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Energy Department Selects Four Companies for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Line Pilot Projects

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced another step forward in the Trump administration’s efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel. DOE selected Oklo Inc., Terrestrial Energy Inc., TRISO-X LLC, and Valar Atomics Inc. for its new pilot program to build advanced nuclear fuel lines. Today’s action will help strengthen America’s national security, reduce reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and support the Department’s Reactor Pilot Program that aims to have at least three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. “President Trump has made clear that a strong nuclear sector is a central component of America’s energy security and prosperity,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly. “Restoring a secure domestic fuel supply will ensure that advanced reactors can move quickly from design to deployment and into operation. The ability to produce these fuels is essential to ensuring American leadership in nuclear energy and to meeting the nation’s growing demand for reliable power.” This is the second round of conditional selections under DOE’s Fuel Line Pilot Program. DOE previously selected Standard Nuclear to build and operate TRISO fuel fabrication facilities. The following projects will leverage the Department’s authorization process to ensure a robust supply of fuel is available for research, development, and demonstration purposes— including the 11 reactors initially selected to participate in DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program: Oklo Inc. (Santa Clara, California) – To build and operate three fuel fabrication facilities to support their Aurora and Pluto reactors, and possibly other fast reactors.  Terrestrial Energy Inc (Charlotte, NC) – To develop the Terrestrial Energy Fuel Line Assembly to demonstrate a fuel salt fabrication process in a phased approach.  TRISO-X Inc. (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) – To build and operate an additional fuel fabrication laboratory facility to enable pilot-scale integration, training, and system validation to

Read More »

New Partnerships Form to Deploy Digital Energy Twins in Data Centers

Of course, partnerships have been ongoing in the data center and AI realms. For example, Microsoft and AMD have a long-standing collaboration to provide powerful cloud solutions for enterprise workloads, high-performance computing, and AI. Google Cloud and NVIDIA have a deep partnership across the AI stack, allowing Google Cloud to integrate NVIDIA’s latest hardware and software into its services. Colocation providers are collaborating with tech companies to offer turnkey AI solutions, which hardware, AI research labs, and cloud providers are joining forces in cross-industry alliances to support AI development. What’s Next for Digital Energy Twins Analysts anticipate that the next wave of digital energy twins will feature deeper integration with AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) for self-updating, autonomous operations, and enhanced predictive capabilities, moving beyond monitoring to proactive simulation and optimization. Key developments include increased integration with quantum computing, the development of interoperable and standardized ecosystems, and a greater focus on cybersecurity to protect these complex systems. These advancements aim to drive greater operational efficiency, improve asset performance, reduce downtime, and support sustainability goals across the energy sector.

Read More »

Exxon to Cut 2,000 Jobs

Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to cut about 2,000 jobs globally as the Texas oil company consolidates smaller offices into regional hubs as part of its long-term restructuring plan.  The reductions represent about 3% to 4% of Exxon’s global workforce and are part of the company’s ongoing efficiency drive, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in an memo to employees Tuesday. About half will be in the Europe and most of rest in Canada at Calgary-based Imperial Oil Ltd., which is nearly 70% owned by Exxon. Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP Plc are among major oil companies to have also announced thousands of job cuts in recent months as crude prices tumbled this year in response to increased supplies from OPEC and its allies. Exxon, however, has been on a major internal restructuring push since 2019 as Woods sought to simplify the company’s sprawling global footprint that came as a result of the merger with Mobil two decades ago.  Exxon is making “tough decisions” that build upon a years-long effort to improve competitiveness, Woods wrote in the memo. “The changes we’ve announced today will further strengthen our advantages and grow the gap with our competition, helping to keep us in the lead for decades to come,” he said.   The oil giant will cut 1,200 positions in the European Union and Norway by the end of 2027, with layoffs making up half of the reductions, it said in a statement. Imperial will cut about 900 positions, or 20% of its workforce, in the same time period, helping reduce operational expenses by C$150 million ($108 million) annually.  The regional hubs will focus on Exxon’s major growth initiatives such as oil in Guyana, liquefied natural gas along the Gulf Coast and trading globally. For example, the company recently announced plans to move employees from Brussels and Leatherhead, UK, to central London, where it’s recently

Read More »

Russia Expects Oil and Gas Revenue at Lowest in Years

The Russian government expects the oil and gas industries’ contributions to the national budget this year to drop to the lowest since the pandemic of 2020 after prices for its fuels dipped and the ruble strengthened. Moscow will gather about 8.65 trillion rubles ($100 billion) in taxes from the oil and gas industry, according to amendments to Russia’s 2025 budget. That’s about 22 percent less than last year’s revenues, according to the amendments, published Monday on the website of the State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament.  Levies from oil and gas producers are critical for the Kremlin, as they are projected to account for almost a quarter of revenues into state coffers this year. Moscow plans to keep boosting military spending to finance the ongoing war in Ukraine, and will raise taxes like VAT and increase borrowing to bridge the budget gap. In a drive to further bear down on Russia’s energy revenues, western nations and allies have adopted wide-ranging sanctions. Most recently, US President Donald Trump has been putting pressure on partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including Turkey, to stop buying Russia’s barrels altogether.  Urals, Russia’s main export blend, is projected to average $58 a barrel this year, compared with $66.60 last year. Despite sanctions, the decline is mainly driven by lower crude prices amid concerns over global economic growth.  Russia’s government sees the average Urals discount to global benchmark Brent at $12 a barrel. The gap has shrunk compared with the earlier years of the war, but is still markedly wider than the historic discount of $2-4 a barrel because of sanctions.  The strengthening of the national currency is another reason behind declining revenues. For this year, the government projects the exchange rate at 86.1 rubles to a US dollar, compared with 92.4 rubles a dollar

Read More »

Treasuries Gain as USA Gov Shutdown May Follow Month-End

Treasuries gained Monday, supported by a slump in oil prices and a rally in UK government bonds, and by anticipation of buying into Tuesday’s month-end index rebalancing. Yields declined as much as five basis points across tenors with the 10-year note’s falling to 4.14%. The 30-year bond’s dipped below 4.70% for the first time since Sept. 18. US benchmark crude oil futures dropped more than 4% on signs OPEC+ will hike production again in November. The prospect of a US government shutdown beginning Wednesday also has implications for the Treasuries market, as shutdowns are associated with gains for bonds based on their potential to restrain the economy. “There’s a global move lower today in yields,” said Angelo Manolatos, an interest-rate strategist at Wells Fargo Securities. “It’s likely a combination of quarter-end flow dynamics and the possibility of a government shutdown. Yields typically drop modestly during government shutdowns that last at least five days.” The market racked up gains even as Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack — who becomes a voting member of the central bank’s rate-setting committee next year — reiterated her view that inflation remains too high to warrant cutting interest rates. Futures markets continue to anticipate about 100 basis points of additional Fed easing over the next 12 months. Expectations for Fed rate cuts rest mainly on signs of stress in the US labor market, where job creation has slowed precipitously in recent months. September data is set to be released on Friday. Tuesday’s month-end bond index rebalancing — to add eligible bonds created during the month and remove those that no longer fit the index criteria — typically drives buying by passive and other index-tracking investment funds that can support the market if their needs exceed expectations.  The rebalancing will increase the duration of the Bloomberg Treasury index by an estimated 0.06

Read More »

EPA mulls postponing coal plant wastewater compliance, changes to Regional Haze Rule

Dive Brief: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed giving coal power generators additional time to comply with new wastewater disposal guidelines and said it also would consider regulatory changes to the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule. EPA’s proposals are part of a package of coal-supporting actions the Trump administration unveiled this week, including $625 million to retrofit and recommission coal plants from the Department of Energy. Extending compliance for EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines would reduce electricity costs by approximately $30 million to $200 million annually, the agency estimated. Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Laurie Williams countered that every day the requirements are delayed means more people “will be exposed to higher levels of toxic pollution.” Dive Insight: Residual waste from burning coal contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic, according to the EPA. The federal government strengthened regulation on coal combustion residuals following a disastrous coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authoriy’s Kingston plant in 2008, which contaminated some 300 acres of land, making it one of the largest industrial spills in U.S. history.  EPA revised its ELG requirements last year to include stronger protections around coal ash wastewater pollution. The changes included requiring plants to halt some types of discharges by 2029 or to commit by the end of this year to cease burning coal by 2034. EPA’s proposal would extend both the compliance and the notice deadlines. The agency said the move would “reduce costs for facilities and help with electricity reliability and affordability.” Comments are due 30 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. EPA’s current ELGs for wastewater discharges from steam electric power plants “are potentially costly to an electric power sector that is struggling with increasing demand as AI is booming, data centers are being constructed and operated around

Read More »

Energy Department Selects Four Companies for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Line Pilot Projects

