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According to Moody’s Analytics, the likelihood of a recession within the next 12 months was already sitting at 49% before the escalation of the Iran conflict. With oil prices now surging and economic data weakening, that probability is expected to move above 50%. For investors, that shift matters. Once recession odds cross that threshold, markets tend to reprice risk quickly and often aggressively.A Fragile Economy Meets an Energy ShockMoody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi pointed to a combination of weakening economic data and rising energy costs as the main drivers behind the rising recession risk.“Behind the recent jump are primarily...

European countries have pushed back against Donald Trump’s decision to ease some US sanctions on Russian oil amid Iran’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz, insisting the international community should maintain pressure on Moscow over its war against Ukraine. The UK has joined Germany, France and Norway in rejecting the move, with the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, decrying what she said was Russia and Iran’s attempt to “hijack the global economy”. Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, described Washington’s move to temporarily waive sanctions on Russian oil stranded at sea as “wrong”, as the Trump administration attempted to counter a surge...

Volodymyr Zelensky today appeared to tacitly attack Donald Trump for easing sanctions on Russian oil to cut prices hammered by his attack on Iran. The Ukrainian president used a speech in Parliament to thank the UK for keeping up pressure on 'wealthy madman' Vladimir Putin despite fresh fighting in the Middle East. Last week Trump signed a one-month sanction waiver allowing countries to buy Russian oil currently floating around in tankers unable to dock anywhere. It was designed to ease prices that spiked when Iran put a block on shipping transiting the Straits of Hormuz off its south coast. In...

Oil prices fell back near $95 a barrel in U.S. futures markets Monday as Iran's Straight of Hormuz strategy became clearer, with the hard-line regime allowing passage of ships bound for Pakistan, India and China. The pullback in oil prices is allowing the S&P 500 to rally on Monday morning even as the U.S. struggles to find partners for an effort to guarantee safe passage through the key shipping route.

Someone should do a wellness check on The New York Times. Looks like its journos read the portents wrong — AGAIN — on another one of its apocalyptic prognostications on the economic consequences of President Donald Trump taking out the Islamist regime in Iran. Times business reporter Emmett Lindner nonsensically tried to dig up the corpse of the 1970s oil price shock following the Yom Kippur War as a comparative case study to what is transpiring around the Persian Gulf as Israel and the U.S. decimate Iran’s war machine. “Echoes of the ’70s in What’s Now the Largest Oil Shock...

After being offline for more than a decade, oil is officially flowing again through the Santa Ynez Pipeline System off the coast of Southern California. The network of pipelines, which pass through Santa Barbara County before ending at Pentland Station in Kern County, restarted Monday following an executive order from President Donald Trump on Friday, which has been seized on by Gavin Newsom. “This is an attempt to illegally restart a pipeline whose operators are facing criminal charges and prohibited by multiple court orders from restarting,” Newsom said in a statement when Trump first announced plans for Sable to resume...

President Trump is a member of a group called “Just Stop Oil.”He just set up a blockade to prevent any oil from being delivered to Cuba.As a result, Cuba’s electrical system has shut down.I hope all the leftists who hate Trump will applaud him for joining their goal of bringing an end to the use of oil.https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/americas/cuba-power-grid-collapse-intl-latam

Sable Offshore Corp. announced Monday that it restarted production on Platform Harmony and transporting oil to refineries in response to President Donald Trump and the Department of Energy ordering the move under the Defense Production Act. The Texas-based company has been attempting to restart the oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County for several years, including the offshore platforms and pipelines to transport oil to refineries. Local governments, environmental groups and residents have consistently pushed back, often citing safety concerns about major spills. One of the Sable pipelines is the one that ruptured and caused the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill...

The United States is allowing Iranian oil tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday.“The Iranian ships have been getting out already, and we’ve let that happen to supply the rest of the world,” Bessent said in an interview CNBC’s Brian Sullivan in Paris. The Treasury secretary is in France to hold trade talks with China. *** “We think that there will be a natural opening that the Iranians are letting out, and for now we’re fine with that. We want the world to be well supplied,” Bessent said. President Donald Trump is...

