European refining margins have flipped from windfall to stress because the recent surge in fuel prices has been more than offset by an even sharper increase in the cost of securing physical crude. In northwest Europe, light sweet hydroskimming margins averaged minus $6.45 a barrel in the week beginning April 6, while medium-sour cracking margins also fell into negative territory. Only light-sweet cracking stayed positive, and even there profitability weakened sharply.

The background to this reversal is that March initially looked like a bonanza for refiners worldwide. Middle distillate cracks surged as the Iran war disrupted flows through Hormuz and tightened diesel, jet fuel, and related product markets. In Singapore, March margins were about 14 times February levels, while northwest European light sweet hydroskimming margins in March were more than nine times February levels, at around $15.20 a barrel.

Japanese refineries are still running far below normal because replacing Middle Eastern crude is proving harder in practice than it looks on paper. Utilization was 67.8% in the week through April 11, almost unchanged from 67.7% the previous week and still well below the 80%-plus levels seen before the war began in late February.

That tells you the core problem is not just availability of crude in the abstract, but the difficulty of securing the right kinds of crude quickly enough and running them through plants built for a very different import structure.

China is considering whether to restrict exports of advanced solar manufacturing equipment to the United States, a move that would mark a significant escalation in the clean-tech rivalry between the two countries. Officials have begun preliminary consultations with equipment suppliers, including discussions around higher-end tools used to make more efficient solar cells, but no final rule has been adopted and the process has not yet reached the stage of formal industry consultation.

The background is that China’s dominance in solar no longer rests only on low-cost panel production. It also extends deep into the manufacturing ecosystem itself. China produces more than 80% of the world’s solar panel components and is home to the top suppliers of the machinery used to make solar cells.

China’s first-quarter surge in lithium battery exports points to two forces working in the same direction: a structural rise in overseas demand for storage and electrification equipment, and a short-term rush to ship before tax policy turned less favorable.

Customs data showed lithium battery exports up 50.4% year on year in the first quarter, a clear acceleration from the 26% growth recorded across full-year 2025. EV and wind-turbine exports also posted strong double-digit gains in the same quarter.

The disruption to leaching chemicals in Congo is a reminder that the fallout from the Iran war is not limited to headline commodities like crude oil and LNG. It is now reaching into the specialized chemical inputs that sit behind copper and cobalt production, and that matters because Congo is central to the global supply chain for both metals.

The country is the world’s top cobalt producer and Africa’s largest copper supplier, so any production restraint there quickly becomes relevant for electric vehicles, batteries, and the broader clean-energy transition.

The European Union’s launch of the critical minerals arm of its joint procurement platform is an important sign that Brussels is moving from diagnosis to mechanism in its effort to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains.

The new raw-materials window of the EU Energy and Raw Materials Platform opened for buyer submissions on April 13 and will begin its first round of buyer-supplier matchmaking this month, focused on rare earths, battery materials, and defense-related raw materials, with results due in September.

The European Union’s preliminary deal to slash tariff-free steel imports and double duties on excess shipments marks a major turn in its industrial trade policy. The agreement would cap tariff-free imports at 18.3 million metric tons a year, a 47% reduction versus 2024 levels, while raising the tariff on out-of-quota shipments from 25% to 50%.

The stated aim is to lift EU steelmakers’ capacity utilization from roughly 65% back toward 80%, after years of pressure from global overcapacity and, more recently, from US tariffs that have redirected foreign steel toward Europe.

The case for a new commodities supercycle is becoming harder to dismiss, but it is still better understood as a regime shift than as a guarantee that every raw material will rise together. The immediate catalyst has been the Iran war, which delivered an historic oil shock and tightened physical energy markets in ways that are still not fully unwinding.

At the same time, longer-running forces were already in place before the war: stronger demand for copper and other industrial metals from electrification and AI infrastructure, renewed stockpiling behavior, and a more fragmented geopolitical environment in which countries are willing to pay more for secure supply.