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced another step forward in the Trump administration’s efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel. DOE selected Oklo Inc., Terrestrial Energy Inc., TRISO-X LLC, and Valar Atomics Inc. for its new pilot program to build advanced nuclear fuel lines. Today’s action will help strengthen America’s national security, reduce reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and support the Department’s Reactor Pilot Program that aims to have at least three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. “President Trump has made clear that a strong nuclear sector is a central component of America’s energy security and prosperity,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly. “Restoring a secure domestic fuel supply will ensure that advanced reactors can move quickly from design to deployment and into operation. The ability to produce these fuels is essential to ensuring American leadership in nuclear energy and to meeting the nation’s growing demand for reliable power.” This is the second round of conditional selections under DOE’s Fuel Line Pilot Program. DOE previously selected Standard Nuclear to build and operate TRISO fuel fabrication facilities. The following projects will leverage the Department’s authorization process to ensure a robust supply of fuel is available for research, development, and demonstration purposes— including the 11 reactors initially selected to participate in DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program: Oklo Inc. (Santa Clara, California) – To build and operate three fuel fabrication facilities to support their Aurora and Pluto reactors, and possibly other fast reactors.  Terrestrial Energy Inc (Charlotte, NC) – To develop the Terrestrial Energy Fuel Line Assembly to demonstrate a fuel salt fabrication process in a phased approach.  TRISO-X Inc. (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) – To build and operate an additional fuel fabrication laboratory facility to enable pilot-scale integration, training, and system validation to

Read More »

New Partnerships Form to Deploy Digital Energy Twins in Data Centers

Of course, partnerships have been ongoing in the data center and AI realms. For example, Microsoft and AMD have a long-standing collaboration to provide powerful cloud solutions for enterprise workloads, high-performance computing, and AI. Google Cloud and NVIDIA have a deep partnership across the AI stack, allowing Google Cloud to integrate NVIDIA’s latest hardware and software into its services. Colocation providers are collaborating with tech companies to offer turnkey AI solutions, which hardware, AI research labs, and cloud providers are joining forces in cross-industry alliances to support AI development. What’s Next for Digital Energy Twins Analysts anticipate that the next wave of digital energy twins will feature deeper integration with AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) for self-updating, autonomous operations, and enhanced predictive capabilities, moving beyond monitoring to proactive simulation and optimization. Key developments include increased integration with quantum computing, the development of interoperable and standardized ecosystems, and a greater focus on cybersecurity to protect these complex systems. These advancements aim to drive greater operational efficiency, improve asset performance, reduce downtime, and support sustainability goals across the energy sector.

Read More »

Exxon to Cut 2,000 Jobs

Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to cut about 2,000 jobs globally as the Texas oil company consolidates smaller offices into regional hubs as part of its long-term restructuring plan.  The reductions represent about 3% to 4% of Exxon’s global workforce and are part of the company’s ongoing efficiency drive, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in an memo to employees Tuesday. About half will be in the Europe and most of rest in Canada at Calgary-based Imperial Oil Ltd., which is nearly 70% owned by Exxon. Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP Plc are among major oil companies to have also announced thousands of job cuts in recent months as crude prices tumbled this year in response to increased supplies from OPEC and its allies. Exxon, however, has been on a major internal restructuring push since 2019 as Woods sought to simplify the company’s sprawling global footprint that came as a result of the merger with Mobil two decades ago.  Exxon is making “tough decisions” that build upon a years-long effort to improve competitiveness, Woods wrote in the memo. “The changes we’ve announced today will further strengthen our advantages and grow the gap with our competition, helping to keep us in the lead for decades to come,” he said.   The oil giant will cut 1,200 positions in the European Union and Norway by the end of 2027, with layoffs making up half of the reductions, it said in a statement. Imperial will cut about 900 positions, or 20% of its workforce, in the same time period, helping reduce operational expenses by C$150 million ($108 million) annually.  The regional hubs will focus on Exxon’s major growth initiatives such as oil in Guyana, liquefied natural gas along the Gulf Coast and trading globally. For example, the company recently announced plans to move employees from Brussels and Leatherhead, UK, to central London, where it’s recently

Read More »

Russia Expects Oil and Gas Revenue at Lowest in Years

The Russian government expects the oil and gas industries’ contributions to the national budget this year to drop to the lowest since the pandemic of 2020 after prices for its fuels dipped and the ruble strengthened. Moscow will gather about 8.65 trillion rubles ($100 billion) in taxes from the oil and gas industry, according to amendments to Russia’s 2025 budget. That’s about 22 percent less than last year’s revenues, according to the amendments, published Monday on the website of the State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament.  Levies from oil and gas producers are critical for the Kremlin, as they are projected to account for almost a quarter of revenues into state coffers this year. Moscow plans to keep boosting military spending to finance the ongoing war in Ukraine, and will raise taxes like VAT and increase borrowing to bridge the budget gap. In a drive to further bear down on Russia’s energy revenues, western nations and allies have adopted wide-ranging sanctions. Most recently, US President Donald Trump has been putting pressure on partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including Turkey, to stop buying Russia’s barrels altogether.  Urals, Russia’s main export blend, is projected to average $58 a barrel this year, compared with $66.60 last year. Despite sanctions, the decline is mainly driven by lower crude prices amid concerns over global economic growth.  Russia’s government sees the average Urals discount to global benchmark Brent at $12 a barrel. The gap has shrunk compared with the earlier years of the war, but is still markedly wider than the historic discount of $2-4 a barrel because of sanctions.  The strengthening of the national currency is another reason behind declining revenues. For this year, the government projects the exchange rate at 86.1 rubles to a US dollar, compared with 92.4 rubles a dollar

Read More »

Treasuries Gain as USA Gov Shutdown May Follow Month-End

Treasuries gained Monday, supported by a slump in oil prices and a rally in UK government bonds, and by anticipation of buying into Tuesday’s month-end index rebalancing. Yields declined as much as five basis points across tenors with the 10-year note’s falling to 4.14%. The 30-year bond’s dipped below 4.70% for the first time since Sept. 18. US benchmark crude oil futures dropped more than 4% on signs OPEC+ will hike production again in November. The prospect of a US government shutdown beginning Wednesday also has implications for the Treasuries market, as shutdowns are associated with gains for bonds based on their potential to restrain the economy. “There’s a global move lower today in yields,” said Angelo Manolatos, an interest-rate strategist at Wells Fargo Securities. “It’s likely a combination of quarter-end flow dynamics and the possibility of a government shutdown. Yields typically drop modestly during government shutdowns that last at least five days.” The market racked up gains even as Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack — who becomes a voting member of the central bank’s rate-setting committee next year — reiterated her view that inflation remains too high to warrant cutting interest rates. Futures markets continue to anticipate about 100 basis points of additional Fed easing over the next 12 months. Expectations for Fed rate cuts rest mainly on signs of stress in the US labor market, where job creation has slowed precipitously in recent months. September data is set to be released on Friday. Tuesday’s month-end bond index rebalancing — to add eligible bonds created during the month and remove those that no longer fit the index criteria — typically drives buying by passive and other index-tracking investment funds that can support the market if their needs exceed expectations.  The rebalancing will increase the duration of the Bloomberg Treasury index by an estimated 0.06

Read More »

EPA mulls postponing coal plant wastewater compliance, changes to Regional Haze Rule

Dive Brief: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed giving coal power generators additional time to comply with new wastewater disposal guidelines and said it also would consider regulatory changes to the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule. EPA’s proposals are part of a package of coal-supporting actions the Trump administration unveiled this week, including $625 million to retrofit and recommission coal plants from the Department of Energy. Extending compliance for EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines would reduce electricity costs by approximately $30 million to $200 million annually, the agency estimated. Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Laurie Williams countered that every day the requirements are delayed means more people “will be exposed to higher levels of toxic pollution.” Dive Insight: Residual waste from burning coal contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic, according to the EPA. The federal government strengthened regulation on coal combustion residuals following a disastrous coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authoriy’s Kingston plant in 2008, which contaminated some 300 acres of land, making it one of the largest industrial spills in U.S. history.  EPA revised its ELG requirements last year to include stronger protections around coal ash wastewater pollution. The changes included requiring plants to halt some types of discharges by 2029 or to commit by the end of this year to cease burning coal by 2034. EPA’s proposal would extend both the compliance and the notice deadlines. The agency said the move would “reduce costs for facilities and help with electricity reliability and affordability.” Comments are due 30 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. EPA’s current ELGs for wastewater discharges from steam electric power plants “are potentially costly to an electric power sector that is struggling with increasing demand as AI is booming, data centers are being constructed and operated around

Read More »

Energy Department Selects Four Companies for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Line Pilot Projects

