This Is a Fight for Humanity’: Meet the 2026 Winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize

“The 2026 prize winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress,” one foundation leader said.


2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Alannah Acaq Hurley poses for a photo.
(Photo by Goldman Environmental Prize)

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Olivia Rosane
Apr 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


The Goldman Environmental Foundation announced the six winners of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize on Monday, honoring an all-female slate of advocates who protected wildlife, took on extractive industries, and won important legal victories in the movement to halt the climate crisis.

The announcement comes as world leaders have failed to make progress in addressing environmental challenges, and President Donald Trump, leader of the world’s largest historical climate polluter, has withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement, rolled back climate and environmental regulations domestically, and made efforts to supercharge the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

“While we continue to fight uphill to protect the environment and implement lifesaving climate policies—in the US and globally—it is clear that true leaders can be found all around us,” John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said in a statement. “The 2026 prize winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress.”

The 2026 prize is notable because it marks the first time that all of the winners—Iroro Tanshi of Nigeria, Borim Kim of South Korea, Sarah Finch of the United Kingdom, Theonila Roka Matbob of Papau New Guinea, Alannah Acaq Hurley of the US, and Yuvelis Morales Blanco of Colombia—are women.

‘There’s lots of people doing really good things and, together, we are going to make the world a better place than it would otherwise have been.“

“I am especially thrilled to honor our first-ever cohort of six women, as this is a powerful reflection of the absolutely central role that women play in the environmental community globally,” Goldman said.

The winners also exemplify the prize’s 2026 theme “Change Starts Where You Stand,” as each of them began with a fight to protect a local community or ecosystem that has global implications for the climate, biodiversity, and environmental justice.

As US-based winner Alannah Acaq Hurley said, “At the end of the day, this is a fight for humanity, and, honestly, our ability to continue as humans on this planet.”

Here is how six remarkable women waged this fight and won.

Iroro Tanshi

Iroro Tanshi is a Nigerian conservation ecologist who has worked successfully with local communities to protect endangered bats and their rainforest habitat from wildfires.

Tanshi was elated in 2016 when she discovered the short-tailed roundleaf bat, previously believed to be extinct in the area, living in Nigeria’s Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary. However, two weeks later, a devastating wildfire ignited, forcing Tanshi to evacuate and ultimately impacting around half of the park.

Tanshi then turned her attention to preventing wildfires, which are sparked by traditional farming practices rubbing against the climate crisis.

“The way people manage these farms is they use fire to clean the farms every year, but climate change has completely toppled the pattern of rainfall and people can no longer predict when to burn safely,” she explained in a video.

Tanshi and her team worked with local communities on a Zero Wildfire Campaign, which includes educating farmers on when it is safe to burn and forming a team of “forest guardians” to patrol and fight fires on high-risk days. Due to her efforts, these guardians put out 74 fires between 2022 and 2025, preventing any of them from becoming major blazes.

“My hope for the future is that people would take these small-scale projects as signals for what the future should look like,” she said. “Let’s stay nimble. Let’s try to work in our small communities and solve those problems there on the ground.”

Borim Kim

Borim Kim helped win Asia’s first successful youth climate lawsuit, inspiring people across the region to demand government action on climate.

Kim was first motivated to take collective action when a heatwave baked Seoul in 2018, killing 48 people including a woman near her mother’s age, who died in her home.

“I realized that even home wasn’t safe from the climate crisis,” she said in a video. “I started looking for what I could do.”

Inspired by the international youth climate movement, she founded Youth 4 Climate Action (Y4CA) and helped organize school strikes and walkouts. After her activism led to meetings with policymakers, she realized that national leaders had no real plans to address the climate crisis. In 2020, she and Y4CA mobilized 19 young people to sue the South Korean government for violating the constitutional rights of future generations. Once the case was launched, she also continued to build a social movement for climate action.

In August 2024, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the young people, mandating that South Korea reduce its emissions in line with the scientific consensus, a decision the environmental minister accepted. The ruling is projected to prevent between 1.6-2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere.

“Youth may be seen as having a lower position in society, but now this decision has affirmed our right to live safely and the state’s duty to protect us,” Kim said.

Sara Finch

On the other side of the world, Sarah Finch also secured a precedent-setting legal climate victory.

Finch lives in a part of southeastern England called the Weald. While it is currently a rural area, it hosts oil and gas reserves that were eyed for exploitation during the fracking boom of the 2010s. Finch helped form the Weald Action Group to push back against many potential wells, but they were not able to stop the Surrey County Council from approving the operation and expansion of a drilling site called Horse Hill in 2018.

In gearing up to challenge the decision, Finch discovered that the council’s environmental impact statement had only considered emissions from direct drilling at the site, but not the emissions generated from the burning of the fuel once it was extracted, also known as Scope 3 emissions, which make up around 90% of oil and gas’ contribution to the climate emergency.

“It became apparent that it was actually the norm that Scope 3 emissions were being emitted from these kinds of decisions, and we realized that actually it was happening everywhere and in much bigger developments than Horse Hill,” Finch said in a video.

She and her team challenged the environmental impact statement over its failure to consider Scope 3 emissions, losing multiple times before finally securing a groundbreaking victory from the UK Supreme Court in 2024, which has come to be known as “the Finch ruling.”

The UK government cited the “Finch ruling” when it revoked its backing of two North Sea oil developments. Overall, the projects canceled or delayed in 2024 due to the ruling would have generated enough Scope 3 emissions to equal the UK’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions that year.

“It wasn’t just a win on Horse Hill,” Finch said. “It wasn’t even just a win on a handful of sites. It was a win on the whole future of the UK oil and gas industry. And I feel like, there’s lots of people doing really good things and, together, we are going to make the world a better place than it would otherwise have been.”

Theonila Roka Matbob

Theonila Roka Matbob was born into an environmental disaster. Rio Tinto’s Panguna Mine had devastated the ecosystem of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARB), destabilized its society, and led to a civil war that killed 15,000-20,000 Bougainvilleans, including her father.

“Our environment was tortured, and then the land was tortured, and the third party that was tortured were my people,” Roka Matbob said in a video.

Rio Tinto closed its copper, silver, and gold mine in 1989 due to the war, but had done nothing to clean up the 150,000 tons of tailings it had dumped into local rivers or take responsibility for the havoc the mine had caused. As an adult, Roka Matbob began to wonder why justice had not been done and to gather testimony from people impacted by the mine.

This led to a successful campaign that persuaded Rio Tinto first to fund an assessment of the mine’s impacts and then to sign a memorandum of understanding in 2024 to act on the assessment’s findings and develop a plan with local communities to remediate the area.

“It doesn’t mean we will restore everything as it was, but at least the story that my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren can remember [is] that our grandparents fought,” she said.

Alannah Acaq Hurley

As Theonila Roka Matbob secured justice for the impacts of one major mine, Alannah Acaq Hurley helped prevent another one from being dug in the first place.

Hurley grew up as a member of the Yup’ik Indigenous group in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a haven of biodiversity that also hosts the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon run. But in 2001 a new danger emerged: Canadian company Northern Dynasty Minerals announced plans to construct the Pebble Mine, the largest open-pit mine in North America.

“The pit would be so big, you could literally see it from the moon,” Hurley said in a video. “It didn’t take long for us to understand the level of threat that this mine posed—acid mine drainage, toxic tailings left in perpetuity. It was not a matter of if something goes wrong, it was a matter of when.”

Chosen to lead the United Tribes of Bristol Bay in 2013, Hurley built a coalition to oppose the mine, uniting tribes, commercial fishers, and environmentalists to make their cause to the US Environmental Protection Agency and push back against the company’s multiple attempts to move forward with the copper-and-gold mining project. Finally, in 2023, the EPA canceled the project via its rarely used veto power.

“It’s just really a testament to the power of the people,” she said. “We just never stopped until we were heard.”

Yuvelis Morales Blanco

Yuvelis Morales Blanco also defended her community from an extractive industry.

Blanco was born to subsistence fishers on Colombia’s Magdalena River in the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches.

“We had nothing but the river—she was like a mother who took care of me,” she said in a statement.

