Labor Day Gas Prices Hit a Record High

Current conditions: After decades without a major storm, Hawaii is set to be brushed by its second hurricane this season as Hurricane Lowell comes within 100 miles of the state’s western islands • Typhoon Krovanh is stalling over Okinawa, Japan, and weakening back into a tropical depression • Eastward in the Pacific, Hurricane Marie battered Southern California with 10-foot waves.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Oil prices surge near $100 per barrel as Labor Day gas prices soar

On Labor Day, I took a long drive through southern New England and filled the tank of my typically very efficient Honda Accord. The price at the pump made me grateful for work. Gas prices hit a record high for America’s end-of-summer holiday, reaching an average of $4.14, according to the AAA motor club. The national average has never been above $4 for Labor Day weekend, and the new figure easily bested the previous peak of $3.82, set on September 3, 2012. I was too irritated to write down the exact price I paid on Interstate 95 in Connecticut, but it was somewhere closer to $4.30.

The new high came as Iran set up what The Independent called a “potential clash with the U.S. Navy” over a new exclusion zone the Islamic Republic threatened to enforce in the Strait of Hormuz. In response, the price of crude ticked upward. Murban crude, the benchmark for barrels coming out of the United Arab Emirates, spiked more than 3% to nearly $107. Europe’s Brent crude rose nearly 1% to $97 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. measure, rose by more than 1% to about $93. Never fear, for the Russians are — despite sanctions — bringing more supply online. Rosneft shipped the first crude from its Vostok Oil project, which Russia believes holds around 7 billion tons of low-sulfur crude. Per Oil Price, the “project reinforces Russia’s energy pivot toward Asia and the Arctic, with the Northern Sea Route becoming increasingly important for future exports.”

2. Energy Department closes a $1.9 billion loan to revive another nuclear plant

The Department of Energy has unveiled a $1.9 billion loan to restart Iowa’s lone, shuttered nuclear station, the Duane Arnold Energy Center. This morning, the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing said it had already closed the deal with NextEra Energy, the station’s owner. The funding comes as little surprise. The Trump administration is pushing hard to bring more nuclear generation online. One of the first Biden-era spending packages the current administration approved to go out after taking office was a $1.5 billion loan to fund the restart of the first reactor expected to ever begin operations again after a permanent closure, the Palisades nuclear station in Michigan. That plant, as I told you in July, has reached a “watershed moment” and could come back online before its contract to sell electricity kicks in early next year. “Returning 615 megawatts of reliable baseload generation will drive down electricity costs, while supporting thousands of American jobs,” James Danly, the deputy secretary of energy, said in a statement. The head of the financing office, Gregory Beard, called Duane Arnold, which closed in 2020, “exactly the kind of investment that will help restore American nuclear leadership.”

The company behind Palisades, meanwhile, just took a major step toward debuting on the stock market. Early this morning, Holtec Nuclear Corporation, as the company previously called Holtec International will now be known, announced plans to raise more than $1 billion when it starts trading on the Nasdaq. Holtec has not yet given a specific date for its IPO. And just now, another nuclear startup announced an initial fundraising round. Bluecore Energy, one of the firms competing to commercialize offshore floating nuclear in the U.S., pulled in a $50 million seed round led by the venture firm Silverton Partners.

3. Export-Import Bank weighs a $750 million investment into a rare earths project

The U.S. Export-Import Bank has issued a letter of interest expressing its willingness to invest up to $750 million into Project Dynamo, a rare earth processing facility in Louisiana.

The plant is the flagship refinery of Alcara Resources, where the Vancouver-based company behind the project, plans to process heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium from its Carina mine in Goiás, Brazil. Compared to the light rare earths produced at California’s Mountain Pass mine, the only U.S. rare earths mine, heavy rare earths are more difficult to refine. The infrastructure is particularly risky given its high cost and the relatively small volumes of heavy rare earths that are needed. “The potential support from EXIM would provide a pathway to bring these capabilities together at industrial scale,” Ramón Barúa, Aclara’s chief executive, said in a press release. “Our objective is to establish a secure, traceable, and sustainable supply chain capable of serving U.S. and allied industries across some of the most critical sectors of the global economy.”

Meanwhile, Africa is set for its largest initial public offering in the history of any stock exchange on the continent. Alika Dangote, Africa’s richest man, is looking to raise at least $1.6 billion by listing his oil refinery business on the Nigerian stock exchange. “We’re targeting 10 million shareholders from all over Africa and maybe other parts of the world,” Dangote told the Financial Times. “If you can afford 10 shares, you buy 10. If you can afford one million, you buy one million.”