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced another step forward in the Trump administration’s efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel. DOE selected Oklo Inc., Terrestrial Energy Inc., TRISO-X LLC, and Valar Atomics Inc. for its new pilot program to build advanced nuclear fuel lines. Today’s action will help strengthen America’s national security, reduce reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and support the Department’s Reactor Pilot Program that aims to have at least three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. “President Trump has made clear that a strong nuclear sector is a central component of America’s energy security and prosperity,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly. “Restoring a secure domestic fuel supply will ensure that advanced reactors can move quickly from design to deployment and into operation. The ability to produce these fuels is essential to ensuring American leadership in nuclear energy and to meeting the nation’s growing demand for reliable power.” This is the second round of conditional selections under DOE’s Fuel Line Pilot Program. DOE previously selected Standard Nuclear to build and operate TRISO fuel fabrication facilities. The following projects will leverage the Department’s authorization process to ensure a robust supply of fuel is available for research, development, and demonstration purposes— including the 11 reactors initially selected to participate in DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program: Oklo Inc. (Santa Clara, California) – To build and operate three fuel fabrication facilities to support their Aurora and Pluto reactors, and possibly other fast reactors.  Terrestrial Energy Inc (Charlotte, NC) – To develop the Terrestrial Energy Fuel Line Assembly to demonstrate a fuel salt fabrication process in a phased approach.  TRISO-X Inc. (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) – To build and operate an additional fuel fabrication laboratory facility to enable pilot-scale integration, training, and system validation to

Read More »

Treasuries Gain as USA Gov Shutdown May Follow Month-End

Treasuries gained Monday, supported by a slump in oil prices and a rally in UK government bonds, and by anticipation of buying into Tuesday’s month-end index rebalancing. Yields declined as much as five basis points across tenors with the 10-year note’s falling to 4.14%. The 30-year bond’s dipped below 4.70% for the first time since Sept. 18. US benchmark crude oil futures dropped more than 4% on signs OPEC+ will hike production again in November. The prospect of a US government shutdown beginning Wednesday also has implications for the Treasuries market, as shutdowns are associated with gains for bonds based on their potential to restrain the economy. “There’s a global move lower today in yields,” said Angelo Manolatos, an interest-rate strategist at Wells Fargo Securities. “It’s likely a combination of quarter-end flow dynamics and the possibility of a government shutdown. Yields typically drop modestly during government shutdowns that last at least five days.” The market racked up gains even as Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack — who becomes a voting member of the central bank’s rate-setting committee next year — reiterated her view that inflation remains too high to warrant cutting interest rates. Futures markets continue to anticipate about 100 basis points of additional Fed easing over the next 12 months. Expectations for Fed rate cuts rest mainly on signs of stress in the US labor market, where job creation has slowed precipitously in recent months. September data is set to be released on Friday. Tuesday’s month-end bond index rebalancing — to add eligible bonds created during the month and remove those that no longer fit the index criteria — typically drives buying by passive and other index-tracking investment funds that can support the market if their needs exceed expectations.  The rebalancing will increase the duration of the Bloomberg Treasury index by an estimated 0.06

Read More »

Russia Expects Oil and Gas Revenue at Lowest in Years

The Russian government expects the oil and gas industries’ contributions to the national budget this year to drop to the lowest since the pandemic of 2020 after prices for its fuels dipped and the ruble strengthened. Moscow will gather about 8.65 trillion rubles ($100 billion) in taxes from the oil and gas industry, according to amendments to Russia’s 2025 budget. That’s about 22 percent less than last year’s revenues, according to the amendments, published Monday on the website of the State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament.  Levies from oil and gas producers are critical for the Kremlin, as they are projected to account for almost a quarter of revenues into state coffers this year. Moscow plans to keep boosting military spending to finance the ongoing war in Ukraine, and will raise taxes like VAT and increase borrowing to bridge the budget gap. In a drive to further bear down on Russia’s energy revenues, western nations and allies have adopted wide-ranging sanctions. Most recently, US President Donald Trump has been putting pressure on partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including Turkey, to stop buying Russia’s barrels altogether.  Urals, Russia’s main export blend, is projected to average $58 a barrel this year, compared with $66.60 last year. Despite sanctions, the decline is mainly driven by lower crude prices amid concerns over global economic growth.  Russia’s government sees the average Urals discount to global benchmark Brent at $12 a barrel. The gap has shrunk compared with the earlier years of the war, but is still markedly wider than the historic discount of $2-4 a barrel because of sanctions.  The strengthening of the national currency is another reason behind declining revenues. For this year, the government projects the exchange rate at 86.1 rubles to a US dollar, compared with 92.4 rubles a dollar

Read More »

Exxon to Cut 2,000 Jobs

Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to cut about 2,000 jobs globally as the Texas oil company consolidates smaller offices into regional hubs as part of its long-term restructuring plan.  The reductions represent about 3% to 4% of Exxon’s global workforce and are part of the company’s ongoing efficiency drive, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in an memo to employees Tuesday. About half will be in the Europe and most of rest in Canada at Calgary-based Imperial Oil Ltd., which is nearly 70% owned by Exxon. Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP Plc are among major oil companies to have also announced thousands of job cuts in recent months as crude prices tumbled this year in response to increased supplies from OPEC and its allies. Exxon, however, has been on a major internal restructuring push since 2019 as Woods sought to simplify the company’s sprawling global footprint that came as a result of the merger with Mobil two decades ago.  Exxon is making “tough decisions” that build upon a years-long effort to improve competitiveness, Woods wrote in the memo. “The changes we’ve announced today will further strengthen our advantages and grow the gap with our competition, helping to keep us in the lead for decades to come,” he said.   The oil giant will cut 1,200 positions in the European Union and Norway by the end of 2027, with layoffs making up half of the reductions, it said in a statement. Imperial will cut about 900 positions, or 20% of its workforce, in the same time period, helping reduce operational expenses by C$150 million ($108 million) annually.  The regional hubs will focus on Exxon’s major growth initiatives such as oil in Guyana, liquefied natural gas along the Gulf Coast and trading globally. For example, the company recently announced plans to move employees from Brussels and Leatherhead, UK, to central London, where it’s recently

Read More »

Democratic House bill would reverse Trump energy policies, bolster RTO oversight

Democratic Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois and Mike Levin from California are preparing to introduce sweeping energy legislation that would reverse Trump administration policies, including by restoring clean energy tax credits and limiting the U.S. Department of Energy’s ability to declare “energy emergencies” to keep fossil-fueled power plants from retiring. The Trump administration is driving up the cost of electricity by creating barriers to clean energy investment to support higher-cost fossil fuel sectors, according to Casten. “You’ve now got this surging demand [from data centers and other loads] — and particularly if we’re not going to have an administration that’s going to encourage competitive markets — then that means that the only people who are going to be able to build stuff are regulated utilities with mandatory capital amortization and so it’s very hard to see anything but upward pressure on electric prices,” Casten said Monday in an interview. The draft Cheap Energy Act aims to put downward pressure on electricity bills by bolstering energy efficiency efforts, supporting grid-enhancing technologies and helping provide lower-cost renewable energy projects access to the grid, according to Casten. One section of the legislation would increase oversight of regional transmission organizations. “Everybody in the electric regulatory world, including lots of [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] commissioners … and frankly a lot of utility executives, knows that there’s a massive governance problem in the RTO space,” Casten said. Governors in the PJM Interconnection footprint, for example, are pressing for a role in the RTO’s decisionmaking. Provisions in the bill would require FERC to reform the governance and stakeholder participation practices of RTOs and independent system operators, according to a summary of the draft bill. They would also require independent transmission monitors to facilitate the cost-effective construction of transmission. Partly, those provisions would make it easier for outsiders

Read More »

EPA mulls postponing coal plant wastewater compliance, changes to Regional Haze Rule

Dive Brief: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed giving coal power generators additional time to comply with new wastewater disposal guidelines and said it also would consider regulatory changes to the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule. EPA’s proposals are part of a package of coal-supporting actions the Trump administration unveiled this week, including $625 million to retrofit and recommission coal plants from the Department of Energy. Extending compliance for EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines would reduce electricity costs by approximately $30 million to $200 million annually, the agency estimated. Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Laurie Williams countered that every day the requirements are delayed means more people “will be exposed to higher levels of toxic pollution.” Dive Insight: Residual waste from burning coal contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic, according to the EPA. The federal government strengthened regulation on coal combustion residuals following a disastrous coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authoriy’s Kingston plant in 2008, which contaminated some 300 acres of land, making it one of the largest industrial spills in U.S. history.  EPA revised its ELG requirements last year to include stronger protections around coal ash wastewater pollution. The changes included requiring plants to halt some types of discharges by 2029 or to commit by the end of this year to cease burning coal by 2034. EPA’s proposal would extend both the compliance and the notice deadlines. The agency said the move would “reduce costs for facilities and help with electricity reliability and affordability.” Comments are due 30 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. EPA’s current ELGs for wastewater discharges from steam electric power plants “are potentially costly to an electric power sector that is struggling with increasing demand as AI is booming, data centers are being constructed and operated around