However, even as a child she saw the river was threatened by oil spills from Ecopetrol, Colombia’s leading oil company headquartered nearby. The potential threat level was raised even further when she learned while attending college in 2019 that Ecopetrol planned to build two pilot fracking projects near Puerto Wilches.

“Man, I’m like, ‘They’re going to do that in Wilches?’ No sir!’” she recalled in a video.

Blanco joined the Colombia Free from Fracking Alliance and began to raise awareness in her community about the plans. As the campaign’s momentum grew, so did her reputation as a spokesperson. This ultimately led to threats of violence against her that forced her to seek asylum in France in 2022, yet she continued to mobilize against the fracking plans from abroad.

She and the alliance saw success in 2022, as a local court halted the permitting process, newly elected President Gustavo Petro pledged there would be no fracking during his administration, and Ecopetrol suspended its contracts. In 2024, the Colombian Constitutional Court further ruled that the fracking projects had violated the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches’ right to free, prior, and informed consent.

Blanco continues to fight for a ban on fracking and for legal protections for environmental defenders—over 140 of whom were reported missing or killed in 2024, the most recent year for which Global Witness has a full tally. Colombia was also the most dangerous countries for defenders that year, with 48 deaths.

“I am very hopeful because I have a river that always accompanies me, and I know we’re going to win,” she said.

The Goldman Environmental Prize was founded in 1989 by Rhoda and Richard Goldman, and has since honored 239 winners in 37 years. The 2026 awards will be presented live in San Francisco on Monday evening at 8:30 pm ET. Watch it on YouTube here.

US Mining Plan Will Sacrifice Mexico’s Environment for Weapons and Tech

A new mining agreement provides no benefits for Mexico and fails to address health and environmental impacts.

By Tamara Pearson , 

Truthout

PublishedApril 18, 2026

The Autlán plant in Teziutlan, in the Sierra Norte, Puebla.Tamara Pearson


The U.S. and Mexico have established a mining agreement which has Indigenous and other residents of the Sierra Norte mountains, as well as activists around Mexico, worried.

Announced on February 4, the U.S.-Mexico Action Plan on Critical Minerals aims to guarantee the U.S.’s supply of minerals for its arms industry, technology like data centers and smartphones, and the so-called energy transition. It sets out price floors, identification of mining projects, geological mapping coordination, and mineral location identification for the U.S., but provides no benefits for Mexico and fails to address health and environmental impacts.

“They want us to show these gringo companies where the minerals are and then go and hand over everything, all without a fuss,” said Miguel Sánchez Olvera, a Totonac man from the Sierra Norte region who has been at the forefront of struggles that have expelled mines from the area. “That’s concerning, because where does it leave us, as Mexicans? Basically, they are going to keep stealing from us.”

Miguel Sánchez Olvera, a Totonac man and environment activist from the Sierra Norte, Puebla, speaking at a protest on March 22, 2026.Tamara Pearson

The beautiful Sierra Norte — teeming with rivers and sprawling forests, and where a majority of people speak Indigenous languages — has massive amounts of minerals that the U.S. has identified as “critical,” such as manganese, gold, silver, and copper.

According to NATO, manganese is one of 12 minerals critical for the weapons industry; it is used in submarines, fighter aircraft, tanks, and torpedoes. For Mexico, however, manganese is a source of distress before it is even processed. In the lush Sierra Norte cordillera, stark black mountains of manganese ore and slag piles are set off by smoking chimneys from a plant run by Autlán, a major Mexican mining company. Homes nearby are drenched in black stains. Residents describe mornings of black clouds along the ground and black dust covering their windows.

Sand Mining Is a Booming Industry — This Mexican Community Is Paying the Price
Fifty-six residents of an Indigenous Oaxaca community face 200 trumped-up charges for resisting mining in their rivers. By Tamara Pearson , Truthout July 9, 2025

Autlán operates four electric furnaces in its Teziutlán plant to smelt manganese ore, producing ferroalloys. Manganese is also on the U.S.’s critical minerals list and aside from weapons, it is vital to batteries and other steel applications.

Homes in Teziutlan, right near the Autlán plant, are drenched in black soot from the plant.Tamara Pearson

Mexico as a whole is the top silver-producing country, and among the top producers of copper, lead, and zinc — all on the U.S.’s list. Silver is vital for new weapon systems, hypersonic missiles, bombs, fighter jets, satellites, torpedoes, radar systems, AI data centers, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, and smartphones. Demand for copper for munitions is skyrocketing as the U.S. restocks its arsenal, and it is essential for armor and electronics. Copper supply problems can cause significant weapon production delays, and supply chain vulnerabilities for weapons manufacturers.

The U.S. is home to 6 of the top 10 global arms companies and 13 of the top 15 global tech companies. The White House’s 2027 budget includes over 18 billion U.S dollars for the Department of Defense to stockpile minerals that are critical to the military industry. That figure is up from the current 2 billion U.S. dollars.

A few days before the U.S.-Mexico plan was signed, the White House had also announced Project Vault, which will establish a public-private partnership to stockpile critical minerals for U.S. businesses. These moves “imply hyper-extractivism — or basically, renewed extractivism,” César Enrique Pineda, a researcher and professor of geopolitical and capitalist intersections with the environment at the José María Luis Mora Research Institute, told Truthout.

An Open-Pit Mine for the U.S.

Autlán is the largest manganese producer in Central and North America. Like other mining companies in Mexico, it exports much of what it produces, including to the U.S. In late March, the environmental protection agency Profepa temporarily shut down one of its furnaces in the Teziutlan plant after finding that it was operating without an emissions filter. Locals told Truthout they had complained about the resulting harsh black clouds for more than six months, but Autlán did nothing.

The Autlán plant in the Sierra Norte is located right in the center of the town of Teziutlan.Tamara Pearson

Autlán continues to accumulate massive mountains of slag rock, a byproduct of metal smelting, in open air. Exposed slag can release small particulates that can lead to respiratory or skin problems. Too much manganese in the body can affect the nervous system, and another potential component, hexavalent chromium, can cause cancer. Leachates — toxic liquid runoffs — spill onto nearby land and eventually into the water system.

Before the fourth furnace was shut down, Gisela Macias Dionisio, a local water activist with Servicios Ambientales Amelatzin Hualactoc, told Truthout, “the dust was like snow. You couldn’t even sweep it up. They tell us babies are being born with gestational cancer.”

“Nobody speaks up, nobody says anything out of fear. A doctor told me that 50 percent of his patients have cancer,” said another woman who lives just behind the mine but who requested anonymity out of fear. “My house is covered in black dust, even the dishes have black dust on them, the trees are covered in it too. Our fruit used to be nice and big and now it’s small and rots quickly. The sound (from the plant) never stops.”

Pollution Doesn’t Squash Mining Companies’ Excitement

Nevertheless, the Mexican government is already promoting the critical minerals action plan as an investment opportunity, and companies here are using the plan to demand relaxation of regulations. The mining industry chamber, Camimex, said it sees the U.S.’s focus on securing strategic minerals as a moment to push for mining interests after the reforming of the 2023 mining law, which was a result of years of movement struggle.

The law was “a historic achievement,” said Beatriz Olivera Villa, an industrial engineer and a founder of Cambiémosla Ya — a coalition of communities and organizations campaigning around the mining law. The reformed law made environmental assessments and informed consent from affected communities obligatory, “and now they aren’t handing out concessions, at least not like they used to,” she said.

Now, with the critical minerals action plan, “we’re worried, because the economy secretary [of Mexico] has been speaking with the mining companies … and they are talking about modernizing the mining law to recover the privileges they lost,” Olivera said. “With the demand for critical minerals … it seems like they would increase extraction at any cost.”

“Trump’s administration doesn’t just represent extractive capital, but also an authoritarian approach that disregards any kind of regulation. Therefore, we should expect significant pressure to ensure, at any cost and regardless of our laws, that the mining industry’s needs are met with this plan,” Pineda said.


Nobody Benefits From Weapons Except Weapons Companies


But while the mining industry is being heard, the mines bring no economic benefits to the country or to nearby communities.

“I very much doubt that Mexico would benefit economically from this plan because it has never been that way with mining projects. Extraction only contributes 0.9 percent to the GDP, for example,” said Olivera. “Mining represents just 0.66 percent of formal employment, and in terms of taxes, they contribute very little.” There are 22,247 active mining concessions in Mexico, with a total surface area of 10.2 million hectares, or 5.2 percent of Mexico’s territory

.