As we reported Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order authorizing the Energy Department to invoke the Defense Production Act, a 1950s Cold War-era law, to force the restart of a dormant offshore oil operation along the California coast.Oil prices have been volatile as the Iran conflict continues, and the Islamic Republic threatens the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the Middle Eastern waterway through which over 20 percent of the world's oil flows. According to the Santa Barbara News-Press, that oil could start flowing immediately:A federal order Friday directed Sable Offshore Corporation to restart its pipelines to transport oil from...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused European allies of seeking to "blackmail" Kyiv into reopening a pipeline transporting Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. He said restoring the flow of Russian crude oil through Ukraine into the European Union (EU) would be like lifting economic sanctions on Moscow. Ukraine says the Soviet-era Druzhba oil pipeline was damaged by Russian air strikes in January and has yet to be repaired. Hungary depends on Russian energy and is blocking both fresh EU sanctions on Moscow and a vital €90bn ($103bn; £78bn) loan for Kyiv until the pipeline is reopened. The EU has...

We saw President Donald Trump take the audacious move of launching U.S. strikes against military targets on Iran's very important Kharg Island, where so much of their oil goes through. While Trump said they wiped out the military targets, he also made it clear they didn't hit the oil installations. But he warned Iran that if they didn't open the Strait of Hormuz, they would consider hitting them. He also said the United States and other countries would send warships to ensure that the Strait was open. Marines were also being dispatched to the region. After Trump's warning and action...

Oil pumping operations are expected to begin imminently off the coast of California after President Trump issued an executive order Friday to resume oil drilling operations near Santa Barbara, The Post has learned. Officials for Sable Offshore Corp. informed local fire officials of their intent to “resume pumping operations within 24 hours.” The notification is a standard protocol for industrial activities involving hazardous materials pipelines. “This coordination allows the department to maintain readiness for potential emergency response, including resource staging, personnel alerting, and collaboration with other agencies, in the event of any incident such as a leak, spill, or fire,”...

The U.S. military devastated the military installations on Kharg Island, Iran’s major oil transport facility, but left the oil infrastructure alone. President Trump threatened to blow up the oil facilities, too: “The United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump said in a statement Friday evening, referring to an island in the Persian Gulf where most of Iran’s oil is processed. “I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should...

US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his demand that countries that need oil should help combat Iran's efforts to shut the Strait of Hormuz. Just hours after saying he hopes the UK, China and other nations will send warships, Trump said in a post on Truth Social countries 'that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage'. On Thursday, Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to keep blocking the strait, which is a key trade artery for around 20 per cent of the world's oil. It comes after Trump said last night that...

Thanks to the U.S. president’s keen political acumen, the Islamic Republic has lost a key point of leverage. What makes this attack so shocking is not just the target; it is who got targeted. Oman is the Gulf state closest to Iran politically, and it has long served as the main mediator between Iran and the West. Yet Tehran still went after its oil infrastructure... ...Iran’s message is clear: No oil infrastructure in the Gulf is off limits. And this is not new behavior. Iran has previously targeted oil production even in countries that are not openly hostile. Saudi Arabia,...

The Trump administration has signed an executive order to ​resume oil drilling operations off the Southern California coast, citing national energy security concerns. The order, which invokes a Cold War-era Defense Production Act, will prove controversial despite the potential to bring down gas prices, which are now the highest in America. Gov. Gavin Newsom also flagged the state would challenge the order in the courts. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is now permitted to take actions under the Defense Production Act. California’s price for a regular gallon hit an average of $5.416 on Friday. That’s far above the national average...

Iran's mullahs know their regime falling and they intend to take the rest of the world down with them.The missiles currently lighting up the skies over the Persian Gulf are not the precision tools of a confident power; they are the desperate flailing of a regime that has realized its end is near. For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained a thin veneer of "Islamic solidarity" to mask its expansionist ambitions. But as the "Epic Fury" strikes of early 2026 continue to dismantle the regime’s internal command, that mask has been ripped away, revealing a cold, nihilistic...

The move was met Friday with dismay in Europe, where officials and experts feared it would aid the Russian war machine in Ukraine. The Kremlin pressed Washington to go further.... The United States has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil, a boost to the Kremlin as Washington tries to contain energy prices sent soaring by the American-Israeli assault on Iran. President Vladimir Putin’s team welcomed the move to ease penalties that were imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and pushed Friday for the U.S. to go further. The decision caused dismay in Europe, where officials feared it would give a...

The United States has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil, a boost to the Kremlin as Washington tries to contain energy prices sent soaring by the American-Israeli assault on Iran. President Vladimir Putin’s team welcomed the move to ease penalties that were imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and pushed Friday for the U.S. to go further. The decision caused dismay in Europe, where officials feared it would give a timely boost to the Moscow war machine on their doorstep as attention shifts to the Middle East. The announcement failed to immediately calm oil prices, which have spiraled since Tehran...