Risk Wire — 11 August 2026

Oil / Products

Sourced from Bloomberg’s Energy Daily.

Oil erased its gains after Pakistan signalled the US and Iran were close to an arrangement. The report was enough to unwind the day’s move, in a market that has spent months repricing on each turn in the negotiation rather than on barrels. — Bloomberg

Risk lens: Neutral, headline risk dominating — when flat price is set by diplomatic commentary rather than physical balances, stop-losses on fundamental positions get triggered by noise. Size to survive the rumour, not the forecast.

Chinese teapot refiners are running their stockpiles down, which puts a floor under Iranian sales. Oil inventories in Shandong — home to most of China’s independent refiners — fell to an eight-month low in July, according to Energy Aspects data. Those refiners are by far the largest buyers of Iranian crude, and thinning stocks may spur fresh purchases, giving Tehran a boost after sales slowed. — Bloomberg

Risk lens: Bearish (sanctions premium) — Chinese restocking is the release valve that has kept Iranian barrels moving throughout the blockade. It argues against pricing a sustained Iranian supply loss into the back of the curve.

A drone strike hit a refinery in western Libya, destroying a storage tank. The attack put wider oil facilities at risk and threatens to aggravate fuel shortages in the OPEC member. — Bloomberg

Risk lens: Bullish (Mediterranean product) — another increment of refining capacity offline in a basin already short of distillate. Small in isolation, meaningful as the latest in a run of outages.

Gas & Power

Sourced from Bloomberg’s Energy Daily.

Wind-lease cancellations are being converted into gas investment by contract. Refunds to developers for cancelled US offshore leases now total $4 billion, but much of that cash is not going back to investors — it is being redirected into fossil-fuel projects as a condition of settlement. RWE settled with the US government last week to relinquish leases off New York, California and Louisiana, and as part of that agreement pledged $900 million for a stake in Woodside’s Louisiana LNG export facility. TotalEnergies struck a comparable deal earlier this year, getting back almost $1 billion while committing to US gas and LNG. Bluepoint Wind, part-owned by BlackRock, gave up a New York development, with BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners directing as much as $765 million into US LNG infrastructure. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg · US Interior

Risk lens: Bullish (US gas demand), bearish (renewables build-out) — policy risk expressing itself through settlement terms rather than legislation, which makes it far harder to hedge. For renewable development exposure, a lease is now a revocable asset.

The gas momentum lands on production that is already at record levels. US output is running at highs just as Big Tech turns to the fuel to meet surging data-centre power demand. LNG gets a lift at the same time, with the Iran war throttling Persian Gulf flows and lifting global prices, making US supply look increasingly attractive to international buyers. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg

Risk lens: Bullish (Henry Hub basis) — record supply meeting data-centre load growth and export pull at once is a basis story, not a flat-price one. Pipeline constraints between the gas and the new demand are what will price.

LNG

Sourced from Bloomberg’s Energy Daily.

India is pulling South Asian LNG imports sharply higher even with Hormuz traffic stalled. As of 9 August, its cumulative August imports were 131% above the same period in 2025, according to BloombergNEF. The likely driver is substitution rather than appetite: war-related disruption has tightened propane supply, pushing industrial users onto natural gas. — Bloomberg

Risk lens: Bullish (JKM) — demand created by scarcity in a different fuel appears fast and reverses just as fast. Term positions written against this volume carry reversal risk the forward curve is not pricing.

Meanwhile the US supply side keeps being reinforced by policy. Settlements over cancelled offshore wind leases are directing developer capital into US LNG export infrastructure — RWE into Woodside’s Louisiana project, BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners committing up to $765 million. — Woodside · Bloomberg Law

Risk lens: Bearish (long-dated JKM–TTF spread) — more US export capacity arriving into a market where Atlantic-basin supply is already growing narrows the diversion arbitrage. The front stays tight; the back end is where it shows.