The Autlán plant is located right in the center of the town of Teziutlan and within the lush Sierra Norte mountains.Tamara Pearson

“Towns like Guadalupe y Calvo in Chihuahua (state) are among the top producers of gold and silver, but it is one of the poorest towns in Mexico,” Olivera said. In Fresnillo, another top global silver producer, 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, and in Eduardo Neri, a key gold producer, 65 percent do. Across Mexico, mining regions have very high poverty rates, “and a lack of access to services like water or electricity,” she added.


“There is a militarization of these resources. The U.S. is considering securing minerals for war as part of its national security strategy.”

Meanwhile, arms producers are breaking revenue records, with 679 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Increased production requires more minerals. “There is a militarization of these resources. The U.S. is considering securing minerals for war as part of its national security strategy,” said Olivera.

And as minerals flow from Global South countries like Mexico to the Global North for manufacturing and sales, so do the profits. Mining took off “in an intense way” after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which served U.S. and Canadian markets, Olivera says, calling it a “legalized plundering.” In 2024, Mexico exported 42.3 billion U.S. dollars in minerals, making it the 24th-largest exporter. Its main destinations were the U.S. ($17.7 billion), China ($6.31 billion), and Spain ($4.58 billion). Mexico exports 70 to 80 percent of its copper production.


Mining’s Legacy of Environmental Disaster



The U.S.-Mexico action plan “benefits investors, but it doesn’t benefit us at all,” said Urbano Córdova Guerraas, a local resident and also a member of Servicios Ambientales Amelatzin Hualactoc as we chatted in a small eatery near the Autlán plant. To extract copious amounts of manganese, Autlán has destroyed whole mountain tops in nearby Hidalgo state, buying off local politicians in order to do so. In Zoquitlán, Autlán chopped down 77 hectares of forest for a hydroelectric plant.

Communities in the Sierra Norte have successfully resisted various hydroelectric, fracking, and mining projects in their region. In 2022, they managed to cancel mining concessions in Ixtacamaxtitlán, Cuetzalan, Tlatlauquitepec, and Yaonáhuac, including for the Canadian gold-mining company, Almaden Minerals. Sánchez, a member of the land movement Makxtum Kalaw Chuchutsipi (Everyone United as a People), along with various movements in the region, including Masuel Indigenous communities, shut down three of Autlán’s gold, silver, and copper concessions last year.

“Our territory isn’t a resource. It’s our body, our memory, our spirituality,” the Maseual Altepetajpianij Council wrote to the court at the end of their 11-year battle. The council, made up of 35 Indigenous and small-farmer communities in the Sierra Norte, defends the region against mines.

“(Autlán) had just finished the exploration stage and was about to start exploiting, but with the strength of women and men here, they left the Sierra very pissed off because they had bought 1,000 hectares of land,” said Sánchez.

Meanwhile, in the north of the country, the U.S. consul general in Mexico, Michelle Ward, visited the country’s Buenavista copper mine on March 25, stressing that it is one of the top copper mines globally. She said that with the joint action plan, the U.S. government wants to strengthen its presence in the region. Ward omitted that the mine was the site of Mexico’s worst environmental disaster, when in 2014, a leaching pool collapsed, spilling 40,000 cubic meters of copper sulfate into the Sonora River, eventually reaching wells that supplied the city of Hermosillo

.

A Google Maps screenshot shows an aerial view of the Buenavista copper mine in Sonora, taken on March 27, 2026. At 93,706 hectares in size, it is almost as big as New York City, and has carved out a large chunk of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.Google Maps / Tamara Pearson

Over a decade later, according to Olivera, members of the Sonora River Basin Committee say “their demands haven’t been met and the damage hasn’t been repaired, the skin problems are ongoing due to high levels of arsenic. They’re still finding arsenic in their urine and blood.” Even before the spill, authorities had found copper, arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, iron, manganese, and lead in the water supply.

Pineda lists off more negative impacts from mines in Mexico, including displacement of communities, water scarcity, contamination of tributaries and aquifers, heavy metal contamination, health harm, and toxic dust. “These are not things you can negotiate with the mining companies. You can’t negotiate if water is contaminated or not … so communities typically demand the closure of mines,” he said.

To mine just one ounce of gold, 40 kilograms of explosives and 200,000 liters of water are used, and 650 kilograms of carbon dioxide are emitted.


Imposing Destruction



In order to operate without disruption, mining companies in Mexico are often involved in the disappearance of activists and with organized crime. The top minerals that attract organized crime groups are the same critical minerals that Mexico plans to supply to the U.S.

In 2022, Indigenous activists Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, who had opposed a Ternium mine, were forcibly disappeared; they are still missing. The year before, anti-mining activist Higinio Trinidad De la Cruz and another activist were kidnapped by organized crime members and told to stop their activism, then released. Trinidad De la Cruz was killed the following year.

Autlán too has reportedly used violence, intimidation, death threats, buying people off, sowing community division, and attacking activists — including burning a bus that activists were in after a protest against one of Autlán’s hydroelectric plants — in order to get its way. In 2018, Sergio Rivera Hernández disappeared after opposing Autlán’s Coyolapa-Atzalan hydroelectric project.

There is a similar logic of control in the U.S. plans to funnel Mexico’s critical minerals its way. “With this plan, the U.S. government is taking advantage of Mexico’s deep economic dependency on it in order to impose a new instrument of subordination,” wrote the Mexican Network of those Affected by Mining in a statement.

“Mexico isn’t in a position to negotiate on equal terms,” said Pineda. “This plan doesn’t just mean communities losing control over their ecosystems, but that the whole country loses control over its ecosystems.”

Of course, Mexico isn’t alone. The U.S. has made an alarming deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, exchanging “security” support for access to its minerals, while threatening to cut off Zambia’s aid if it doesn’t increase the U.S.’s mineral access. A trade deal with Indonesia in March also paves the way for the U.S.’s access to minerals, with few environmental safeguards.

“The environmental impact stays in the (Global) South, and the raw materials head to the North … at a scale that is unsustainable,” said Pineda.

Over the years, thousands of organized communities have declared themselves “mining-free territory” to legally prohibit mining in their territory.

Stopping mines after the fact is much harder, but many communities are willing to wage the legal and organizational battle. Even after victory, the struggle continues.

“We want to clean our rivers, so that the Sierra Norte de Puebla can be a paradise again,” said Sánchez.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.


Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist and literary fiction author. Her latest novel is, The Eyes of the Earth, and she writes the Global South newsletter, Excluded Headlines.

 

"Energy Dominance" In Action

Middle East crisis has made the U.S. the marginal supplier

A VLCC in ballast arrives at Port of Corpus Christi (file image courtesy Port of Corpus Christi)

Published Apr 17, 2026 7:38 PM by Erik Broekhuizen / Poten & Partners

 

The crisis in the Middle East and in particular the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has upended global oil markets. Both crude oil and refined products are now in short supply. Refiners around the world are desperate to get their hands on alternative sources of crude oil, almost at any price. However, the options are limited and dwindling. The volume of Russian and Iranian oil in floating storage is shrinking fast since the U.S. has lifted some of its restrictions, allowing countries to buy these previously sanctioned barrels. Several countries have tapped into their strategic petroleum reserves, but most of this oil is being allocated to domestic refiners and not traded internationally. So, the focus has shifted to the Atlantic Basin, where several producers (Venezuela, Canada, Brazil) have some capability to ramp up production and exports. However, in this Weekly Tanker Opinion we want to highlight the United States.

The United States is by far the largest oil producer in the world. In 2018 it surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia due to advancements in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling. U.S. crude oil exports, which (re)started in earnest after the crude export ban was lifted about 10 years ago, quickly ramped up from 500,000 barrels per day in early 2016 to average more than 4.0 Mb/d in 2023 and 2024. According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday, exports climbed to 5.2 million bpd, the highest in seven months. This was due to record demand from Asian and European buyers, who are scrambling to replace barrels from the Middle East that are trapped inside the Persian Gulf because of the war.

