Oil steadies on reports of US-Russia deal, ends week about 5% lower
West Texas Intermediate crude futures were unchanged at $63.88. Brent fell 4.4% over the week, while WTI finished 5.1% lower than last Friday's close. U.S. crude fell over 1% earlier in the session after Bloomberg News reported that Washington and Moscow were aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia's occupation of territory seized during war.
U.S. and Russian officials are working towards an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Trump and Putin as early as this week. The potential meeting raises expectations of a diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine, which could lead to eased sanctions on Russia, and comes as trade tensions have been on the rise between Trump and buyers of Russian oil.
Trump threatened to increase tariffs on India if it kept purchasing Russian oil. Trump also said China, the largest buyer of Russian crude, could be hit with tariffs similar to those levied against Indian imports. Higher U.S. tariffs on imports from a host of trade partners went into effect on Thursday, raising concern over economic activity and demand for oil.
Asian Spot LNG Prices Down on Weak Demand; Eyes on Sanctions
Asian spot liquefied natural gas prices declined last week due to weak demand and as markets awaited further clarity on U.S. Russian energy sanctions or secondary tariffs.
The average LNG price for September delivery into north-east Asia was at $11.90 per million British thermal units, down from $12.10 per mmBtu previous week, industry sources estimated. Spot global gas prices have been relatively rangebound since the start of summer gas season in April..
Analysts expect this trend to continue during the remaining months of the summer season. The market will be paying close attention to the latest news on tariffs and peace talks between Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine. Increased tariffs on countries like India could slow global trade, cutting energy demand.
In Europe, prices remained relatively stable as Friday marks the deadline for Russia to respond to the U.S. ceasefire ultimatum.
Looking ahead, anticipated Norwegian maintenance later this month, coupled with the need for further injections into Europe's storage, could provide upward price support in the second half of August.
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Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
‘Putin will fool Trump': Why Ukrainians are wary about Trump-Putin talks
Kyiv, Ukraine – Taras, a seasoned Ukrainian serviceman recovering from a contusion, expects 'no miracles' from United States President Donald Trump's August 15 summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. 'There's going to be no miracles, no peace deal in a week, and Putin will try to make Trump believe that it is Ukraine that doesn't want peace,' the fair-haired 32-year-old with a deep brown tan acquired in the trenches of eastern Ukraine, told Al Jazeera. Taras, who spent more than three years on the front line and said he had recently shot down an explosives-laden Russian drone barging at him in a field covered with explosion craters, withheld his last name in accordance with the wartime protocol. Putin wants to dupe Trump by pandering to the US president's self-image as a peacemaker to avoid further economic sanctions, while the Russian leader seeks a major military breakthrough in eastern Ukraine, Taras said. 'Putin really believes that until this winter, he will seize something sizeable, or that [his troops] will break through the front line and will dictate terms to Ukraine,' Taras said. As the Trump administration trumpets the upcoming Alaska summit as a major step towards securing a ceasefire, Ukrainians — civilians and military personnel — and experts are largely pessimistic about the outcomes of the meeting between the US and Russian presidents. This is partly because of the facts on the ground in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this month, Russia intensified its push to seize key locations in the southeastern Donetsk region, ordering thousands of servicemen to conduct nearly-suicidal missions to infiltrate Ukrainian positions, guarded 24/7 by buzzing drones with night and thermal vision. In the past three months, Russian forces have occupied some 1,500sq km (580 square miles), mostly in Donetsk, of which Russia controls about three-fourths, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates based on geolocated photos and videos. The pace is slightly faster than in the past three years. Within weeks after Moscow's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Russia controlled some 27 percent of Ukrainian territory. But Kyiv's daring counteroffensive and Moscow's inability to hold onto areas around the capital and in Ukraine's north resulted in the loss of 9 percent of occupied lands by the fall of 2022. Russia has since re-occupied less than 1 percent of Ukrainian territory, despite losing hundreds of thousands of servicemen, while pummelling Ukrainian cities almost daily with swarms of drones and missiles. Russia's push to occupy a 'buffer zone' in Ukraine's northern Sumy region failed as Kyiv's forces regained most of the occupied ground. Ukraine also controls a tiny border area in Russia's western Kursk region, where it started a successful offensive in August 2024, but lost most of its gains earlier this year. The scepticism in Ukraine over the Alaska meeting is also driven by reports of what the US might offer Putin to try to convince him to stop fighting. Reports — not denied by Washington — suggest that Trump might offer Moscow full control of Donetsk and the smaller neighbouring Luhansk region. In exchange, Moscow could offer a ceasefire and the freezing of the front line in other Ukrainian regions, as well as the retreat from tiny toeholds in Sumy and the northeastern Kharkiv region, according to the reports. But to give up Donetsk, Kyiv would have to vacate a 'fortress belt' that stretches some 50km (31 miles) along a strategic highway between the towns of Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk. Donetsk's surrender would 'position Russian forces extremely well to renew their attacks on much more favorable terms, having avoided a long and bloody struggle for the ground,' the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said on Friday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will not 'gift' its land, and that it needs firm security guarantees from the West. 'We don't need a pause in killings, but a real, long peace. Not a ceasefire some time in the future, in months, but now,' he said in a televised address on Saturday. Some civilian Ukrainians hold a gloomy view on the prospects of peace, believing that Kyiv's tilt towards democracy and presumed eventual membership in the European Union, and Moscow's 'imperialistic nature' set up an equation that prevents a sustainable diplomatic solution. 