Half a century after the oil shocks of the 1970s rewired global macroeconomics, the prevailing assumption in markets is that Middle East conflict is tragic, destabilizing and dangerous, but rarely macro-dominant. The modern oil system has repeatedly demonstrated a kind of geopolitical shock absorption: violence can intensify, shipping can be harassed, even state-on-state exchanges can occur, and yet crude often behaves as if the world’s central premise still holds, barrels keep moving.

This “firewall” between geopolitics and energy pricing is real but contingent. It is not that the Middle East has become economically irrelevant; it is that the specific kinds of disruptions that force a sustained oil repricing, like damage to production, export terminals, or a closure of critical maritime choke points, have generally been avoided. If that restraint breaks, the macro consequences would be immediate and global.

China is laying the administrative groundwork for the next major expansion of its national carbon market by compelling a new swath of heavy emitters, including petrochemicals, copper smelters, airlines and several other industrial sectors, to measure and report last year’s emissions under uniform rules.

The environment ministry’s notice sets a clear compliance threshold: companies emitting the equivalent of at least 26,000 tonnes of CO₂ must submit verified data by the end of March. That reporting mandate is not just a data exercise; it is the prerequisite for bringing these sectors into quota allocation and trading, because you cannot credibly cap, benchmark, or penalize emissions without auditable baselines.

China’s silver market is sending a very different signal from the global one. International prices have calmed after the violent boom-and-bust of January, but inside China the market still looks like a classic physical squeeze: scarce deliverable metal, urgent near-term demand, and a forward curve that is “inverted” so sharply that it is effectively paying you to own silver now rather than later.

The most telling symptom is extreme backwardation on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, where the front-month contract is trading at a record premium to later deliveries, an expression of immediate shortage rather than a mere speculative view on future price direction.

Nickel’s latest leg higher is being driven less by a sudden improvement in end-demand and more by a deliberate political throttle on the world’s most important source of supply: Indonesia. The signal this time is unusually specific. Market participants say PT Weda Bay Nickel, widely regarded as the single largest nickel mining complex globally, has been assigned an ore quota of about 12 million wet tonnes for 2026, down sharply from the 42 million wet tonnes permitted in 2025.

That kind of step-change at a flagship asset reframes Indonesia’s quota regime from a “guidance tool” into something closer to active market management, and it helps explain why prices have extended gains even though inventories and downstream conditions have not suddenly tightened overnight.

Europe’s electrolyser manufacturers are trying to force a policy decision that goes to the heart of the EU’s current industrial dilemma: does Brussels treat green hydrogen equipment as a strategic clean-tech value chain worth defending, even if that means more protectionism and potentially higher upfront costs, or does it prioritize cheapest-available deployment and accept that manufacturing may migrate to the lowest-cost producer, likely China.

Their request for “made in Europe” requirements on publicly funded hydrogen spending is essentially a plea to turn the EU’s large public procurement envelope into an anchor customer for domestic scale-up, before Chinese firms convert their home-market volume advantage into durable cost leadership in electrolysers.

“Project Vault” is the headline, but the real story is that Washington has quietly accepted a hard constraint: you cannot build supply security for dozens of “critical minerals” through domestic production alone, at least not on any timeline that matches the current geopolitical cycle.

The Trump administration’s $12 billion stockpile plan is meant to provide a buffer against sudden disruptions, yet the list of roughly 60 minerals classified as critical spans materials the United States scarcely produces, does not refine at scale, or sources through supply chains ultimately routed through China.

Taiwan’s plan to dispatch officials to evaluate U.S. rare earth deposits is a deliberately targeted move: Taipei is not trying to become a miner, but to insert itself into the most strategically valuable choke point in the rare earth supply chain, refining and processing, so it can reduce exposure to China-centric flows while strengthening its value proposition to the United States.

Economy Minister Kung Ming-hsin said the ministry’s Geological Survey and Mining Management Agency will assess what specific rare earth elements are present in U.S. deposits and whether they match Taiwan’s industrial needs, with the goal of having those minerals refined on the island.

Libya’s decision to award new exploration acreage to a mix of Western majors and state-backed national champions is an explicit attempt to reopen the country’s upstream frontier after nearly two decades of limited licensing activity, and to do it in a way that diversifies partners while keeping the National Oil Corporation (NOC) at the center of the sector.

The awards, Libya’s first licensing round since 2007, cover some of the country’s most geologically attractive real estate: onshore blocks in the prolific Sirte basin, southern acreage in the Murzuq basin, and offshore Sirte/Mediterranean gas prospects.