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Foreign intelligence services are using "spy turtles" and "spy fish" to snoop on China, the country's Ministry of State Security said Friday. "An unseen covert war of espionage is currently unfolding" in the seas around China's coast, the ministry wrote in a post on the WeChat social media platform. In recent years, overseas spy agencies have been "continuously collecting and stealing sensitive maritime data through various new types of espionage equipment," it said, including "spy turtles and spy fish." In certain Chinese waters, "relatively large living marine animals have been fitted with sensors to swim in specific areas, collect ocean...

A sanctioned Russian LNG tanker from the Portovaya project idled near Singapore in May 2026 with no buyer. At the same time, Ukrainian drones had already knocked roughly 700,000 barrels per day of Russian refining capacity offline across 16 major facilities. Europe had locked in a binding legal phase-out of Russian gas. And just four months earlier, U.S. forces had captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Iran is increasing its military presence in Venezuela, with officials and personnel, with some members of the country's elite acquiring properties in the Latin American country and being offered political asylum ... The relationship between the two countries has grown over the years, Infobae has detailed, with Iran having established a drone development base at the El Libertador air base in Venezuela, where training for Venezuelan military personnel is also carried out. That project includes the production and training in the use of a wide range of unnamed aerial vehicles (UAV) Among them are the ZAMORA V-1 (Shahed-131), used for...

The housing market was expected to rebound this year, but the Iran war has changed that trajectory... In early June, the average 30-year fixed-rate was 6.52%, according to Freddie Mac. Just before the war began, rates fell below 6% for the first time in years... The rate environment is typically driven by numerous economic and political events, but the war is driving the movement now, Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com, said. “Over the last couple of months, the rate market has been held hostage by this conflict in Iran,” he said. “When it looks like a ceasefire is in...

President Trump has reportedly told his aides to prepare for a prolonged US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical waterway for global energy flows. On Wednesday, the president told Axios he is maintaining the blockade until Iran agrees to a deal over its nuclear program. The pressure campaign carries mounting costs beyond Iran. While the near-total cessation of flows through the key waterway is cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Tehran, it’s also choking key corners of the global market. By extending the blockade, Trump is wagering that Iran’s export-dependent economy will...

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. military has secretly helped 200 commercial ships and more than 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. "This wildly successful effort is because the UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz — NOT Iran," Trump said in a Truth Social post. "Their military is defeated, and their economy is lost." Trump disclosed the operation earlier Wednesday during remarks to reporters in the Oval Office. He credited the clandestine exports with keeping oil prices around $90 per barrel instead of surging above $200. But ship traffic through Hormuz...

A stunning military disclosure has confirmed that American naval forces have been executing highly classified, pitch black raids to seize millions of barrels of oil while simultaneously vaporizing an entire fleet of blockade runners under the cover of total darkness. The United States has been secretly conducting massive, highly coordinated maritime operations under the cover of darkness, systematically draining millions of barrels of oil from blockaded shipping lanes. This stunning development was officially disclosed during a high-profile address from the Oval Office, exposing a massive, previously unacknowledged campaign designed to economically cripple the regime. The operation has been running continuously...

Back Truth Details 3527 replies Avatar Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Last month, I directed our Great U.S. Military to execute a secret mission to support Oil Tankers and other Commercial Ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Today, I am pleased to announce that this effort has resulted in more than 100 MILLION Barrels of Oil making its way through the Strait, and into the Open Market. More than 200 Commercial Ships have safely traveled through the Strait. This wildly successful effort is because the UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz — NOT Iran. Their military is defeated,...

Ahmad Chalabi is in possession of "miles" of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds. That may have been enough to provoke yesterday's American raid. So explosive are the contents of the files that their publication would cause serious problems for US allies and friendly states around the globe. Late last year and several months before Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority became involved, Mr Chalabi had amassed enough information concerning corruption in the oil-for-food scandal to realise that he was...

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Monday that they would ban ships linked to Israel from the Red Sea after Israel renewed its military attacks on Iran, adding to concerns about global shipping and energy flows.

The Trump administration on Friday auctioned off rights to drill in a pristine wildlife refuge in Alaska, but the lease sale attracted only two bidders on a few tracts of land. Of the about 60 tracts of land opened up for leasing by the Trump administration, only five received bids.

