ADNOC’s plan to spend tens of billions of dollars building a U.S. gas business shows how sharply Gulf energy strategy is evolving. The company’s overseas investment arm, XRG, is reviewing 29 potential deals as it tries to build a vertically integrated gas platform in the United States, stretching from upstream production and pipelines to processing, liquefaction, and potentially downstream import infrastructure in destination markets.

XRG’s chief investment officer, Nameer Siddiqui, said the company wants to diversify its commodity exposure and position itself across the full gas value chain, while remaining willing to deploy very large sums into the U.S. market if returns are attractive.

India has swung back to being a net exporter of finished steel, a notable reversal after two years in which import pressure had become a major concern for domestic mills. Provisional government data show that in fiscal year 2025/26, which ended on March 31, India exported 6.6 million metric tons of finished steel, up 35.9% from a year earlier, while imports fell 31.7% to 6.5 million tons.

Crude steel production rose to 169.2 million tons, up 11.2%, and finished steel consumption climbed 8% to 164.2 million tons. Italy, Vietnam, Belgium, the UAE, and Spain were the biggest buyers of Indian finished steel, while South Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, and Russia were the main sources of imports into India.

China is considering returning to London for a second sovereign green bond sale, a move that would reinforce two ambitions at once: expanding its footprint in international debt markets and using sovereign issuance to deepen the global role of its green-finance agenda. Officials at the Ministry of Finance have been working with banks on a possible deal for the second half of 2026, although the size, tenor, and structure are still under discussion.

The significance of that possible return is clearer when set against last year’s debut transaction. China’s first offshore sovereign green bond, issued in London in April 2025, raised 6 billion yuan in two tranches: 3 billion yuan of three-year notes at 1.88% and 3 billion yuan of five-year notes at 1.93%.

The latest jump in electric-vehicle sales suggests the Iran war is beginning to reshape consumer behavior in transport just as clearly as it has already reshaped energy markets. The immediate mechanism is simple: when oil prices and retail fuel costs rise sharply, the economic case for switching away from gasoline and diesel becomes easier for households to see, especially in markets where EV availability has improved and lower-cost Chinese models are arriving in larger numbers.

Surging petrol prices helped push battery-electric vehicle registrations sharply higher across Europe in March, with strong gains in countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland. In the main European markets tracked by E-Mobility Europe and New Automotive, BEV sales rose 29.4% year on year in the first quarter, with March alone showing a 51.3% jump across 15 European countries.

The new fertilizer shock is shaping up as one of the most serious threats yet to the next global harvest cycle because it is hitting farmers at exactly the wrong moment. The Iran war has disrupted a major share of global fertilizer trade flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off urea exports from Qatar’s huge production base and curbing flows of sulphur and ammonia, two key fertilizer inputs.

At least 2 million metric tons of urea production have already been lost since the conflict began, equal to about 3% of annual seaborne trade, while nearly 1 million tons already loaded on vessels remain stranded in the Gulf.

Europe’s aluminium market is moving from price pressure into a genuine physical squeeze, and the most acute stress point is no longer primary metal alone but billet, the semi-finished product essential for extrusions used in construction, transport, and higher-spec industrial components.

The premium for aluminium extrusion billet in Rotterdam has more than doubled since the war began, jumping to about $1,100 a metric ton from roughly $530 before the conflict. At the same time, the physical premium for primary aluminium delivered into Europe has risen about 63% to $585 a ton, with May and June levels around $625. Those moves show that buyers are paying not just for the metal itself, but for immediate access to scarce material in the right form.

The agreements announced in Croatia and Albania show that the United States is trying to do more than sell energy into the Balkans. Washington is using a mix of LNG supply, infrastructure backing, civilian nuclear cooperation, and AI-linked investment to deepen its strategic footprint across a region that has long been contested by outside powers.

At the Three Seas Initiative business forum in Dubrovnik, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright presented the deals as part of a broader push to strengthen ties with southern, central, and eastern Europe, while reducing the space for Russian energy influence in the region.

Guinea’s bauxite surge in early 2026 captures a central contradiction in today’s raw-material economy: output is booming, yet producer stress is still rising. Official data show Guinean bauxite production jumped 25.3% year on year in the first quarter to 60.9 million metric tons, up from 48.6 million tons a year earlier, with more than 70% of Guinea’s shipments continuing to go to China.

That keeps Guinea firmly at the center of the global aluminium supply chain, since it is already the world’s largest exporter of bauxite and produced about 183 million tons in 2025.