'The war will go on until [either] Ukraine or Russia exist,' Iryna Kvasnevska, a biology teacher in Kyiv whose first cousin was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2023, told Al Jazeera. But the lack of trust in the Alaska summit for many Ukrainians also stems from a deep lack of faith in Trump himself. Despite Trump's recent change in rhetoric and growing public dissatisfaction with Moscow's reluctance to end the hostilities, the US president has a history of blaming Ukraine – for the war and its demands of its allies – while some of his negotiators have repeated Moscow's talking points. It is also unclear whether Zelenskyy will be invited to a trilateral meet with Trump and Putin in Alaska, or whether the US will go ahead and seek to shape the future of Ukraine without Kyiv in the room. 'Trump has let us down several times, and the people who believe he won't do it again are very naive, if not stupid,' Leonid Cherkasin, a retired colonel from the Black Sea port of Odesa who fought pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk in 2014-2015 and suffered contusions, shrapnel and bullet wounds, told Al Jazeera. 'He did threaten Putin a lot in recent weeks, but his actions don't follow his words,' he said. He referred to Trump's pledges during his re-election campaign to 'end the war in 24 hours', and his ultimatums to impose crippling sanctions on Russia if Putin does not show progress in a peace settlement. Trump's ultimatum to Putin, initially 50 days long, was reduced to '10 to 12 days' and ended on Friday, one day after the Alaska summit was announced. Military analysts agree that Putin will not bow to Trump's and Zelenskyy's demands. Meanwhile, the very fact of a face-to-face with Trump heralds a diplomatic victory for Putin, who has become a political pariah in the West and faces child abduction charges that have led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant against him. Putin last visited the US for bilateral meetings in 2007, only coming for UN summits after that, but not visiting the country since the warrant was issued. 'What's paramount for Putin is the fact of his conversation with Trump as equals,' Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University, told Al Jazeera. 'I think the deal will be limited to an agreement on cessation of air strikes, and Putin will get three months to finalise the land operations – that is, to seize the [entire] Donetsk region.' An air ceasefire may benefit Russia, as it can amass thousands of drones and hundreds of missiles for future attacks. The ceasefire will also stop Ukraine's increasingly successful drone strikes on military sites, ammunition depots, airfields and oil refineries in Russia or occupied Ukrainian regions. 'Then [Putin] will, of course, fool Trump, and everything will resume,' Mitrokhin said.
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
Nvidia, AMD to pay 15% of China chip sales to US government, reports say
Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the United States government a share of revenues from chip sales in China as part of a deal to secure export licences for their products, US media have reported. Under the agreement reached with US President Donald Trump's administration, Nvidia will share 15 percent of revenues from sales of its H20 AI chip, while AMD will pay the same percentage of MI308 chip revenues, multiple outlets reported on Sunday. The unorthodox agreement, which has no known precedent, comes after the Trump administration last month agreed to reverse a ban on the sale of Nvidia's H20 chips to China. The Financial Times, which first reported the news, said the Trump administration had yet to decide how it would use the collected revenues. AMD did not respond to a request for comment. Nvidia neither confirmed nor denied the deal, but said it follows US government rules for doing business in overseas markets. 'While we haven't shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,' a company spokesperson said. 'America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America's AI tech stack can be the world's standard if we race.' Following reports of the deal, which was confirmed by The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC, trade experts expressed concern about the implications of linking controls on sensitive technology to monetary payments. Christopher Padilla, the former head of the US Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, called the agreement 'astonishing'. 'If the Trump administration is allowing companies to buy their way past export controls imposed to protect US national security, we are in very dangerous waters,' Padilla said in a post on LinkedIn. 'A mix of bribery and blackmail that is certainly unprecedented and possibly illegal.' Peter Harrell, a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the deal set a worrying precedent. 'The Chinese would pay a lot for F35s and advanced US military technology, too,' Harrell said in a post on X. 'Regardless of whether you think Nvidia should be able to sell H20s in China, charging a fee in exchange for relaxing national security export controls is a terrible precedent.'
Qatar Tribune
11 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
EU FMs to meet ahead of US-Russia summit
dpa Brussels European Union top diplomat Kaja Kallas announced on Sunday a special video conference with the bloc's foreign ministers ahead of the planned US-Russia talks between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two presidents are set to meet on Friday in Alaska to discuss a possible solution to the Ukraine war after more than three years of conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited. Kallas plans to discuss the next steps on Monday as 'Europe's core interests are at stake,' she said in a statement. She said: 'Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine's and the whole of Europe's security.' Russia's aggression must not be rewarded, she said, adding that the temporarily Russian-occupied territories belong to Ukraine. Kallas urged the US to use its influence to push Russia into serious negotiations, warning that Moscow would only cease aggression when it feels it can no longer continue. In Ukraine and Europe alike, there are fears that the two leaders could agree to Ukraine permanently ceding territory to its neighbour. Zelensky strictly rejects any territorial concessions and vehemently demands to be included in any talks on his country's future. However, the Ukrainian president has said that he is confident in Trump's ability to bring about an end to the war.