U.S. crude oil exporters are expanding their reach. Greece has bought U.S. crude for the first time ever, while Turkey bought a cargo for the first time in a year. The one limitation that could cap the U.S. export potential is the specifications of the U.S. crude. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main U.S. export, is a light sweet crude, while the refiners are trying to replace medium sour barrels from the Middle East. Mars crude is a medium sour grade produced in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, but its production volumes are limited.

At the same time as exports surged, U.S. crude imports took a dive. Imports from Canada were at their lowest level for this year. Flows from Saudi Arabia and Iraq were down significantly as well, for obvious reasons. As a result, net imports of crude oil (the difference between imports and exports), narrowed to 66,000 barrels per day last week, the lowest on record in weekly data that goes back to 2001. This means that the U.S. nearly turned into a net crude exporter last week for the first time since World War II. Exports are expected to increase significantly in the coming weeks and this switch to a net exporter could become reality.

However, as a result of this ramp up in flows, the U.S. is approaching its export capacity. The U.S. is capable to export up to 6.0 Mb/d, according to estimates from industry experts. Pipeline capacity and export infrastructure are the limiting factors. U.S. exporters have become very adept at maximizing exports with a combination of direct loadings in U.S. Gulf ports and reverse lightering in designated areas offshore. However, outside of Corpus Christi, which can partially load a VLCC (only one reverse lightering needed), the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is the only U.S. facility in the U.S. Gulf that can fully load a VLCC. More deepwater terminals are being planned, but none are available during this crisis.

U.S. refiners have also ramped up production and exports, motivated by strong refining margins and high crack spreads. In recent weeks, we have seen seaborne clean product exports (excluding LPG, lubes and chemicals) exceed 3.5 Mb/d driven by increased flows to Asia. These volumes represent record-highs.

The booming crude oil and refined product exports from the U.S. have benefited all tanker segments. The desire to get access to barrels (and get them quickly) has motivated certain Asian charterers to import crude from the U.S. Gulf on Aframaxes, routing it via the Panama Canal. These are not trades you would expect to see in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. When the conflict ends, vessels will reposition and eventually normal trade patterns will resume. Until that time, we do expect increased volatility and higher freight rates for most tanker segments to continue.

This research note appears courtesy of Poten & Partners.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

Riding the LNG Wave

File image courtesy Venture Global LNG

Published Apr 17, 2026 11:42 PM by Sean Hogue

(Article originally published in Jan/Feb 2026 edition.)

 

The age of global LNG is upon us.

In the latter half of 2025, the global supply increased nearly seven percent. This came largely from North America, which frankly has LNG down to a science. It's abundant here. We know how to extract it in an environmentally conscious manner, and we have the infrastructure to process, store and move it.

New U.S. LNG projects reaching final investment decisions in 2025 included Louisiana LNG, Corpus Christi Trains 8 & 9, CP2 phase 1, Rio Grande LNG Train 4 and Port Arthur Phase 2. This new wave further solidifies the U.S.'s position as the world's largest LNG supplier with global market share expected to increase from about 25 percent last year to 33 percent by the end of the decade.

The rise in supply is expected to drive increased global demand in 2026, primarily from Asia, but also from other global markets as they invest in infrastructure to effectively import this clean, abundant energy source.

And as LNG produces 30 percent less CO? than heavy fuel oil and nearly zero sulfur oxides, it's the cleanest of fossil fuels and an ideal choice for meeting emissions targets over the next decade.

Although achieving that goal is not without its challenges.

Class guidance

In ABS's 2025 Sustainability Outlook, "Vision Meets Reality," the authors rightly note that "from a total cost of ownership perspective, clean fuels currently present a weak economic case due to their high costs and limited availability." And while clean fuels such as ammonia may play a role in the energy transition, they're unlikely to achieve significant decarbonization by 2040.

Conversely, LNG offers lower base costs and an established supply chain, contributing to its being specified in over 70 percent of alternative-fuel newbuild orders.

The cruise, ro/ro, car-carrying and container industries have widely adopted alternative fuels over conventional ones. As ABS has become the largest classification society by gross tonnage in service as of 2025 while maintaining a strong presence in the tanker, gas carrier and containership sectors, it stands perfectly positioned to guide shipowners in their transition journey.

Lloyds Register (LR) is another source of expert advice to vessel operators in their energy transition journey.

The energy transition challenge is really a risk management problem. What fuel to choose? What equipment to purchase? Which ones will be readily available long term with the global infrastructure to support them?

LR's approach is not prescriptive – it remains firmly fuel agnostic. The company has invested significantly in the study of all alternative fuels including its involvement in the Methane Abatement in Maritime Innovation Initiative. This collaboration, led by Safetytech Accelerator, unites industry leaders, tech innovators and maritime stakeholders working together toward the goal of significantly reducing methane emissions from LNG use as a marine fuel.

"Methane slip," as it's known, is the release of unburned methane into the atmosphere from engines using natural gas or liquefied natural gas (LNG) as fuel. It occurs when combustion isn't 100 percent efficient. Because methane is a potent greenhouse gas (over 25 times stronger than CO? over 100 years), minimizing slip is crucial for climate change mitigation.

A significant milestone for LR is the recent renewal surveys and drydocks for P&O Cruises' Iona and Carnival Cruise Line's Mardi Gras – the first major LNG drydocks for large passenger vessels in Europe. The work represented the execution of a highly sophisticated technical program, the culmination of more than a year of detailed collaboration, planning and risk management.

Drydocking a LNG-fueled cruise ship is a fundamentally different exercise from a conventional refit. With vessels spending only a brief period out of service, LNG system maintenance windows are correspondingly narrow.

"Starting 18 months in advance," explains Andrew Bennett, Machinery Survey Policy Manager in LR's Technical Directorate, "we worked closely with the client to understand their specific operation, maintenance and drydocking challenges and helped them develop detailed schedules with optimized surveys agreed in advance and aligned to meet their requirements."

Bunkering Expertise

Running on LNG requires a bunkering infrastructure to support the operation.

Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, TOTE Services is playing a critical role in bringing LNG fuel to the maritime sector through their design and construction of the bunker barges Clean Jacksonville and Clean Everglades, operated by Seaside LNG.

The Clean Jacksonville was the first membrane LNG barge in the world. Membrane technology provides a better space-to-weight ratio and replaces the older, pressure vessel technology used previously for storage and transport. TOTE has completed over 400 bunkering operations with the Clean Jacksonville since it was first launched.

Another newbuild support vessel entering the market in 2025 was the Soaring Eagle, an inland tug operated by Colonial Towing, a subsidiary of the Colonial Group. It will operate as part of an articulated tug-and-barge unit transporting up to 32,000 barrels of fuel products between Charleston, South Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida. Soaring Eagle is the fourth vessel to join the current active fleet of Colonial Towing.

Also in Florida, Glander International Bunkering is making moves with a recent change of leadership. Michael Cammarata replaced long-time Managing Director Larry Messina, who retired after 34 years of service. Cammarata has spent his entire career in bunkering, having joined the company back in 1988.

As such, he brings decades of experience and deep market insight into his role. He also brings strong relationships across the industry. His appointment ensures continuity for the Florida office. It also supports future growth and long-term success.

Global FIDs

We've looked at the U.S.-based projects. But what about the rest of the world?

Chevron's Gorgon LNG project received a $2 billion final investment decision at the end of 2025 to develop Stage 3 off Australia's northwest coast. The development will be used as backfill for the existing LNG export operation and will link the offshore Geryon and Eurytion natural gas fields to Gorgon's existing infrastructure on Barrow Island.

In Gorgon Stage 3, six wells will be drilled across two fields, part of a series of planned subsea tiebacks.

Shell's plans for drilling at the Crux field, also offshore northern Australia, were accepted around the same time. Crux's gas will be sent as backfill to the Prelude floating LNG vessel, the world's largest.

In southern Australia, U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips has just finished its first exploration well in the region and will now move to a nearby location for a second well.

Chevron also made a final investment decision early in January to expand Israel's Leviathan natural gas field, a move that will significantly boost gas production in the eastern Mediterranean. The decision comes weeks after Israel finalized what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as the largest energy deal in the country's history – a long-term gas export agreement with Egypt valued at about 112 billion shekels, roughly $35 billion.

