in federal command-and-control,” the public interest groups said in their request that DOE rescind its decision. If DOE does not respond to the request within a required 30 days, the groups plan to challenge the 90-day emergency order in court, they said. The Federal Power Act’s section 202(c) gives the DOE secretary the authority to temporarily order power plants to operate during wars and emergencies. In a May 23 order, DOE Secretary Chris Wright said parts of the Midwest faced an “energy emergency” and that Consumers’ J.H. Campbell power plant in West Olive, Michigan, should run until Aug. 21, past its planned May 31 shutdown. DOE cited two reports in finding that an emergency exists in MISO: NERC’s 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment issued on May 14 and the grid operator’s capacity auction results released in late April. Those reports fail to show Michigan faces an emergency that requires the Campbell power plant to keep running, according to the public interest groups. MISO and the Michigan Public Service Commission have said the state and broader Midcontinent system have adequate power supplies this summer, the groups said. Also, MISO and the PSC approved retiring the Campbell power plant, and Consumers acquired replacement power supplies, they noted. “MISO has made clear time and again that the vast region over which it has balancing authority is resource adequate for summer 2025,” the groups said. “This means that MISO is not facing

Canadian companies could help Mexico reduce its lopsided dependency on imported US natural gas by maximizing its own domestic supplies of the fuel, according to the head of Canada’s top business group. While Mexico has for decades been a major oil producer, local natural gas output has failed to keep up with demand as it instead favored imports from US suppliers, mostly across the border in Texas. But Canadian firms see opportunities to increase investment in Mexican energy, said Business Council of Canada CEO Goldy Hyder after meeting with President Claudia Sheinbaum. Executives from major pipeline builders ATCO Ltd and TC Energy Corp were present at the sit-down with the Mexican president at the Group of Seven summit in Kananaskis, Canada. “There was a general feeling that it’s in Mexico’s interest to diversify more its sources of energy. It’s dependent on natural gas in the United States. And so obviously Canada can be very helpful in that regard,” Hyder said. “We have projects that are already taking place there that are going to allow Mexicans to have energy security because the gas is in Mexico and it’s being extracted.” State-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, known locally as Pemex, has struggled for years to boost its natural gas output at home. But due to a growing network of pipelines, Mexico’s reliance on gas from Texas sharply scaled up beginning around 15 years ago as US shale projects took off. More than 70% of the Latin American economy’s demand for the fuel is now satisfied via cross-border imports. Sheinbaum met with the business council on Monday prior to her meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump’s unexpected return to Washington late on Monday led to the cancelation of what would have been his first in-person meeting with Sheinbaum.

Sales are still growing, but policy changes in the United States are significantly slowing the country’s adoption of electric vehicles, BloombergNEF said Wednesday in its annual global outlook for the sector. This “is the first year where we have reduced both our near-term and long-term passenger EV adoption outlook,” BNEF said in its 2025 Electric Vehicles Outlook. “Policy changes in the US are the biggest factor, with national fuel-economy targets being rolled back, supportive elements of the Inflation Reduction Act either being removed or under threat, and the potential removal of California’s ability to set its own air quality standards.” Electric vehicles set global sales records last year, and adoption rapidly increased in emerging markets across Asia and Latin America, according to Colin McKerracher, lead author of the report and BNEF’s head of clean transport and energy storage. “Despite these positive tailwinds, we see slower EV adoption in the short and long-term due in large part to the changing landscape in the US,” McKerracher said in a statement. “This shift in global adoption will also have major impacts on the battery industry, leading to overcapacity in manufacturing.” BNEF now expects passenger EV sales in the United States to rise from 1.6 million this year to 4.1 million in 2030, to make up 27% of total passenger car sales by the end of the decade. In last year’s report, the firm had anticipated EVs would make up 48% of sales by that time. “It results in cumulative EV sales between now and 2030 being 14 million units lower,” according to the report. The impact on battery supply is significant, according to BNEF. The firm’s global battery demand outlook between 2025 and 2035 “fell 8% compared to last year’s, equating to 3.4 [TWh] fewer batteries — a majority of which (2.8 TWh) can be attributed

President Donald Trump has rescinded a memorandum issued by his predecessor to safeguard salmon, steelhead and other native fish populations in the Columbia River Basin. The memo, signed by Joe Biden September 2023, “placed concerns about climate change above the Nation’s interests in reliable energy resources”, the White House said in an online statement. “The MOU required the Federal government to spend millions of dollars and comply with 36 pages of onerous commitments to dam operations on the Lower Snake River”, the presidential office said. “Dam breaching would have resulted in reduced water supply to farmers, eliminated several shipping channels, had devastating impacts to agriculture, increased energy costs, and eliminated recreational opportunities throughout the region.   “The dam breaches would have eliminated over 3,000 megawatts of secure and reliable hydroelectric generating capacity – which is enough generation to power 2.5 million American homes”. Biden’s memo, meant to honor U.S. “trust and treaty responsibilities” to tribal nations and enforce safeguards under the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act, directed all agencies with applicable authority to review their programs affecting native fish in the basin. The memo also called for the formation of an intergovernmental partnership involving tribal nations and the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. In December 2023 the Biden administration signed an agreement establishing a 10-year partnership with tribes, conservation groups, Oregon and Washington to restore wild fish populations, including a federal investment of over $1 billion. The agreement also enabled a 10-year break from decades-long litigation against the federal government’s operation of dams in the Pacific Northwest. Trump, through a presidential memorandum, has now directed the secretaries of energy, interior and commerce, as well as the assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, “to withdraw from agreements stemming from Biden’s misguided executive action, including the

Dive Brief: The Senate Finance Committee on Monday released its version of the budget bill the House passed in May, offering gentler cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act but still slashing tax incentives, especially those for wind and solar energy. The bill allows transferability for the full life of certain IRA energy tax credits, breaking with the House, which proposed ending transferability for 45Q, 45Z and 45X tax credits after 2027. The Senate proposal is particularly tough on residential solar and residential batteries, proposing that the 30% 25D tax credit for those items be phased out just 180 days after President Donald Trump signs the budget into law. Dive Insight: The Senate proposal removes the House’s tough requirement that projects must break ground within 60 days of the bill’s signing and then be placed in service by the end of 2028 to qualify for technology-neutral clean electricity production and investment tax credits. The Senate version stipulates that eligible technologies such as nuclear, geothermal and hydropower can claim the 45Y and 48E tax credits as long as they begin construction by 2033. However, it subjects wind and solar energy to different rules. Wind and solar projects would be able to qualify for 60% of these credits if they break ground by 2026, 20% if they break ground by 2027, and nothing after that. “For wind and solar, you have particularly large-scale projects that are very much in development,” said Harry Godfrey, who leads Advanced Energy United’s federal policy team. “They’re in interconnection. They are in permitting processes that have pilot agreements, but they are likely not to go to construction until ’27 or ’28, so this effectively kills those projects.” Godfrey said the legislation’s leasing prohibition on third-party wind and solar projects, along with the abrupt termination of 25D, hits the residential solar