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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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Three Aberdeen oil company headquarters sell for £45m

Three Aberdeen oil company headquarters have been sold in a deal worth £45 million. The CNOOC, Apache and Taqa buildings at the Prime Four business park in Kingswells have been acquired by EEH Ventures. The trio of buildings, totalling 275,000 sq ft, were previously owned by Canadian firm BMO. The financial services powerhouse first bought the buildings in 2014 but took the decision to sell the buildings as part of a “long-standing strategy to reduce their office exposure across the UK”. The deal was the largest to take place throughout Scotland during the last quarter of 2024. Trio of buildings snapped up London headquartered EEH Ventures was founded in 2013 and owns a number of residential, offices, shopping centres and hotels throughout the UK. All three Kingswells-based buildings were pre-let, designed and constructed by Aberdeen property developer Drum in 2012 on a 15-year lease. © Supplied by CBREThe Aberdeen headquarters of Taqa. Image: CBRE The North Sea headquarters of Middle-East oil firm Taqa has previously been described as “an amazing success story in the Granite City”. Taqa announced in 2023 that it intends to cease production from all of its UK North Sea platforms by the end of 2027. Meanwhile, Apache revealed at the end of last year it is planning to exit the North Sea by the end of 2029 blaming the windfall tax. The US firm first entered the North Sea in 2003 but will wrap up all of its UK operations by 2030. Aberdeen big deals The Prime Four acquisition wasn’t the biggest Granite City commercial property sale of 2024. American private equity firm Lone Star bought Union Square shopping centre from Hammerson for £111m. © ShutterstockAberdeen city centre. Hammerson, who also built the property, had originally been seeking £150m. BP’s North Sea headquarters in Stoneywood, Aberdeen, was also sold. Manchester-based

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2025 ransomware predictions, trends, and how to prepare

Zscaler ThreatLabz research team has revealed critical insights and predictions on ransomware trends for 2025. The latest Ransomware Report uncovered a surge in sophisticated tactics and extortion attacks. As ransomware remains a key concern for CISOs and CIOs, the report sheds light on actionable strategies to mitigate risks. Top Ransomware Predictions for 2025: ● AI-Powered Social Engineering: In 2025, GenAI will fuel voice phishing (vishing) attacks. With the proliferation of GenAI-based tooling, initial access broker groups will increasingly leverage AI-generated voices; which sound more and more realistic by adopting local accents and dialects to enhance credibility and success rates. ● The Trifecta of Social Engineering Attacks: Vishing, Ransomware and Data Exfiltration. Additionally, sophisticated ransomware groups, like the Dark Angels, will continue the trend of low-volume, high-impact attacks; preferring to focus on an individual company, stealing vast amounts of data without encrypting files, and evading media and law enforcement scrutiny. ● Targeted Industries Under Siege: Manufacturing, healthcare, education, energy will remain primary targets, with no slowdown in attacks expected. ● New SEC Regulations Drive Increased Transparency: 2025 will see an uptick in reported ransomware attacks and payouts due to new, tighter SEC requirements mandating that public companies report material incidents within four business days. ● Ransomware Payouts Are on the Rise: In 2025 ransom demands will most likely increase due to an evolving ecosystem of cybercrime groups, specializing in designated attack tactics, and collaboration by these groups that have entered a sophisticated profit sharing model using Ransomware-as-a-Service. To combat damaging ransomware attacks, Zscaler ThreatLabz recommends the following strategies. ● Fighting AI with AI: As threat actors use AI to identify vulnerabilities, organizations must counter with AI-powered zero trust security systems that detect and mitigate new threats. ● Advantages of adopting a Zero Trust architecture: A Zero Trust cloud security platform stops

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Powering HPC with next-generation CPUs

In partnership withMicrosoft and AMD For all the excitement around GPUs—the workhorses of today’s AI revolution—the central processing unit (CPU) remains the backbone of high-performance computing (HPC). CPUs still handle 80% to 90% of HPC workloads globally, powering everything from climate modeling to semiconductor design. Far from being eclipsed, they’re evolving in ways that make them more competitive, flexible, and indispensable than ever. [embedded content] The competitive landscape around CPUs has intensified. Once dominated almost exclusively by Intel’s x86 chips, the market now includes powerful alternatives based on ARM and even emerging architectures like RISC-V. Flagship examples like Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer demonstrate how CPU innovation is pushing performance to new frontiers. Meanwhile, cloud providers like Microsoft and AWS are developing their own silicon, adding even more diversity to the ecosystem. What makes CPUs so enduring? Flexibility, compatibility, and cost efficiency are key. As Evan Burness of Microsoft Azure points out, CPUs remain the “it-just-works” technology. Moving complex, proprietary code to GPUs can be an expensive and time-consuming effort, while CPUs typically support software continuity across generations with minimal friction. That reliability matters for businesses and researchers who need results, not just raw power. Innovation is also reshaping what a CPU can be. Advances in chiplet design, on-package memory, and hybrid CPU-GPU architectures are extending the performance curve well beyond the limits of Moore’s Law. For many organizations, the CPU is the strategic choice that balances speed, efficiency, and cost.
Looking ahead, the relationship between CPUs, GPUs, and specialized processors like NPUs will define the future of HPC. Rather than a zero-sum contest, it’s increasingly a question of fit-for-purpose design. As Addison Snell, co-founder and chief executive officer of Intersect360 Research, notes, science and industry never run out of harder problems to solve. That means CPUs, far from fading, will remain at the center of the computing ecosystem. To learn more, read the new report “Designing CPUs for next-generation supercomputing.” This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.

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Designing CPUs for next-generation supercomputing

In partnership withMicrosoft Azure and AMD In Seattle, a meteorologist analyzes dynamic atmospheric models to predict the next major storm system. In Stuttgart, an automotive engineer examines crash-test simulations for vehicle safety certification. And in Singapore, a financial analyst simulates portfolio stress tests to hedge against global economic shocks.  Each of these professionals—and the consumers, commuters, and investors who depend on their insights— relies on a time-tested pillar of high-performance computing: the humble CPU.  With GPU-powered AI breakthroughs getting the lion’s share of press (and investment) in 2025, it is tempting to assume that CPUs are yesterday’s news. Recent predictions anticipate that GPU and accelerator installations will increase by 17% year over year through 2030. But, in reality, CPUs are still responsible for the vast majority of today’s most cutting-edge scientific, engineering, and research workloads. Evan Burness, who leads Microsoft Azure’s HPC and AI product teams, estimates that CPUs still support 80% to 90% of HPC simulation jobs today. In 2025, not only are these systems far from obsolete, they are experiencing a technological renaissance. A new wave of CPU innovation, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), is delivering major performance gains— without requiring costly architectural resets. 
Download the report. To learn more, watch the new webcast “Powering HPC with next-generation CPUs.” This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.

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The Download: our thawing permafrost, and a drone-filled future

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Scientists can see Earth’s permafrost thawing from space Something is rotten in the city of Nunapitchuk. In recent years, sewage has leached into the earth. The ground can feel squishy, sodden.This small town in northern Alaska is experiencing a sometimes overlooked consequence of climate change: thawing permafrost. And Nunapitchuk is far from the only Arctic town to find itself in such a predicament.  Now scientists think they may be able to use satellite data to delve deep beneath the ground’s surface and get a better understanding of how the permafrost thaws, and which areas might be most severely affected. Read the full story.
—Sarah Scoles
The US may be heading toward a drone-filled future —James O’Donnell Last week, I published a story about the police-tech giant Flock Safety selling its drones to the private sector to track shoplifters. Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now leads Flock’s drone efforts, described the ideal scenario: A security team at a Home Depot, say, launches a drone from the roof that follows shoplifting suspects to their car. The drone tracks their car through the streets, transmitting its live video feed directly to the police.It’s a vision that, unsurprisingly, alarms civil liberties advocates. But the fate of drones in the US pretty much comes down to one rule. It’s a Federal Aviation Administration regulation that stipulates where and how drones can be flown—and it is about to change. Read the full story. This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Trump’s impact on the next generation of innovators Every year, MIT Technology Review recognizes dozens of young researchers on our Innovators Under 35 list. This year Amy Nordrum, our executive editor, and our senior investigative reporter Eileen Guo checked back in with recent honorees to see how they’re faring amid sweeping changes to science and technology policy within the US.Join us tomorrow at 1.30pm ET for an exclusive Roundtables conversation with Amy and Eileen to learn about the complex realities of what life has been like for those aiming to build their labs and companies in today’s political climate. Register here!