The Leviathan expansion provides the upstream capacity needed to support those larger export commitments over time. Chevron operates Leviathan alongside Israeli partners. When the expanded project comes online later this decade, it will further help entrench Israel's role as a regional gas supplier.

A strong outlook

With new projects sanctioned, infrastructure expanding, and class, operators and bunkering providers aligned around practical risk management, the LNG market enters 2026 with strong momentum.

Growth will be in delivered capacity, proven technology and real-world operating experience. As demand accelerates and standards continue to evolve, LNG is positioned to remain the cornerstone of global marine and energy growth through the next decade.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

Mexican farmers raise alarm over Sheinbaum’s fracking proposal


By AFP
April 15, 2026


President Claudia Sheinbaum is seeking to potentially expand the controversial practice of fracking in Mexico - Copyright AFP Marco Antonio MARTINEZ

Marco Antonio PEREZ

Over the two decades since fracking started near their lands, farmers in the Mexican state of Veracruz have watched their orange and lime trees wilt away.

Now they’re joining scientific experts to denounce Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s proposal to expand fracking.

The president presented experts in her Wednesday morning press conference who will analyze strategies for extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing.

The proposal is part of the left-leaning government’s plan to reduce the country’s outsized dependence on US fossil fuels, which represents up to 70 percent of oil consumed in Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s plan represents a sharp turn from the policy of her predecessor and mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (2018-2024), who roundly opposed the controversial practice.

Sheinbaum told journalists the plan to push fracking isn’t final, and that it hinges on expert opinion and consulting communities where the project will be implemented.

“We’re going to make the decision on the basis of scientific knowledge, not a decision from the president,” she said.

Fracking entails extracting natural gas and petroleum from subterranean bedrock.

The process is criticized for using industrial quantities of water to break open rocks, as well as causing chemical contamination and provoking micro-earthquakes.

It’s performed in already depleted oil or gas fields as well as unconventional basins as deep as 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) beneath the Earth’s surface.

Mexico’s government is following the path the United States paved over 15 years ago, when fracking helped transform it into the world’s largest producer of petroleum and gas.

Until 2019, Mexico made limited hydraulic fracturing explorations in about 30 non-conventional wells.

However, it also had around 8,500 conventional wells which were extracted through the same means, Manuel Llano, a member of the NGO Mexican Alliance against Fracking, told AFP.



– ‘The land is infertile’ –



Veracruz is Mexico’s top citrus-producing region — as well as the heart of the state oil company, Pemex.

Locals now blame the company’s use of conventional, close-to-the-surface fracking for drying up lime and orange plantations, contaminating the water and damaging the soil.

“The citrus trees have dried up thanks to the soil becoming infertile, you can’t produce corn, you can’t produce anything,” Gloria Dominguez, a resident of the Papantla municipality, said.

In the neighboring community of Coatzintla, Galdino Garcia Juarez says the water started running dry when conventional surface-level fracking started in 2005.

“It used to be normal to see rainwater piling up, we never ran out of water,” he told AFP in front of several oil wells.

“Ever since they started exploring and breaking open the soil” the water doesn’t pool on the surface, he said.

One result has been that his animals no longer drink water from the creek.

Sheinbaum has sought to convey that “there are new techniques, new technologies” so that water can be recycled and so “powerful chemicals aren’t used.”

Pemex didn’t respond to AFP’s requests for comment on the project.



– Costly technology –



Experts argue that highly salinated water filtered through shattered rocks can be made drinkable again, though only through expensive new technology.

Fracking is “four times more expensive than using a traditional oil well,” Llano explained.

“When you consider the price of petroleum and gas, the prices aren’t profitable on the market.”

In Latin America, Argentina and Chile have overseen limited fracking, while Colombia is seeking to ban it.

France and Germany have banned the practice, while the United Kingdom established a moratorium aimed towards fully ending it.

Sheinbaum argues that fracking can help establish Mexico’s energy independence.

“Pemex doesn’t have money, nor technology, knowledge, or experience,” Rosanety Barrios, an independent energy consultant, told AFP.

The country needs people with fracking experience, she said.

“Who does? Of course, people from the United States,” Barrios pointed out, adding that she thinks it’s only a matter of waiting for legal authorization before fracking interests say “yes, we’re coming.”

Mexico’s Forced Pivot Away from US Gas Dependence

By Natalia Katona - Apr 16, 2026

• Mexico’s near total reliance on U.S. natural gas (covering 70–75% of its consumption) has shifted from an economic convenience to a geopolitical vulnerability as Washington’s pressure intensifies.
• 
  
• President Claudia Sheinbaum, long opposed to fracking, is now pivoting toward shale gas development as dependence turns into strategic risk.
• 
  
• With domestic output stuck at 2.3 Bcf/d, unconventional gas is emerging as the only viable path to rebalance supply - despite higher costs and infrastructure gaps.
• 
  

Who could ever transform a climate activist into a shale gas champion? Apparently, Donald Trump. This is exactly what is happening to President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is finally coming to terms with her country’s worsening imbalance between natural gas production and imports. Domestic demand stands at around 9 Bcf/d, while production covers only 2.3 Bcf/d, leaving roughly 6.8 Bcf/d - or 70–75% of consumption – to be met by imports from the United States. This is not just dependence, it is near-total reliance on a single external supplier for the backbone of the country’s energy system. That imbalance is now colliding with geopolitics. Now, with pressure from Washington intensifying, that dependence is turning into leverage.

Mexico’s natural gas dependency on US imports has deepened steadily over the past decade, with pipeline imports rising from 2.2 Bcf/d in 2015 to an average of 6.6 Bcf/d in 2025. The arrangement has been underpinned by favourable pricing: Mexico effectively accesses US domestic gas markets through Henry Hub-linked purchases, currently below $3/MMBtu, making it one of the cheapest sources of supply globally.

This affordability has shaped Mexico’s energy mix. Natural gas now accounts for more than 60% of power generation, embedding US supply directly into the country’s electricity system.  More than 70% of imported gas is used to generate roughly half of Mexico’s electricity, with gas consumption reaching approximately 5.5 Bcf/d during peak summer demand in 2025.  The scale of this reliance currently leaves the system exposed not so much to price fluctuations but rather to geopolitical risk, particularly as US foreign policy becomes more assertive.

Domestic vulnerabilities are amplifying the risk. Mexico’s grid is increasingly strained by heatwaves, hurricanes, and seasonal volatility, while hydropower (once a key buffer) is losing reliability. Summer output in 2023–2025 fell to around 2 TWh, roughly half of 2018 levels, forcing greater reliance on gas-fired generation and tightening the link between weather shocks and gas demand. At the same time, domestic supply is struggling to respond. Production declined until 2018 and has only seen sporadic gains since, with the last meaningful increase in 2023 – up by over 600MMcf/d, driven by Quesqui and Ixachi. Since then, output has plateaued, leaving unconventional gas as the only viable path to materially lift supply.

Mexico is once again confronting the question it has long avoided, whether to fully embrace shale gas. Its share of the Eagle Ford formation offers clear potential, and Pemex tested it through pilot projects and dozens of fracked wells between 2010 and 2016. But the 2014 oil price collapse and a policy shift under Andrés Manuel López Obrador (including a halt to shale bidding rounds) stalled development. That stance is now shifting. President Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist and long-time opponent of fracking, is reconsidering unconventional gas as import dependence becomes a strategic risk. On April 8, she announced a new committee to evaluate shale development, focusing on making the process less environmentally damaging.

Yet even with political backing, the transition to large-scale shale development would be far from straightforward. The US experience illustrates both the potential and the challenge. Over the course of the 2010s, technological advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (combined with scale efficiencies across the Lower 48 states) reduced the marginal cost of shale gas production from nearly $15/MMBtu to around $4/MMBtu by 2014. This transformation enabled the US to offset declines in conventional production and establish itself as the world’s lowest-cost large-scale shale gas producer. Replicating this model in Mexico could significantly improve project economics, potentially reducing breakeven costs from the $5–6/MMBtu range typical of other regions to approximately $3-4/MMBtu, bringing domestic production closer to parity with imported gas.

However, the ’Lower 48 US model’ is not simply a set of technologies but an integrated system, combining extensive pipeline infrastructure, a mature oilfield services sector, and a high degree of operational scale. Mexico lacks much of this supporting framework, meaning that even with regulatory backing, development timelines would be longer and costs structurally higher.

