Oil tankers and cargo ships line up in the Strait of Hormuz as seen from Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. Altaf Qadri | AP The U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is not only squeezing Iran but also ratcheting up pressure on two of its most consequential relationships in Asia — India and China. With roughly 98% of Iranian oil exports bound for China, and a summit bet...
Oil tankers and cargo ships line up in the Strait of Hormuz as seen from Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. Altaf Qadri | AP The U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is not only squeezing Iran but also ratcheting up pressure on two of its most consequential relationships in Asia — India and China. With roughly 98% of Iranian oil exports bound for China, and a summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping weeks away, Washington's maximum pressure campaign on Iran risks destabilizing the fragile detente that the administration has carefully cultivated with Beijing. India, with its complicated ties with the U.S., is increasingly finding U.S. policy at odds with its economic interests — most acutely in the energy shock now rippling through its economy. Trump is scheduled to visit China in mid-May, and the administration signaled repeatedly in recent weeks that it wants the bilateral relationship stable enough to keep the high-stakes meeting on track. "The Iran conflict, particularly the blockade, may upend this effort," said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator. Signs of friction are already emerging. Beijing, which had kept its stance on Trump's blockade largely restrained, appeared to harden its tone on Tuesday. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun slammed the move as "dangerous and irresponsible," and it will only "exacerbate tensions." More than a month into the war, Trump pulled a familiar playbook when he threatened to hit China with a 50% tariff if Beijing supplies weapons to Iran. Beijing pushed back, with Guo rejecting what he called "groundless smears and malicious linkage." "China will resolutely retaliate with countermeasures against any U.S. attempt to use weapons sales as a pretext for additional tariffs," Guo said. watch now VIDEO 4:18 04:18 China will take center stage in the U.S.-Iran negotiations: Atlantic Council Inside India India, in...
peshkov/iStock via Getty Images A guest post by Ovi The focus of this post is an overview of world oil production along with a more detailed review of the top 11 non-OPEC oil-producing countries. OPEC production is covered in a separate post. Below are a number of crude plus condensate (C + C) production charts, usually shortened to “oil”, for the oil-producing countries. The charts are created fr...
peshkov/iStock via Getty Images A guest post by Ovi The focus of this post is an overview of world oil production along with a more detailed review of the top 11 non-OPEC oil-producing countries. OPEC production is covered in a separate post. Below are a number of crude plus condensate (C + C) production charts, usually shortened to “oil”, for the oil-producing countries. The charts are created from data provided by the EIA’s International Energy Statistics and are updated to December 2025. This is the latest and most detailed/complete world oil production information available. Information from other sources such as OPEC, IEA, STEO and country-specific sites such as Brazil, Norway, Mexico, Argentina, and China is reported to provide an extra one- or two-month production preview beyond the EIA. The EIA’s April STEO report has made significant and major revisions to the projected world oil production due to the US/Iranian war. Also, US projected production has been significantly revised upward. See the US chart at the end. The world's December oil production decreased by 192 kb/d to 86,058 kb/d. September 2025 is the new current world peak oil at 86,428 kb/d for the next year and a half, when more oil production is brought online in late 2027. Note that after the March 2026 output crash, oil production only gets back to the November 2025 production level in February 2027. This chart has been updated using the April 2026 STEO to project world C + C production out to December 2027. It uses the STEO report along with the International Energy Statistics to make the projection. Production in January 2026 is projected to decrease by 1,551 kb/d to 84,507 kb/d. March/April production drops by more than 10,000 kb/d due to the Iran/US war. April production at 75,747 is 10,722 lb/d lower than March 2026. The 12-month centred moving average shown at July 2027 is 86,462 kb/d vs the September 2018 12-month CMA of 82,962 kb/d. For December 2027, production is projected to be 87,253...
Krot Studio/iStock via Getty Images It should not surprise anyone that coding has found the most product market fit in AI, but it is notable how much it surpasses everything else in the enterprise segment so far, which explains so much why Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) has been on a tear. a16z recently highlighted AI’s adoption and use cases of AI in the enterprise world. From a16z : “On the revenue moment...