The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 California’s governor has signed America’s first AI law It’ll require AI developers to publicly disclose their safety and security protocols. (Politico)+ The landmark bill has received a mixed reception from the AI industry. (TechCrunch) 2 The Trump administration is pressuring TaiwanIt’s pushing officials to move 50% of chip production to the US—or else. (Ars Technica)+ The US argues it’s the best way to counter invasion threats from China. (Bloomberg $)+ Taiwan’s “silicon shield” could be weakening. (MIT Technology Review) 3 US ChatGPT users can now buy stuff without leaving the chatbotIt’s laying the groundwork for AI agent-based shopping. (WSJ $)+ Etsy is among the first retailers to sign up for the service. (CNBC)+ It’s a direct challenge to Google’s business model. (Fortune $)+ Your most important customer may be AI. (MIT Technology Review) 4 YouTube has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump It’s handing over $24.5 million after his account was suspended in the wake of the US Capitol riot in 2021. (WSJ $)+ It’s the third giant tech platform to bend to the President’s will. (The Verge) 5 Meta is expanding use of its facial recognition toolsIn a bid to combat account impersonation in Europe, the UK, and South Korea. (Engadget) 6 The US Energy Department has banned the term “climate change”See also: “green” and “decarbonization.” (Politico)+ Even “emissions” isn’t safe. (TechCrunch)+ How to make clean energy progress under Trump in the States. (MIT Technology Review)
7 AI data centers are sending the cost of electricity skyrocketingAnd it’s regular citizens who are left paying the price. (Bloomberg $)+ Sam Altman wants a staggering amount of energy. (The Information $)+ The data center boom in the desert. (MIT Technology Review) 8 Elon Musk’s senior staff are leaving in their drovesThey’re burnt out and tired of their leader’s erratic strategies. (FT $)
9 Do black holes actually exist?The evidence says yes, but proving it is a different matter. (New Scientist $)10 California police tried to ticket a driverless car But who’s to blame for its illegal U-turn if there’s no driver? (The Guardian)+ It turns out officers don’t currently have any way to issue tickets to robots. (Insider $) Quote of the day “There are certainly people in [the] tech world who would like to see no regulation of anything in any respect whatsoever, but that’s not tenable.” —US Senator Scott Wiener, who proposed the original AI Safety Bill last year, explains why he believes the revised version that’s been passed into law is a reasonable approach to the New York Times.
One more thing How mobile money supercharged Kenya’s sports betting addictionMobile money has mostly been hugely beneficial for Kenyans. But it has also turbo-charged the country’s sports betting sector.Since the middle of the last decade, experts and public figures across the African continent have been sounding the alarm over the rising popularity of sports betting. The practice has produced tales of riches, but it has also broken families, consumed college tuitions, and even driven some to suicide.Nowhere, though, is the craze as acute as it is in Kenya, the country often dubbed Africa’s “Silicon Savannah” for its status as a regional tech powerhouse. But while Kenya’s mobile money revolution has played a well-documented role in encouraging savings and democratizing access to finance, today, it’s easier than ever for those in fragile economic circumstances to squander everything. Read the full story. —Jonathan W. Rosen

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The US may be heading toward a drone-filled future

On Thursday, I published a story about the police-tech giant Flock Safety selling its drones to the private sector to track shoplifters. Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now leads Flock’s drone efforts, described the ideal scenario: A security team at a Home Depot, say, launches a drone from the roof that follows shoplifting suspects to their car. The drone tracks their car through the streets, transmitting its live video feed directly to the police.  It’s a vision that, unsurprisingly, alarms civil liberties advocates. They say it will expand the surveillance state created by police drones, license-plate readers, and other crime tech, which has allowed law enforcement to collect massive amounts of private data without warrants. Flock is in the middle of a federal lawsuit in Norfolk, Virginia, that alleges just that. Read the full story to learn more.  But the peculiar thing about the world of drones is that its fate in the US—whether the skies above your home in the coming years will be quiet, or abuzz with drones dropping off pizzas, inspecting potholes, or chasing shoplifting suspects—pretty much comes down to one rule. It’s a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulation that stipulates where and how drones can be flown, and it is about to change. Currently, you need a waiver from the FAA to fly a drone farther than you can see it. This is meant to protect the public and property from in-air collisions and accidents. In 2018, the FAA began granting these waivers for various scenarios, like search and rescues, insurance inspections, or police investigations. With Flock’s help, police departments can get waivers approved in just two weeks. The company’s private-sector customers generally have to wait 60 to 90 days.
For years, industries with a stake in drones—whether e-commerce companies promising doorstep delivery or medical transporters racing to move organs—have pushed the government to scrap the waiver system in favor of easier approval to fly beyond visual line of sight. In June, President Donald Trump echoed that call in an executive order for “American drone dominance,” and in August, the FAA released a new proposed rule. The proposed rule lays out some broad categories for which drone operators are permitted to fly drones beyond their line of sight, including package delivery, agriculture, aerial surveying, and civic interest, which includes policing. Getting approval to fly beyond sight would become easier for operators from these categories, and would generally expand their range. 
Drone companies, and amateur drone pilots, see it as a win. But it’s a win that comes at the expense of privacy for the rest of us, says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project who served on the rule-making commission for the FAA. “The FAA is about to open up the skies enormously, to a lot more [beyond visual line of sight] flights without any privacy protections,” he says. The ACLU has said that fleets of drones enable persistent surveillance, including of protests and gatherings, and impinge on the public’s expectations of privacy. If you’ve got something to say about the FAA’s proposed rule, you can leave a public comment (they’re being accepted until October 6.) Trump’s executive order directs the FAA to release the final rule by spring 2026. This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

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Scientists can see Earth’s permafrost thawing from space

Something is rotten in the city of Nunapitchuk. In recent years, a crack has formed in the middle of a house. Sewage has leached into the earth. Soil has eroded around buildings, leaving them perched atop precarious lumps of dirt. There are eternal puddles. And mold. The ground can feel squishy, sodden.  This small town in northern Alaska is experiencing a sometimes overlooked consequence of climate change: thawing permafrost. And Nunapitchuk is far from the only Arctic town to find itself in such a predicament.  Permafrost, which lies beneath about 15% of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, is defined as ground that has remained frozen for at least two years. Historically, much of the world’s permafrost has remained solid and stable for far longer, allowing people to build whole towns atop it. But as the planet warms, a process that is happening more rapidly near the poles than at more temperate latitudes, permafrost is thawing and causing a host of infrastructural and environmental problems. Now scientists think they may be able to use satellite data to delve deep beneath the ground’s surface and get a better understanding of how the permafrost thaws, and which areas might be most severely affected because they had more ice to start with. Clues from the short-term behavior of those especially icy areas, seen from space, could portend future problems.
Using information gathered both from space and on the ground, they are working with affected communities to anticipate whether a house’s foundation will crack—and whether it is worth mending that crack or is better to start over in a new house on a stable hilltop. These scientists’ permafrost predictions are already helping communities like Nunapitchuk make those tough calls. But it’s not just civilian homes that are at risk. One of the top US intelligence agencies, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is also interested in understanding permafrost better. That’s because the same problems that plague civilians in the high north also plague military infrastructure, at home and abroad. The NGA is, essentially, an organization full of space spies—people who analyze data from surveillance satellites and make sense of it for the country’s national security apparatus. 
Understanding the potential instabilities of the Alaskan military infrastructure—which includes radar stations that watch for intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as military bases and National Guard posts—is key to keeping those facilities in good working order and planning for their strengthened future. Understanding the potential permafrost weaknesses that could affect the infrastructure of countries like Russia and China, meanwhile, affords what insiders might call “situational awareness” about competitors.  The work to understand this thawing will only become more relevant, for civilians and their governments alike, as the world continues to warm.  The ground beneath If you live much below the Arctic Circle, you probably don’t think a lot about permafrost. But it affects you no matter where you call home. In addition to the infrastructural consequences for real towns like Nunapitchuk, thawing permafrost contains sequestered carbon—twice as much as currently inhabits the atmosphere. As the permafrost thaws, the process can release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That release can cause a feedback loop: Warmer temperatures thaw permafrost, which releases greenhouse gases, which warms the air more, which then—you get it.  The microbes themselves, along with previously trapped heavy metals, are also set dangerously free. For many years, researchers’ primary options for understanding some of these freeze-thaw changes involved hands-on, on-the-ground surveys. But in the late 2000s, Kevin Schaefer, currently a senior scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, started to investigate a less labor-intensive idea: using radar systems aboard satellites to survey the ground beneath.  This idea implanted itself in his brain in 2009, when he traveled to a place called Toolik Lake, southwest of the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. One day, after hours of drilling sample cores out of the ground to study permafrost, he was relaxing in the Quonset hut, chatting with colleagues. They began to discuss how  space-based radar could potentially detect how the land sinks and heaves back up as temperatures change.  Huh, he thought. Yes, radar probably could do that. 