This creates a fundamental economic constraint. Even under improved conditions, domestically produced shale gas would likely struggle to compete with imported US pipeline gas priced at Henry Hub levels. Sustaining investor interest in large-scale shale development would therefore require either direct state support – a significant burden on already constrained public finances – or access to higher-priced export markets.

In that context, Asia may be the only commercially viable outlet. Spot LNG prices in the region, as reflected by the JKM benchmark, are currently in the range of $15–18/MMBtu, and even prior to the latest supply disruptions were trading at $10–11/MMBtu. At those levels, exporting domestically produced gas would materially improve project economics and potentially make upstream development profitable. Yet this solution introduces a new layer of contradiction. Prioritizing exports would leave domestic demand structurally reliant on U.S. imports, preserving (rather than resolving) Mexico’s exposure to external pressure.

Mexico does, in fact, have an LNG export project under development: the Energía Costa Azul terminal. However, it does not serve domestic production. The project is a joint venture involving TotalEnergies and Japanese buyers and is operated by the U.S.-based Sempra Infrastructure. Its business model is to liquefy U.S. pipeline gas for export to Asia. As a result, Mexico’s emerging LNG capacity reinforces the existing dependency rather than alleviating it. Dedicated infrastructure for exporting domestically produced gas is effectively absent, and building it would require substantial additional investment, likely led by state-owned Pemex alongside private partners (assuming sufficient capital can be mobilized).

This duality defines Mexico’s current position. The existing system delivers low-cost energy and supports industrial competitiveness, but it also concentrates risk in a single external supplier. The alternative – developing domestic unconventional resources – offers greater autonomy but requires substantial investment, technological transfer, and a recalibration of environmental policy. As external pressures mount and internal vulnerabilities become more pronounced, the balance between these two models is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

By Natalia Katona for Oilprice.com

 Inflation Jumps, Propelled by War-Driven Energy Costs

Dean Baker

 April 13, 2026

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

As expected, inflation was sharply higher in March than in prior months. The overall inflation rate for March was 1.3 percent, although inflation in the core index was just 0.2 percent. This brought the year-over-year rates in the overall index to 3.3 percent, and in the core index to 2.6 percent.

The jump in war-related inflation was expected, but it is important to note that inflation was already on an upswing even before the war started. The Personal Consumption Expenditure deflator (PCE) for February rose by 0.4 percent, as did the core PCE. Year-over-year inflation in the PCE was 2.8 percent overall and 3.0 percent in the core index.

The acceleration was clear in the annualized rate for the last three months. In the overall index it was 4.1 percent, while in the core index it was 4.4 percent. It is important to remember that inflation had been headed lower throughout 2023 and 2024. Most analysts expected the inflation rate to hit the Fed’s 2.0 percent target in 2025 or at least be very close to it.

As the first inflation data since the start of the war, the March CPI showed inflation is accelerating even further. The annualized rate in the overall CPI over the last three months was 5.3 percent. It was 2.9 percent in the core index.

Inflation in the core index was held down by some likely anomalous readings. The health insurance index, which accounts for just over 1.0 percent of the core index, fell by 1.4 percent in March. This index, which measures the operating costs and profits of insurers, is unlikely to keep falling.

The auto insurance index, which accounts for 3.4 percent of the core index, was flat in March. This index had been rising at double-digit rates from 2022 to 2024, but has risen just 0.8 percent over the last year.

There also appears to have been a sharp fall in the legal services index. While the sample was too small to post the index itself, it led to a March decline of 1.2 percent in the “miscellaneous personal services” index, which accounts for 1.2 percent of the core CPI. The prices rose for all the listed items in this category, except for the tiny non-laundry apparel services category, where prices fell 0.2 percent. Anyhow, this will likely not be repeated.

It seems inflation was accelerating even before the war. The surge in oil prices added fuel to the fire, but inflation will likely be well above the Fed’s 2.0 percent target for the foreseeable future, even if the ceasefire lasts and oil begins flowing through the Strait of Hormuz in the near future.

Individualized Medicine: Pay for the Research Upfront

The New York Times had an interesting column by Jeff Coller, the director of the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University, on the promise of individualized medicine for treating rare diseases. The piece points out that while specific “rare” diseases are by definition rare, collectively they are not. It reports that 25 million people in this country have some form of genetic disorder. By Coller’s account, the medical costs from these diseases come to over $400 billion a year (1.3 percent of GDP or 40 percent of the military budget) in addition to the cost they impose on the patients’ lives.

The gist of Coller’s piece is that the normal structure of the FDA approval process for traditional drugs is not appropriate for the sort of gene editing that is being developed to treat these rare diseases. It is not really possible to have large-scale clinical trials to establish safety and effectiveness. As an alternative, Coller suggests a process whereby the FDA would establish accreditation to an institution or group of doctors that effectively follow procedures to treat conditions.

While this approach sounds promising, it is also worth commenting on the funding side of the equation. Coller’s point that the traditional regulatory process for approving drugs is not appropriate for these individualized treatments also applies to the patent-monopoly financing model for their development. Relying on patents could lead to an absurd situation where a researcher or company holds a patent on a treatment that may literally apply to just one patient.

Rather than try to recoup costs through this route, it would make far more sense to allocate funding to develop the technology, which then can be used at no cost, other than the direct cost to pay the doctors and other healthcare professionals involved in administering the treatment. This would also have the benefit that all the research can be made freely available to other researchers, since that could be a condition of the funding.

I have harped on this point endlessly, since government-granted patent monopolies both create the artificial problem of high prices and are a recipe for corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. It would be great to get more examples of the effectiveness of upfront funding of research.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. 

Who’s Counting? Gas Prices, the Stock Market, and Dead Children

David Masciotra

 April 10, 2026

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Collapsing in panic over the price of gas is a characteristically incoherent American tradition. The highly paid press, political officials, and the same people who ignore as a matter of routine the rising costs of housing, health care, and higher education treat a 25-cent-per-gallon jump in fuel as tantamount to the apocalypse. Meanwhile, something similar to the apocalypse actually threatens livable ecology on Earth (the universe’s only habitable planet for those keeping count), largely due to the extraction of fossil fuels, but biodiversity in a boiling world is hardly relevant. Or, at least, that is what one could discern from watching CNN and MS-Now, formerly MSNBC, both of which keep a running tracker of the average cost of gas, breathlessly announcing a three-cent increase or one cent drop as if they are reporting live from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Evidently, they would consider it impolite to mention that, according to Car and Driver, most of the top 25 selling automobiles in the US are heavy-duty pickup trucks and large SUVS, notoriously unsafe and expensive vehicles that guzzle gasoline with the same speed and appetite of frat boys using beer bongs at a kegger. If Americans were actually concerned about paying for gas, they would drive fuel economy cars.

Of course, any increase in the cost of living hurts the poor, but many impoverished Americans in inner cities use public transportation, and for those who do own their own cars, rent, health insurance, and the financial barriers to college are much graver concerns.

The fixation on fuel going up or down by a couple of quarters per gallon allows Americans to display the narcissism that accompanies geographic and intellectual isolation. Drivers in the US already consume the highest amounts of gasoline, at the cheapest rates, in the developed world. Paying little attention to the devastating environmental effects, the country continues to build more highways, purchase more monstrous vehicles that belch fumes out of the exhaust pipe, and to quote Joni Mitchell, “pave paradise to put up a parking lot.”

Social psychologists and thoughtful economists have posited that the American fixation on the price of gas operates at the subconscious, symbolic, and ultimately, irrational level. Because they see the cost advertised at gas stations at every corner, they become emotionally invested in its fluctuation. It becomes emblematic of the cost of living in such a way that housing and health care never could, especially for those locked into fixed mortgage payments and with coverage from employer-based insurance or Medicare. To reduce it to the most simplistic terms, it’s a number; a number in the face of the average middle class or upper class American no matter where they go, typically by car, or what they do, just like the price of oil is a number, and the stock market, which often moves in the opposite direction of the cost of gas, is a number.