Krot Studio/iStock via Getty Images It should not surprise anyone that coding has found the most product market fit in AI, but it is notable how much it surpasses everything else in the enterprise segment so far, which explains so much why Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) has been on a tear. a16z recently highlighted AI’s adoption and use cases of AI in the enterprise world. From a16z : “On the revenue momentum, enterprise adoption of AI is dominated by a clear set of use cases and industries. Coding, support, and search represent the lion’s share of use cases by far (with coding being an order-of-magnitude outlier even among this set), while the tech, legal, and healthcare sectors have been the industries most eager to adopt AI.” It may be obvious to most people, but it is still worth spelling out why coding is such a perfect use case for AI. Again, from a16z (emphasis mine): In many ways, coding represents the ideal use case for AI, both in terms of what the technology can do and how readily the enterprise market will embrace it. Code is data dense, meaning there is a massive amount of high-quality code available online for the models to train on. It is also text-based, making it easy for models to parse. It is precise and unambiguous, with strict syntax and predictable outcomes. And crucially, it is verifiable: anyone can run it and know if it works, creating tight feedback loops for models to learn from and improve . Anthropic has been quite focused on nailing the coding use case for the last couple of years, as they believe it can not only accelerate their own research but also provide the most compelling economic return. From Sholto Douglas on a podcast 6 months ago on why Anthropic has been so focused on coding (emphasis mine): Two reasons.First, we think it’s the thing that will allow us to assist ourselves in AI research faster. There’s this notion of automating AI research. The speed of takeoff—the speed of progress—is driven by how much AI can assist AI research. Pre...
Japanese chemicals maker Asahi Kasei Corp. says it’s working to diversify sources of naphtha as the war in the Middle East curbs supplies. The company is sourcing the key petroleum product used in plastics-making from the US, Central and South America, Africa and Central Asia, President Koshiro Kudo said at a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday. Asahi Kasei is working closely with the governmen...
Japanese chemicals maker Asahi Kasei Corp. says it’s working to diversify sources of naphtha as the war in the Middle East curbs supplies. The company is sourcing the key petroleum product used in plastics-making from the US, Central and South America, Africa and Central Asia, President Koshiro Kudo said at a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday. Asahi Kasei is working closely with the government to broaden its supply, he said. Petroleum-products markets have been upended by the war, as the conflict centered on Iran has curtailed production and closed key shipping routes. Japan is particularly vulnerable as the country typically gets around 60% of its naphtha from overseas, and relies on the Middle East for more than 70% of those flows, according to the Japan Petrochemical Industry Association. Some plastics makers have already declared force majeure in recent weeks. Read More: Shortage of Naphtha Threatens Supply Chain Chaos in Japan Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said earlier this month that the country has enough supplies to cover at least four months of its demand for the product. That included about two months of shipments from abroad and volumes from domestic refiners, as well as an additional two months of inventories of intermediate chemical products derived from naphtha, she said. While it stands to be “incredibly tough,” Asahi Kasei should be able to continue procuring naphtha beyond May due to diversification strategies, Kudo said. Still, the company will have “no choice but to ask” for price hikes on a wide range of products due to the supply-chain disruption, he said.
Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer at Perplexity, discusses the company's growth and new product push of Perplexity Computer, in improving search functions from AI technology for its customers. He speaks exclusively with David Ingles and Yvonne Man on the sidelines of the HSBC Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong on "Bloomberg: The Asia Trade." (Source: Bloomberg)
Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer at Perplexity, discusses the company's growth and new product push of Perplexity Computer, in improving search functions from AI technology for its customers. He speaks exclusively with David Ingles and Yvonne Man on the sidelines of the HSBC Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong on "Bloomberg: The Asia Trade." (Source: Bloomberg)
Citi has reiterated its "Buy" rating on Amazon (AMZN.US), with the acquisition of Globalstar accelerating its low-orbit satellite direct-connect device strategy. 富途牛牛
Citi has reiterated its "Buy" rating on Amazon (AMZN.US), with the acquisition of Globalstar accelerating its low-orbit satellite direct-connect device strategy. 富途牛牛
Chip stocks surge! NVIDIA achieves a strong 10-day consecutive rise, AMD soars 30% in ten days, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index continues to hit new highs. 富途牛牛
Chip stocks surge! NVIDIA achieves a strong 10-day consecutive rise, AMD soars 30% in ten days, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index continues to hit new highs. 富途牛牛