Scientists call the ground right above permafrost the active layer. The water in this layer of soil contracts and expands with the seasons: during the summer, the ice suffusing the soil melts and the resulting decrease in volume causes the ground to dip. During the winter, the water freezes and expands, bulking the active layer back up. Radar can help measure that height difference, which is usually around one to five centimeters.  Schaefer realized that he could use radar to measure the ground elevation at the start and end of the thaw. The electromagnetic waves that bounce back at those two times would have traveled slightly different distances. That difference would reveal the tiny shift in elevation over the seasons and would allow him to estimate how much water had thawed and refrozen in the active layer and how far below the surface the thaw had extended. With radar, Schaefer realized, scientists could cover a lot more literal ground, with less effort and at lower cost. “It took us two years to figure out how to write a paper on it,” he says; no one had ever made those measurements before. He and colleagues presented the idea at the 2010 meeting of the American Geophysical Union and published a paper in 2012 detailing the method, using it to estimate the thickness of the active layer on Alaska’s North Slope. When they did, they helped start a new subfield that grew as large-scale data sets started to become available around 5 to 10 years ago, says Roger Michaelides, a geophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis and a collaborator of Schaefer’s. Researchers’ efforts were aided by the growth in space radar systems and smaller, cheaper satellites.  With the availability of global data sets (sometimes for free, from government-run satellites like the European Space Agency’s Sentinel) and targeted observations from commercial companies like Iceye, permafrost studies are moving from bespoke regional analyses to more automated, large-scale monitoring and prediction. The remote view Simon Zwieback, a geospatial and environmental expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, sees the consequences of thawing permafrost firsthand every day. His office overlooks a university parking lot, a corner of which is fenced off to keep cars and pedestrians from falling into a brand-new sinkhole. That area of asphalt had been slowly sagging for more than a year, but over a week or two this spring, it finally started to collapse inward.  Kevin Schaefer stands on top of a melting layer of ice near the Alaskan pipeline on the North Slope of Alaska.COURTESY OF KEVIN SCHAEFER The new remote research methods are a large-scale version of Zwieback taking in the view from his window. Researchers look at the ground and measure how its height changes as ice thaws and refreezes. The approach can cover wide swaths of land, but it involves making assumptions about what’s going on below the surface—namely, how much ice suffuses the soil in the active layer and permafrost. Thawing areas with relatively low ice content could mimic thinner layers with more ice. And it’s important to differentiate the two, since more ice in the permafrost means more potential instability. 
To check that they’re on the right track, scientists have historically had to go out into the field. But a few years ago, Zwieback started to explore a way to make better and deeper estimates of ice content using the available remote sensing data. Finding a way to make those kinds of measurements on a large scale was more than an academic exercise: Areas of what he calls “excess ice” are most liable to cause instability at the surface. “In order to plan in these environments, we really need to know how much ice there is, or where those locations are that are rich in ice,” he says. Zwieback, who did his undergraduate and graduate studies in Switzerland and Austria, wasn’t always so interested in permafrost, or so deeply affected by it. But in 2014, when he was a doctoral student in environmental engineering, he joined an environmental field campaign in Siberia, at the Lena River Delta, which resembles a gigantic piece of coral fanning out into the Arctic Ocean. Zwieback was near a town called Tiksi, one of the world’s northernmost settlements. It’s a military outpost and starting point for expeditions to the North Pole, featuring an abandoned plane near the ocean. Its Soviet-era concrete buildings sometimes bring it to the front page of the r/UrbanHell subreddit. 
Here, Zwieback saw part of the coastline collapse, exposing almost pure ice. It looked like a subterranean glacier, but it was permafrost. “That really had an indelible impact on me,” he says.  Later, as a doctoral student in Zurich and postdoc in Canada, he used his radar skills to understand the rapid changes that the activity of permafrost impressed upon the landscape.  And now, with his job in Fairbanks and his ideas about the use of radar sensing, he has done work funded by the NGA, which has an open Arctic data portal.  In his Arctic research, Zwieback started with the approach underlying most radar permafrost studies: looking at the ground’s seasonal subsidence and heave. “But that’s something that happens very close to the surface,” he says. “It doesn’t really tell us about these long-term destabilizing effects,” he adds. In warmer summers, he thought, subtle clues would emerge that could indicate how much ice is buried deeper down. For example, he expected those warmer-than-average periods to exaggerate the amount of change seen on the surface, making it easier to tell which areas are ice-rich. Land that was particularly dense with ice would dip more than it “should”—a precursor of bigger dips to come.
The first step, then, was to measure subsidence directly, as usual. But from there, Zwieback developed an algorithm to ingest data about the subsidence over time—as measured by radar—and other environmental information, like the temperatures at each measurement. He then created a digital model of the land that allowed him to adjust the simulated amount of ground ice and determine when it matched the subsidence seen in the real world. With that, researchers could infer the amount of ice beneath. Next, he made maps of that ice that could potentially be useful to engineers—whether they were planning a new subdivision or, as his funders might be, keeping watch on a military airfield. “What was new in my work was to look at these much shorter periods and use them to understand specific aspects of this whole system, and specifically how much ice there is deep down,” Zwieback says.  The NGA, which has also funded Schaefer’s work, did not respond to an initial request for comment but did later provide feedback for fact-checking. It removed an article on its website about Zwieback’s grant and its application to agency interests around the time that the current presidential administration began to ban mention of climate change in federal research. But the thawing earth is of keen concern. 
To start, the US has significant military infrastructure in Alaska: It’s home to six military bases and 49 National Guard posts, as well as 21 missile-detecting radar sites. Most are vulnerable to thaw now or in the near future, given that 85% of the state is on permafrost.  Beyond American borders, the broader north is in a state of tension. Russia’s relations with Northern Europe are icy. Its invasion of Ukraine has left those countries fearing that they too could be invaded, prompting Sweden and Finland, for instance, to join NATO. The US has threatened takeovers of Greenland and Canada. And China—which has shipping and resource ambitions for the region—is jockeying to surpass the US as the premier superpower.  Permafrost plays a role in the situation. “As knowledge has expanded, so has the understanding that thawing permafrost can affect things NGA cares about, including the stability of infrastructure in Russia and China,” read the NGA article. Permafrost covers 60% of Russia, and thaws have affected more than 40% of buildings in northern Russia already, according to statements from the country’s minister of natural resources in 2021. Experts say critical infrastructure like roads and pipelines is at risk, along with military installations. That could weaken both Russia’s strategic position and the security of its residents. In China, meanwhile, according to a report from the Council on Strategic Risks, important moving parts like the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, “which allows Beijing to more quickly move military personnel near contested areas of the Indian border,” is susceptible to ground thaw—as are oil and gas pipelines linking Russia and China.  In the field Any permafrost analysis that relies on data from space requires verification on Earth. The hope is that remote methods will become reliable enough to use on their own, but while they’re being developed, researchers must still get their hands muddy with more straightforward and longer tested physical methods. Some use a network called Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring, which has existed since 1991, incorporating active-layer data from hundreds of measurement sites across the Northern Hemisphere.  Sometimes, that data comes from people physically probing an area; other sites use tubes permanently inserted into the ground, filled with a liquid that indicates freezing; still others use underground cables that measure soil temperature. Some researchers, like Schaefer, lug ground-penetrating radar systems around the tundra. He’s taken his system to around 50 sites and made more than 200,000 measurements of the active layer. The field-ready ground-penetrating radar comes in a big box—the size of a steamer trunk—that emits radio pulses. These pulses bounce off the bottom of the active layer, or the top of the permafrost. In this case, the timing of that reflection reveals how thick the active layer is. With handles designed for humans, Schaefer’s team drags this box around the Arctic’s boggier areas.  The box floats. “I do not,” he says. He has vivid memories of tromping through wetlands, his legs pushing straight down through the muck, his body sinking up to his hips. Andy Parsekian and Kevin Schaefer haul a ground penetrating radar unit through the tundra near Utqiagvik.COURTESY OF KEVIN SCHAEFER Zwieback also needs to verify what he infers from his space data. And so in 2022, he went to the Toolik Field station, a National Science Foundation–funded ecology research facility along the Dalton Highway and adjacent to Schaefer’s Toolik Lake. This road, which goes from Fairbanks up to the Arctic Ocean, is colloquially called the Haul Road; it was made famous in the TV show Ice Road Truckers. From this access point, Zwieback’s team needed to get deep samples of soil whose ice content could be analyzed in the lab. Every day, two teams would drive along the Dalton Highway to get close to their field sites. Slamming their car doors, they would unload and hop on snow machines to travel the final distance. Often they would see musk oxen, looking like bison that never cut their hair. The grizzlies were also interested in these oxen, and in the nearby caribou.  At the sites they could reach, they took out a corer, a long, tubular piece of equipment driven by a gas engine, meant to drill deep into the ground. Zwieback or a teammate pressed it into the earth. The barrel’s two blades rotated, slicing a cylinder about five feet down to ensure that their samples went deep enough to generate data that can be compared with the measurements made from space. Then they pulled up and extracted the cylinder, a sausage of earth and ice. All day every day for a week, they gathered cores that matched up with the pixels in radar images taken from space. In those cores, the ice was apparent to the eye. But Zwieback didn’t want anecdata. “We want to get a number,” he says. So he and his team would pack their soil cylinders back to the lab. There they sliced them into segments and measured their volume, in both their frozen and their thawed form, to see how well the measured ice content matched estimates from the space-based algorithm.  The initial validation, which took months, demonstrated the value of using satellites for permafrost work. The ice profiles that Zwieback’s algorithm inferred from the satellite data matched measurements in the lab down to about 1.1 feet, and farther in a warm year, with some uncertainty near the surface and deeper into the permafrost.  Whereas it cost tens of thousands of dollars to fly in on a helicopter, drive in a car, and switch to a snowmobile to ultimately sample a small area using your hands, only to have to continue the work at home, the team needed just a few hundred dollars to run the algorithm on satellite data that was free and publicly available.  Michaelides, who is familiar with Zwieback’s work, agrees that estimating excess ice content is key to making infrastructural decisions, and that historical methods of sussing it out have been costly in all senses. Zwieback’s method of using late-summer clues to infer what’s going on at that depth “is a very exciting idea,” he says, and the results “demonstrate that there is considerable promise for this approach.”  He notes, though, that using space-based radar to understand the thawing ground is complicated: Ground ice content, soil moisture, and vegetation can differ even within a single pixel that a satellite can pick out. “To be clear, this limitation is not unique to Simon’s work,” Michaelides says; it affects all space-radar methods. There is also excess ice below even where Zwieback’s algorithm can probe—something the labor-intensive on-ground methods can pick up that still can’t be seen from space.  Mapping out the future After Zwieback did his fieldwork, NGA decided to do its own. The agency’s attempt to independently validate his work—in Prudhoe Bay, Utqiagvik, and Fairbanks—was part of a project it called Frostbyte.  Its partners in that project—the Army’s Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory—declined requests for interviews. As far as Zwieback knows, they’re still analyzing data.  But the intelligence community isn’t the only group interested in research like Zwieback’s. He also works with Arctic residents, reaching out to rural Alaskan communities where people are trying to make decisions about whether to relocate or where to build safely. “They typically can’t afford to do expensive coring,” he says. “So the idea is to make these data available to them.”  Zwieback and his team haul their gear out to gather data from drilled core samples, a process which can be arduous and costly.ANDREW JOHNSON Schaefer is also trying to bridge the gap between his science and the people it affects. Through a company called Weather Stream, he is helping communities identify risks to infrastructure before anything collapses, so they can take preventative action. Making such connections has always been a key concern for Erin Trochim, a geospatial scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. As a researcher who works not just on permafrost but also on policy, she’s seen radar science progress massively in recent years—without commensurate advances on the ground. For instance, it’s still hard for residents in her town of Fairbanks—or anywhere—to know if there’s permafrost on their property at all, unless they’re willing to do expensive drilling. She’s encountered this problem, still unsolved, on property she owns. And if an expert can’t figure it out, non-experts hardly stand a chance. “It’s just frustrating when a lot of this information that we know from the science side, and [that’s] trickled through the engineering side, hasn’t really translated into the on-the-ground construction,” she says.  There is a group, though, trying to turn that trickle into a flood: Permafrost Pathways, a venture that launched with a $41 million grant through the TED Audacious Project. In concert with affected communities, including Nunapitchuk, it is building a data-gathering network on the ground, and combining information from that network with satellite data and local knowledge to help understand permafrost thaw and develop adaptation strategies.  “I think about it often as if you got a diagnosis of a disease,” says Sue Natali, the head of the project. “It’s terrible, but it’s also really great, because when you know what your problem is and what you’re dealing with, it’s only then that you can actually make a plan to address it.”  And the communities Permafrost Pathways works with are making plans. Nunapitchuk has decided to relocate, and the town and the research group have collaboratively surveyed the proposed new location: a higher spot on hardpacked sand. Permafrost Pathways scientists were able to help validate the stability of the new site—and prove to policymakers that this stability would extend into the future.  Radar helps with that in part, Natali says, because unlike other satellite detectors, it penetrates clouds. “In Alaska, it’s extremely cloudy,” she says. “So other data sets have been very, very challenging. Sometimes we get one image per year.” And so radar data, and algorithms like Zwieback’s that help scientists and communities make sense of that data, dig up deeper insight into what’s going on beneath northerners’ feet—and how to step forward on firmer ground.  Sarah Scoles is a freelance science journalist based in southern Colorado and the author, most recently, of the book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons.