Here’s another number: 168. That is the number of people, most of whom were children, killed when the US fired a missile at an Iranian elementary school on February 28^th, 2026. No major news outlet has flashed 168 on its airwaves or in its pages at anywhere near the rate that they dissect gas prices. Senator Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, has called for an investigation of the bombing, while denouncing Donald Trump’s war policy and Pete Hegseth’s leadership more broadly, but its has failed to register as a salient issue with his political party, the mainstream media, or any of the prominent podcast bloviators who have managed to replace public intellectuals in the discourse.

None of this is to say that the bombing was kept secret. The legacy press did report on it multiple times. Pete Hegseth, who, according to rumor, his aides have nicknamed “Dumb McNamara,” has dodged questions about it from the press, and his boss, Dumb Nixon (?), claimed that Iran was responsible for bombing itself. “They are very inaccurate with their munitions,” Trump said. The insult might have struck Iranians as rich, who, as they bury their children, might recall that, during his first term in the White House, Trump eliminated the standards that Barack Obama put in place to avoid killing civilians in drone strikes targeting alleged terrorists. Obama’s own record was abysmal, as his administration killed far more innocent family members and neighbors of supposed terrorists than terrorists themselves. But a dissatisfied Trump wanted even more death. And now he is getting it.

War in Iran is unpopular with the American people, but even among those who disapprove, there is little discussion about the Iranians who have died and who will die as a result of a mindless exercise of US power. There is far greater scrutiny of how the war will influence everything from the cost of groceries to the midterm elections, and of course, an obsessive monitoring of the number on the digital screen at the fuel pump. A review of other numbers demonstrates that American leaders and many voters have a long tradition of ignoring the blood on their hands. To remain within relatively recent history with only two of countless examples, journalist Nick Turse details in his extraordinary and disturbing book, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, that the US killed two million civilians during the Vietnam War, most of them in deliberate acts with “heavy firepower.” After the war ended in 1975, the US left four million Vietnamese exposed to Agent Orange, which causes birth defects, brain damage, high rates of cancer, and early onset heart disease. Decades later, in 2003, the US invaded Iraq for the second time in thirty years, with a “shock and awe” campaign that led to an occupation that lasted for nearly nine years. Researchers at Brown University estimate that over 432,000 Iraqi civilians died during the US war of aggression, and that many more suffered premature deaths and debilitating diseases, in a repetition of Vietnam, due to the toxic chemicals, munitions, and military pollutants that lingered in the atmosphere long after the US press and population moved on to stories they found more fascinating, like the latest intrigue of Kardashian family and the guest list at Jeff Bezos’s wedding.

To track the priorities of the American attention span, one might want to consider a juxtaposition of stories from 2025, the contrast of which offers a nifty sociopolitical experiment. In July of that year, the Trump junta shut down USAID, an international organization that provided medical, infrastructural, and food assistance to millions of people in the developing world. Despite the too often violent and predatory aims of US foreign policy, USAID managed to save and otherwise improve the lives of many of the poorest people on the planet. For no discernible reason or purpose, other than racist psychopathy, Donald Trump and his then-henchman, Elon Musk, shuttered the agency, all while flashing wicked, deranged grins and making self-congratulatory posts on social media. As early as November of 2025, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health concluded that the end of USAID operations caused hundreds of thousands of people to die from starvation, complications of HIV/AIDS, and the effects of treatable diseases.

Also in the fall of 2025, the restaurant chain, Cracker Barrel, changed its logo, removing a depiction of an old man in bib overalls leaning on a barrel, in an attempt to adopt a more modern image. The fallout was intense. Republican lawmakers issued statements denouncing the corporate rebranding effort as “woke.” The political press summoned its resident geniuses to analyze what the logo change, and the anger it provoked, indicated about US politics, and the business press ran lengthy dissections of the decision and its aftermath. The conclusion is as painful as it is unavoidable: According to the calculus of US culture, as measurable by press coverage, political debate, and popular interest, Cracker Barrel’s logo is more important than the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Africa and the Middle East.

Given the enormous precedent, it is hardly surprising that the deaths of 168 Iranians, mostly children, can barely rate in comparison to tomorrow’s gas prices. It is something to keep in mind the next time a member of the Trump junta, US Senator, or cable news pundit with a flag pin on his lapel clears his throat to repeat a bromide about America’s respect for “human life,” “freedom,” and “democracy.”

David Masciotra is the author of six books, including Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy and I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters. He has written for the Progressive, New Republic, Liberties, and many other publications about politics, literature, and music. His Substack is Absurdia Now.

The Market Law of One Price – How the Donald Bombed Energy Consumers, Too

by David Stockman | Apr 13, 2026 | 

The Donald plunged into one hell of a hornets nest when he took the bait from Bibi Netanyahu and launched an all out “kinetic” war on Iran (as distinguished from the brutal economic war Washington has been waging for decades). But now that the gasoline pump price has breached $4/gallon and is heading higher, he’s desperately looking for an off-ramp.

Yet the one he has seized upon in the last 48 hours or so is not even remotely fit for purpose. To wit, he threatens to pick up Washington’s military football and go home, leaving what’s left of the Iranian government – mainly the brutish IRGC – in charge of the Strait of Hormuz. That is, operating a toll booth and military checkpoint on a waterway that had been open to world commerce free of charge until the Donald foolishly unleashed bombs and missiles on Iran on February 28th.

“we don’t import much oil from there anymore… within 2-3 weeks, we’ll leave. That’s not for us. A guy can take a mine, drop it in the water. That can be for France or whoever is using the strait”.

The presumption, of course, is that because the US imports virtually no petroleum from the Persian Gulf the new Hormuz toll booth is Europe’s and Asia’s problem, not Washington’s. And that’s technically true but here’s the spoiler alert: What matters is not the geography of where the barrels of hydrocarbon molecules are moving from and to at any given point in time, but the level of hydrocarbon prices embedded in the digital bits coursing through the global futures and cash markets all the time and everywhere.

That’s because the latter reflects the markets’ judgement about the state of global supply, demand and inventories in totality. Unlike the Donald, traders on the exchanges are fully familiar with the potent process of market arbitrage. In this case, it means that when the same hydrocarbon molecule has radically different prices around the planet, then some enterprising traders will buy them where the price is low and ship them to where it’s high, and pocket the profit, net of shipping costs, insurance, interest carry cost and other nits and nats of market operation.

The consequence, of course, is the “law of one price” worldwide. Rather than zero exposure to the Persian Gulf’s slow-steaming barrels of hydrocarbon molecules, the US has 100% exposure to Gulf-impacted digital price bits being digitally transmitted instantaneously around the planet on a 24/7 basis.

Accordingly, if the Donald thinks the oil price is going to be high in Europe and Asia because they get their hydrocarbon molecules from the Persian Gulf and low in the USA because we are 100% self-sufficient in oil and gas, he is sadly and utterly mistaken. The digital networks of the paper and cash markets will quickly equilibriate the price of hydrocarbons on a worldwide basis, and the physical barrels will not be far behind.

So lets start with the home team that the Donald thinks somehow operates as an economic island all by its lonesome, unconnected to the global markets. But for this purpose we must look at the entire oil and natural gas complex because under the law of one market petroleum and nat gas molecules are highly interchangeable. And we also measure everything in BOE (barrels of oil equivalent) in order to avoid apples and oranges on the price quotations.

Thus, if we look at just the domestic energy patch, the massive output of the US natural gas industry – heavily driven by fracking – towers well above conventional US crude oil production, including fracked crude. To wit, in 2025 field production of natural gas (i.e. “wet gas”) was 26.5 million BOE/day while crude oil and condensate from the field was 13.6 million BOE/day.

In terms of physical molecules and pricing, however, upwards of 30% of field production (7.9 million BOEs/day) of so-called “wet gas” consists of NGLs (natural gas liquids), mainly ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline. All of these go into the same end markets – heating, cooking, petrochemicals and transportation – as similar liquids obtained from refinery runs of crude oil. The common molecules from both streams, therefore, are subject to the law of one market.