The oil industry is warning the Trump administration that a Hormuz-sized hole in the world’s petroleum market is steadily draining inventories to levels that are likely to send global energy prices surging in the next several weeks, according to four executives. Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said. The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were...

Researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) are taking significant steps that can help boost production of oil and natural gas that can be recovered from unconventional formations. The method focuses on recovering these additional resources in shale and other tight reservoirs that have already produced hydrocarbons through hydraulic fracturing in primary recovery operations but still contain large amounts of oil and gas trapped within rocks. In unconventional formations, only a small percentage of hydrocarbons in place are typically extracted. While the new research could help ensure affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the United States. Primary recovery from...

When Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in December 2024, Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa declared that he would embrace a “zero problems” foreign policy, in the hopes that would help break the country’s isolation and solve some of its economic problems. The prospect of a stable Syria enticed at least $28 billion in investment deals from Middle Eastern countries in 2025, and even more has been secured so far in 2026. The continuation of that trend amid the current war with Iran has amplified Syria’s central geopolitical and economic pitch—that it can be a potentially transformational corridor for energy flows, commercial...

(The Center Square) - ExxonMobil shareholders on Wednesday approved the board of directors’ plan to redomicile the company's legal headquarters to Texas. Shareholders also rejected a proposal made by two proxy advisory firms urging them to vote against the plan and add more automatic voting options to the company’s retail investor voting program. In March, ExxonMobil Corp., based in Spring, Texas, announced its board unanimously recommended its shareholders approve changing its legal domicile from New Jersey to Texas, where its leadership and core operations have been based since 1989. The board hadn’t held a meeting in New Jersey for more...

Thousands of miles from the Persian Gulf, a sprawling network of tanker-to-tanker oil transfers off the coast of Malaysia and Singapore is helping Iran sustain its crude exports to China, even as the country navigates a tense ceasefire with the United States.Analysis of satellite imagery and maritime tracking data has identified the waters roughly 100 kilometres southeast of the Malay Peninsula as the primary hub for what analysts describe as a clandestine laundering operation for Iranian crude. Dozens of ship-to-ship transfers take place there every week, involving not only Iranian vessels but a wider cast of tankers serving the shadow...

Prices at gas pumps are starting to sink and oil is on track to drop 20% in May — its largest one-month decline since 2020 — as investors remain optimistic that a deal to end the Iran war is near. As of Friday, national average gasoline prices had eased to $4.39 a gallon, according to AAA. That’s about 17 cents lower than the 2026 peak price of $4.56 a gallon – though it’s still nearly 50% higher than pre-war prices. Brent crude oil had fallen 1.3% to $91.51 a barrel as of about 2:50 p.m. ET Friday. The global benchmark...

Earlier this month, Senator John McCain indicated that it was time for the United States to consider selling lethal weapons to Vietnam after a 30-year embargo. The recent maritime standoff between Beijing and Hanoi over Chinese oil exploration off the central coast of Vietnam exposed Hanoi’s many strategic weaknesses. Providing Vietnam with coast guard and maritime systems as a first step - and eventually radar, fighter aircraft and spare parts for leftover American military equipment - would bolster Hanoi’s strategic capabilities vis-a-vis China and give substance to the "comprehensive partnership" announced last year between Hanoi and Washington. But more than...

Yes, an end to the Iran war remains elusive – but that doesn’t mean investors should wait around for it.What if talks fail? Won’t inflation skyrocket? Shouldn’t I wait for this to pass before buying stocks? Those are key questions I have been getting as this conflict drags on. They’re understandable, but they’re also expensive.Since my March column, America “double blockaded” the Strait of Hormuz. Yet little changed. The US blockade only affects Iranian exports and imports. Iran’s oil went mostly to China which, by the way, had stocked up beforehand.Meanwhile, Strait workarounds proliferate. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline exports were...

Driving the highway between Loving and Carlsbad on May 19, Jackie Onsurez noticed something unusual rising above an oilfield site operated by NGL Energy Partners. As he got closer, he realized the 70-foot plume was not smoke but a geyser of toxic oil field wastewater — known as produced water — erupting from a pipe. Onsurez, an engineer and member of New Mexico’s State Emergency Response Commission, immediately began calling NGL, 911, the New Mexico Environment Department and local officials. A roughneck arrived moments later and tried unsuccessfully to stop the spray. “The only people with protective gear were the...