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The Download: AI to detect child abuse images, and what to expect from our 2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch list

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. US investigators are using AI to detect child abuse images made by AIGenerative AI has enabled the production of child sexual abuse images to skyrocket. Now the leading investigator of child exploitation in the US is experimenting with using AI to distinguish AI-generated images from material depicting real victims, according to a new government filing. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Crimes Center, which investigates child exploitation across international borders, has awarded a $150,000 contract to San Francisco–based Hive AI for its software, which can identify whether a piece of content was AI-generated. Read the full story. —James O’Donnell
Coming soon: our 2025 list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch
The need to cut emissions and adapt to our warming world is growing more urgent. This year, we’ve seen temperatures reach record highs, as they have nearly every year for the last decade. Climate-fueled natural disasters are affecting communities around the world, costing billions of dollars.  That’s why, for the past two years, MIT Technology Review has curated a list of companies with the potential to make a meaningful difference in addressing climate change (you can revisit the 2024 list here). We’re excited to share that we’ll publish our third edition of Climate Tech Companies to Watch on October 6. Here’s what you can expect from this year’s list. —Casey Crownhart The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 ChatGPT’s parental controls are now liveThe model can now alert parents and law enforcement when users under 18-years old discuss self harm or suicide. (Wired $)+ The feature launches as chatbot makers face increasing pressure to improve safety. (Bloomberg $)+ The looming crackdown on AI companionship. (MIT Technology Review) 2 Companies’ AI spending is spiralling out of controlAnd it’s unclear whether they’ll ever get returns on their investments. (WSJ $)+ Some VCs are convinced AI is the best way to make a quick buck. (TechCrunch)+ Investors are wondering what to invest in beyond AI. (Reuters)

3 Even oil executives are worried by Trump’s attacks on offshore windCracking down on renewables now is bad news for traditional energy down the line. (NYT $)+ The scale of the Trump administration’s intervention is wild. (The Guardian)+ How to make clean energy progress under Trump in the states. (MIT Technology Review) 4 How America is winning the war on city firesMaking homes fire-resistant isn’t glamorous—but it’s essential. (Vox)+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Top AI firms are going all-in on world modelsThey’re powered by videos and robotics data, not just language. (FT $)+ Experts are convinced they’re vital to creating the next wave of AI. (WSJ $) 6 China is rushing to electrify freight trucksNot content with dominating the electric car market, it’s eyeing bigger vehicles. (Rest of World)+ Sales of battery-powered cars are projected to plummet in the US. (NYT $) 7 What we lose when we rely on AI translationNuance and cultural context are among the first casualties. (WP $)+ How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral. (MIT Technology Review) 8 The tricky ethics of gene-editing the natural worldJust because we can, doesn’t mean we should. (Aeon)+ The short, strange history of gene de-extinction. (MIT Technology Review) 9 This robotics firm uses AI to clean the underside of giant ships 🚢Neptune Robotics has the lofty goal of becoming Uber for hull-cleaning. (Bloomberg $)10 Talent agents are desperate to sign this AI actressWe are living in the end times. (Deadline $)+ Why the Twin Peaks subreddit briefly became an AI slop dumping ground. (404 Media)+ An AI-powered hologram of Marvel Comics’ creator Stan Lee isn’t very popular. (Ars Technica)
Quote of the day “There’s so much pressure to be the company that went from zero to $100 million in X days.”
—An anonymous VC tells Fortune about the intense pressure on startups in the age of AI hype. One more thing How DeepSeek became a fortune teller for China’s youthAs DeepSeek has emerged as a homegrown challenger to OpenAI, young people across China have started using AI to revive fortune-telling practices that have deep roots in Chinese culture. People are sharing AI-generated readings, experimenting with fortune-telling prompt engineering, and revisiting ancient spiritual texts—all with the help of DeepSeek.The surge in AI fortune-telling comes during a time of pervasive anxiety and pessimism in Chinese society. And as spiritual practices remain hidden underground thanks to the country’s regime, computers and phone screens are helping younger people to gain a sense of control over their lives. Read the full story. —Caiwen Chen
We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + This site lets you find out what was happening in the news on the day you were born. + This blistering track by South Korean band Silica Gel confirms rock is alive and well.+  Spend a few minutes exploring Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.+ Play around with this map that allows you to explore movie settings around the world.

