Risk Wire › 15 Aug 2026
Daily brief
Risk Wire — 15 August 2026
The workarounds keeping Gulf barrels moving are now visible from orbit as slicks, The Economist argues China rather than OPEC is setting the oil price, and Microsoft cuts its carbon-removal buying by four fifths.
Oil / Products
Sourced from Bloomberg’s Energy Daily.
The cost of keeping Middle East barrels moving is now washing ashore. On the Iranian side of Hormuz, satellite imagery shows a slick along the coast of Qeshm Island, where authorities are fighting a spill next to a major conservation area. A second slick near Fujairah, the bunkering hub at the strait’s south-western entrance, has spread across at least 60 square kilometres, according to John Amos of SkyTruth, who reviewed the images for Bloomberg. Separately a sanctioned tanker carrying Russian oil ran aground off Oman’s Hallaniyat Islands and has been leaking for weeks, with a seasonal monsoon worsening the salvage. Much of the traffic still crossing the strait sails with its transponders switched off. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg · Bloomberg
Risk lens: Bullish (war-risk premia and P&I cover) — transponders off and hulls aground turn a routing problem into an insurance one. Freight and liability reprice well before flat price does.
The Economist’s leader argues the buyer, not the cartel, now sets the oil price. Five months into the Iran war and with the Strait of Hormuz mostly shut, Brent remains roughly $40 below the $126 intraday high it reached on 30 April — and for a period there was even a “mini-glut” of crude. The paper credits China’s buying power for the restraint, arguing that when market power comes from the demand side, oil importers can do better. — The Economist
Risk lens: Bearish (Brent flat price) — pricing power sitting with the buyer caps the rallies a supply shock would once have driven. Books sized off supply-side risk keep missing where the bid actually is.
Russian regions are short of fuel again as Ukraine resumes near-daily refinery strikes. Several regions have reported a fresh crunch, and an overnight drone strike started a fire at Ust-Luga, Russia’s key Baltic gateway for energy and commodity exports. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg
Risk lens: Bullish (distillate) — strikes on refineries plus a hit on an export gateway compound damage at the refined end of the barrel, which is where cover is thinnest.
Gas & Power
Sourced from Bloomberg’s Green Daily.
This El Niño is shaping up to be the strongest in the record. The US Climate Prediction Center puts the chance of it reaching a strength unseen in 76 years of record-keeping at 69% for October to December, with sea-surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific projected to run 4C above normal against 2.75C in the 2015–16 event. Berkeley Earth separately raised the odds of 2026 becoming the hottest year on record from 12% in July to 69% in August. France’s government estimates this summer’s heat waves may already have cost the country as much as €15 billion. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg · Bloomberg
Risk lens: Bullish (prompt power, cooling load) — a historically strong El Niño front-loads demand into the peak while thinning hydro in the same regions. Shape reprices before flat price.
One in 25 Australian homes now has a battery. Half a million households, about 4% of the total, have installed residential storage under a government programme, in a market long treated as the bellwether for what high intermittent penetration does to a grid. — Bloomberg
Risk lens: Bearish (evening peak spreads) — distributed storage at this density erodes the evening scarcity that funds peaking plant. The volatility that made the market profitable is being sold back into it.
Carbon
Sourced from Bloomberg’s Green Daily.
Microsoft has cut its carbon-removal buying by about 80%. The company purchased 8.55 million tonnes of removal credits in the year to mid-July, roughly 80% below the same period in 2025, according to BloombergNEF’s calculations — its first retreat since 2023 from a market it entered in 2020. The pullback comes as AI spending climbs and its own emissions rise: Microsoft reported a 25% increase for 2025. The company says adjustments are “part of our disciplined approach, not a change in ambition”. — Bloomberg · Bloomberg
Risk lens: Bearish (durable removal offtake) — the anchor buyer stepping back removes the demand signal the market was priced against. Sellers holding forward capacity are facing a thin bid.
Headlines are summarised in our own words for comment and analysis, with attribution and a link to the original publisher. Indicative only — not investment advice.