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4. Germany’s victorious far-right party vows a ‘180-degree U-turn’ on energy policy

AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund. Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

For the first time since democracy returned to Germany after World War II, a far-right party is set to assume control of one of the republic’s states. In Sunday’s elections, Alternative für Deutschland won the race to control Saxony-Anhalt, bringing the party to power in one of five former East German states. The national party’s manifesto calls for a “180-degree U-turn in energy policy.” The statewide party in Saxony-Anhalt pledges a “wind power moratorium,” though an analysis by the German investigative site Correctiv — translated into English by the anti-fossil fuels publication DeSmog — cautioned that the party has limited powers since turbine permits are regulated at the federal level. In 2024, Saxony-Anhalt bested the national average by generating about 60% of its power from renewables. Before Germany’s other parties embraced calling the country’s nuclear phaseout a mistake, the AfD, at least on the national level, was among atomic energy’s only high-profile defenders in the country. Still, the AfD’s most significant electoral victory to date sent shockwaves through Germany, where anxiety over the Nazi era has stirred intense debates over whether the party itself has a legal right to compete in elections where right-wing extremists are barred. The party’s defenders, including Elon Musk, counter that the AfD is a legitimate conservative movement addressing issues Germany’s mainstream parties have ignored or obscured.

Across the border in the country exporting lots of nuclear power into Germany every day, France is putting up nearly $1.2 billion to support farmers suffering losses from this summer’s brutal heat waves and wildfires. The funds, according to Bloomberg, will compensate farmers whose crops died off during the drought and heat. “This is new money, not recycled,” Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard said Friday in a press conference, pledging a “massive effort” from the government amid heated debates over the 2027 budget and preparations for next year’s presidential election, which could vault the far-right Marine Le Pen to office.”

5. New Panama Canal chief takes over as historic drought plagues the waterway

You may have been barbecuing and drinking Surfsides on your day off. But on Monday, Ilya Espino de Marotta took over as the new head of the Panama Canal Authority, becoming the first woman to lead the agency overseeing the waterway. The Panamanian engineer has her work cut out for her. She arrives at the helm after a summer of drought that left water levels in the 50-mile pass between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans impassably low. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, she said she is simultaneously taking on major infrastructure upgrades while managing an influx of shipping as cargo haulers veer away from the Persian Gulf amid the ongoing war. “We are developing a new lake, the Río Indio project. It will be able to accumulate enough water to provide 10 to 15 additional transits per day or about the same volume consumed by drinking water,” she said when asked about water levels. “This project should be ready in 2031.”

In more inflammatory Latin American geopolitics, Israel’s controversial national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has publicly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands. Buenos Aires has long claimed the oil-rich archipelago, which has no documented history of indigenous habitation prior to the British setting up the most permanent settlement ever established. In repeated elections since Britain defeated Argentina following its invasion in 1982, the population of fewer than 4,000 predominantly British people has voted almost unanimously to remain under the Union Jack. Now that the United Kingdom is building the infrastructure to begin drilling for oil offshore starting in 2032 — under a project led by investors with strong ties to Israel, mind you — Argentinian President Javier Milei is working his strong relationships with other right-wing leaders, including President Donald Trump, to gain recognition of what his country calls Las Malvinas. “It’s time for the State of Israel to publicly recognize that the Malvinas Islands are Argentine territory under occupation, which the British violently stole from the Argentine people. The British are not content with merely occupying the territory; they also carry out oil drilling there and steal the money from the Argentine people,” Ben-Gvir wrote in a Spanish-language post on X. “I call upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and to impose sanctions on Great Britain as long as the occupation continues.”

THE KICKER

In November 2016, I rode a ferry from Rhode Island to see North America’s first-ever offshore wind turbines. The five-turbine Block Island wind farm, located just off the vacation enclave, seemed magnificently novel a decade ago. This past weekend I rode the ferry with my family to Block Island — the first time I had come near these waters since then. When I stood on the port side pointing out what looked like pinwheels in the distance, I was struck by the vast array of turbines that preceded it: Revolution Wind. On a sunny day, most of the blades in sight were spinning. That wasn’t a given. Regular Heatmap readers know the saga of that project well: Trump tried to kill Revolution Wind repeatedly, the developer fought back, and now it’s roaring. Back when the U.S. turned away from nuclear power following the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, a lot of nuclear engineers headed to South Korea to help that country build what’s now the democratic world’s most competitive atomic power industry. Offshore wind workers may consider a similar pathway. Last week, Renewables Now reported that Seoul plans to designate 25 gigawatts of preliminary offshore wind zones by 2031, with the potential to support up to 45 gigawatts of turbines by 2040.