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Energy Department Selects Four Companies for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Line Pilot Projects

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced another step forward in the Trump administration’s efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel. DOE selected Oklo Inc., Terrestrial Energy Inc., TRISO-X LLC, and Valar Atomics Inc. for its new pilot program to build advanced nuclear fuel lines. Today’s action will help strengthen America’s national security, reduce reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and support the Department’s Reactor Pilot Program that aims to have at least three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. “President Trump has made clear that a strong nuclear sector is a central component of America’s energy security and prosperity,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly. “Restoring a secure domestic fuel supply will ensure that advanced reactors can move quickly from design to deployment and into operation. The ability to produce these fuels is essential to ensuring American leadership in nuclear energy and to meeting the nation’s growing demand for reliable power.” This is the second round of conditional selections under DOE’s Fuel Line Pilot Program. DOE previously selected Standard Nuclear to build and operate TRISO fuel fabrication facilities. The following projects will leverage the Department’s authorization process to ensure a robust supply of fuel is available for research, development, and demonstration purposes— including the 11 reactors initially selected to participate in DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program: Oklo Inc. (Santa Clara, California) – To build and operate three fuel fabrication facilities to support their Aurora and Pluto reactors, and possibly other fast reactors.  Terrestrial Energy Inc (Charlotte, NC) – To develop the Terrestrial Energy Fuel Line Assembly to demonstrate a fuel salt fabrication process in a phased approach.  TRISO-X Inc. (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) – To build and operate an additional fuel fabrication laboratory facility to enable pilot-scale integration, training, and system validation to

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New Partnerships Form to Deploy Digital Energy Twins in Data Centers

Of course, partnerships have been ongoing in the data center and AI realms. For example, Microsoft and AMD have a long-standing collaboration to provide powerful cloud solutions for enterprise workloads, high-performance computing, and AI. Google Cloud and NVIDIA have a deep partnership across the AI stack, allowing Google Cloud to integrate NVIDIA’s latest hardware and software into its services. Colocation providers are collaborating with tech companies to offer turnkey AI solutions, which hardware, AI research labs, and cloud providers are joining forces in cross-industry alliances to support AI development. What’s Next for Digital Energy Twins Analysts anticipate that the next wave of digital energy twins will feature deeper integration with AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) for self-updating, autonomous operations, and enhanced predictive capabilities, moving beyond monitoring to proactive simulation and optimization. Key developments include increased integration with quantum computing, the development of interoperable and standardized ecosystems, and a greater focus on cybersecurity to protect these complex systems. These advancements aim to drive greater operational efficiency, improve asset performance, reduce downtime, and support sustainability goals across the energy sector.

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Exxon to Cut 2,000 Jobs

Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to cut about 2,000 jobs globally as the Texas oil company consolidates smaller offices into regional hubs as part of its long-term restructuring plan.  The reductions represent about 3% to 4% of Exxon’s global workforce and are part of the company’s ongoing efficiency drive, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in an memo to employees Tuesday. About half will be in the Europe and most of rest in Canada at Calgary-based Imperial Oil Ltd., which is nearly 70% owned by Exxon. Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP Plc are among major oil companies to have also announced thousands of job cuts in recent months as crude prices tumbled this year in response to increased supplies from OPEC and its allies. Exxon, however, has been on a major internal restructuring push since 2019 as Woods sought to simplify the company’s sprawling global footprint that came as a result of the merger with Mobil two decades ago.  Exxon is making “tough decisions” that build upon a years-long effort to improve competitiveness, Woods wrote in the memo. “The changes we’ve announced today will further strengthen our advantages and grow the gap with our competition, helping to keep us in the lead for decades to come,” he said.   The oil giant will cut 1,200 positions in the European Union and Norway by the end of 2027, with layoffs making up half of the reductions, it said in a statement. Imperial will cut about 900 positions, or 20% of its workforce, in the same time period, helping reduce operational expenses by C$150 million ($108 million) annually.  The regional hubs will focus on Exxon’s major growth initiatives such as oil in Guyana, liquefied natural gas along the Gulf Coast and trading globally. For example, the company recently announced plans to move employees from Brussels and Leatherhead, UK, to central London, where it’s recently

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Russia Expects Oil and Gas Revenue at Lowest in Years

The Russian government expects the oil and gas industries’ contributions to the national budget this year to drop to the lowest since the pandemic of 2020 after prices for its fuels dipped and the ruble strengthened. Moscow will gather about 8.65 trillion rubles ($100 billion) in taxes from the oil and gas industry, according to amendments to Russia’s 2025 budget. That’s about 22 percent less than last year’s revenues, according to the amendments, published Monday on the website of the State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament.  Levies from oil and gas producers are critical for the Kremlin, as they are projected to account for almost a quarter of revenues into state coffers this year. Moscow plans to keep boosting military spending to finance the ongoing war in Ukraine, and will raise taxes like VAT and increase borrowing to bridge the budget gap. In a drive to further bear down on Russia’s energy revenues, western nations and allies have adopted wide-ranging sanctions. Most recently, US President Donald Trump has been putting pressure on partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including Turkey, to stop buying Russia’s barrels altogether.  Urals, Russia’s main export blend, is projected to average $58 a barrel this year, compared with $66.60 last year. Despite sanctions, the decline is mainly driven by lower crude prices amid concerns over global economic growth.  Russia’s government sees the average Urals discount to global benchmark Brent at $12 a barrel. The gap has shrunk compared with the earlier years of the war, but is still markedly wider than the historic discount of $2-4 a barrel because of sanctions.  The strengthening of the national currency is another reason behind declining revenues. For this year, the government projects the exchange rate at 86.1 rubles to a US dollar, compared with 92.4 rubles a dollar

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Treasuries Gain as USA Gov Shutdown May Follow Month-End

Treasuries gained Monday, supported by a slump in oil prices and a rally in UK government bonds, and by anticipation of buying into Tuesday’s month-end index rebalancing. Yields declined as much as five basis points across tenors with the 10-year note’s falling to 4.14%. The 30-year bond’s dipped below 4.70% for the first time since Sept. 18. US benchmark crude oil futures dropped more than 4% on signs OPEC+ will hike production again in November. The prospect of a US government shutdown beginning Wednesday also has implications for the Treasuries market, as shutdowns are associated with gains for bonds based on their potential to restrain the economy. “There’s a global move lower today in yields,” said Angelo Manolatos, an interest-rate strategist at Wells Fargo Securities. “It’s likely a combination of quarter-end flow dynamics and the possibility of a government shutdown. Yields typically drop modestly during government shutdowns that last at least five days.” The market racked up gains even as Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack — who becomes a voting member of the central bank’s rate-setting committee next year — reiterated her view that inflation remains too high to warrant cutting interest rates. Futures markets continue to anticipate about 100 basis points of additional Fed easing over the next 12 months. Expectations for Fed rate cuts rest mainly on signs of stress in the US labor market, where job creation has slowed precipitously in recent months. September data is set to be released on Friday. Tuesday’s month-end bond index rebalancing — to add eligible bonds created during the month and remove those that no longer fit the index criteria — typically drives buying by passive and other index-tracking investment funds that can support the market if their needs exceed expectations.  The rebalancing will increase the duration of the Bloomberg Treasury index by an estimated 0.06

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EPA mulls postponing coal plant wastewater compliance, changes to Regional Haze Rule

Dive Brief: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed giving coal power generators additional time to comply with new wastewater disposal guidelines and said it also would consider regulatory changes to the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule. EPA’s proposals are part of a package of coal-supporting actions the Trump administration unveiled this week, including $625 million to retrofit and recommission coal plants from the Department of Energy. Extending compliance for EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines would reduce electricity costs by approximately $30 million to $200 million annually, the agency estimated. Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Laurie Williams countered that every day the requirements are delayed means more people “will be exposed to higher levels of toxic pollution.” Dive Insight: Residual waste from burning coal contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic, according to the EPA. The federal government strengthened regulation on coal combustion residuals following a disastrous coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authoriy’s Kingston plant in 2008, which contaminated some 300 acres of land, making it one of the largest industrial spills in U.S. history.  EPA revised its ELG requirements last year to include stronger protections around coal ash wastewater pollution. The changes included requiring plants to halt some types of discharges by 2029 or to commit by the end of this year to cease burning coal by 2034. EPA’s proposal would extend both the compliance and the notice deadlines. The agency said the move would “reduce costs for facilities and help with electricity reliability and affordability.” Comments are due 30 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. EPA’s current ELGs for wastewater discharges from steam electric power plants “are potentially costly to an electric power sector that is struggling with increasing demand as AI is booming, data centers are being constructed and operated around

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