Thus, the 22.5 million BOE per day of total “petroleum liquids” supply shown in the table below includes a very large component of Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) as follows:

• Crude oil + lease condensate: 13.6 BOE/d
• Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs): 7.9 BOE/d
• Refinery processing gain: ~1.0 BOE/d

The above hints at the price linkage between the oil and gas markets. The U.S. petrochemical industry, for instance, uses ethane as the primary feedstock for steam crackers that produce ethylene, which is the building block for plastics, packaging, and countless other products. Ethane from two main sources competes for the feedstock requirements of the steam crackers:

1. Field-produced NGLs (extracted from wet natural gas at gas processing plants)
2. Refinery-sourced ethane (produced as a byproduct when refineries process crude oil)

At the present time, NGL-derived ethane is generally cheaper and more abundant — especially from shale gas basins like the Permian and Marcellus owing to the continuing oversupply of natural gas. So it has captured the lion’s share of U.S. cracker feedstock in recent years.

By contrast, refinery ethane tends to be more expensive and less consistent in volume, so it often serves as a secondary or swing feedstock. Moreover, when NGL supply surges or the global price of crude oil and its derivatives rise, the ethane cracker feedstock competition intensifies. On the margin, petrochemical operators shift even more heavily toward the cheaper NGL-derived ethane, thereby linking U.S. natural gas prices to the global petroleum markets.

In any event, the convention with respect to industry statistics is to include NGLs extracted from natural gas wells in the “petroleum liquids” category. So to avoid double counting, we include in the table below only the dry gas portion of nat gas field production, which gets distributed to end markets by pipelines.

Accordingly, as shown below the USA in 2025 produced 41.1 million BOE/day of combined oil and gas, which well exceeded domestic demand of 36.3 million BOE/day. The latter went into the slate of refinery products sold domestically and the pipeline delivery of nat gas to domestic end markets.

The resulting arithmetic, of course, shows that the balance of supply over demand was accounted for by 4.8 million BOE per day of exports. This was a mix of crude oil (@ 1.4 million BOE/day and refinery products (0.7 million BOE/day) under the liquids column and mainly LNG under the dry gas column.

Still, the fact that domestic supply was 113% of domestic demand, does not mean the US economy is insulated from the current massive shortfall of both gas and oil coming out of the Persian Gulf. To the contrary, it means only that the process of arbitrage between geographic markets and near-substitutes among the gas and oil streams is far more complex and subtle than the “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric that the Donald dispenses in justification of what amount to his own attack on domestic users of globally priced hydrocarbons.

Needless to say, it is the 2.1 million BOE of liquids and 2.7 million BOEs of mainly LNG under the dry gas column in the table above that provide the transmission arteries by which domestic prices are linked to global prices. In basic form, the equation is straight forward: To wit, high prices abroad and low prices domestically will cause a massive incremental draw on US exports.

That is to say, if Qatari LNG is scarce and high priced, LNG exports from the US will increase – first from fuller utilization of existing LNG plants and then over time via increased investment in liquefaction capacity. Moreover, at the present time the LNG export market draw will be especially potent if Gulf supply remains curtailed and world LNG prices stay high.

Specifically, Iran’s successful attack on the huge Ras Laffan LNG facility in Qatar (and the prospect that the plant will be out of commission for up to several years) caused the Rotterdam price for LNG to soar from an average of about $69 per BOE in 2025 to current spot market quotes of @$152 per BOE.

So here is where the hidden magic of Mr. Market comes in – notwithstanding the Donald’s illusion that America is an insulated island of energy plenty and cheap prices. To wit, the current spot market price for pipeline natural gas in the US at the Henry Hub terminal is about $18 per BOE. So in the language of Mr. Rogers, can you say arbitrage?

Right now the 5.8 million of BTUs in pipeline gas form at Henry Hub (Louisiana) is priced at only 12% of the landed cost of 5.8 million BTUs in LNG form at Rotterdam. In this circumstance, of course, Mr. Market would also factor in about $20 per BOE to convert US pipeline gas to liquid form at an LNG plant and another $14/BOE to ship it to Rotterdam in a specially equipped LNG tanker.

But still, the apples-to-apples cost gap would remain at about $100 per BOE – that is, $52 per BOE for US gas delivered by LNG tanker to Rotterdam versus the current spot price there of $152 per BOE.

Of course, the arbitrage doesn’t work instantly and overnight. US Gulf Coast LNG plants currently have about 2.8 million BOE/day of capacity but are nearly fully utilized. So in the short run, the US/Rotterdam gap would likely just drive up spot prices and profitability on existing LNG contracts. However, there is also currently nearly 2.6 million BOE of new LNG capacity under construction in the US Gulf coast, which would nearly double current LNG export capacity when it comes on stream during the next several years.

So it is virtually guaranteed that the current $100 per BOE price gap between Rotterdam LNG and Henry Hub pipeline gas will close substantially, if shipments from the Persian Gulf remain restricted owing to Iranian military threats or just due to the delay in rebuilding the badly damaged LNG plants in Qatar and elsewhere.

More importantly, something else would happen as a second order effect that the Donald obviously hasn’t reckoned with, either. The Henry Hub price for pipeline gas at $18 per BOE is low relative to WTI for light crude oil at $100 per BOE or LNG at $152 per BOE in Rotterdam owing to the nature of the pipeline gas business.

That is, domestic demand for delivered pipeline gas is pretty much driven by the level of GDP embodied in household spending and business production. So when investment in the oil patch – and especially the fracking plays – leads to excess gas supply, the spot price of pipeline gas falls. There is very little excess inventory/storage in the industry by its nature beyond the large seasonal working stocks held by the pipelines and middle men.

This is somewhat different than the case of crude oil where there is a huge long standing export market and giant waterborne tanker fleets. Prior to February 28th, there was ordinarily about 60 million BOE per day of crude oil on the blue water, carried by upwards 2,400 crude oil tankers.

So when the Brent or WTI crude oil prices rise owing to the huge supply restrictions out of the Persian Gulf the immediate impact has been the rerouting of tankers to the US crude oil terminals to take oil to Europe and Asia. In turn, that tightens the domestic supply/demand balance, pushing domestic prices higher, as well.

Accordingly, US crude and product export volumes have been and will continue to rise as long as the Gulf remains restricted and global marker prices remain high. All other things equal, in turn, this means that domestic petroleum prices will rise and stay high, as well.

In the case of natural gas, the response time and arbitrage pathways move a little more slowly, but the market dynamic is the same: As more excess US pipeline gas is drawn into the rapidly expanding US LNG plants and thereby into the global export markets, the Henry Hub pipeline gas price will rise as the current surplus of gas “deliverability” is reduced. In turn, the gas bills of homeowners and business users will go up.

In short, the global hydrocarbon market is highly integrated and with the rise of the LNG sector and growing LNG tanker fleet has become more seamless than ever under the one price rule of markets. In this context, the US production in 2025 of 41.1 million BOEs per day of petro liquids and nat gas was nearly as large as the 51.3 million BOEs per day coming out of the Persian Gulf. ( (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman).

By way of comparison, total Russian hydrocarbon production was 26.2 million BOEs or just 64% of the US output and Canada at 11.3 million BOE per day was barely 25% of the US total.

In short, when you look at the entire global oil and nat gas market at 182.5 million BOEs per day it is obvious that there are two giant hydrocarbon supply nodes – the USA and the Persian Gulf. There is no way on god’s green earth, however, that these giant hydrocarbon supply nodes could co-exist in splendid isolation.

Thus, having radically destabilized the world’s breadbasket of hydrocarbons and all their derivatives – LPGs, fertilizer, helium, sulfur and more – that Donald’s assurance that America can remain a low price oasis in a $100 +per barrel world is a barking delusion.

To the contrary, as the sign in the store used to say, if you break it, you own it. The Donald did – so now he does.

For want of doubt, here is the path of the global marker crude oil during the past 24 months versus the national average pump price of gasoline in the US. The correlation is tighter than a drum owing to the arbitrage mechanisms outlined above.

In any event, global crude oil was at $60 per barrel at the beginning of 2026 and the national average pump price stood at $2.75 per gallon, eliciting a noisy chorus of atta boys from MAGA-land.

No more. It’s a global market where pricing pressures transmit rapidly across markets and among various related elements of the hydrocarbon supply system. With global crude oil above $100 per barrel the domestic gas pump price is now at $4.03 per gallon for one reason and one reason only: The Donald kissed Bibi Netanyahu’s ass and joined his war of aggression not only against Iran but the entire Persian Gulf supply system for no good reason of America’s Homeland Security whatsoever.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.