Current conditions: Oman’s Ayn Athum Waterfalls burst to life this week as rain battered the Gulf nation’s southwestern Dhofar governorate • Severe monsoon flooding has deluged parts of the American Southwest, including Navajo Nation, where at least three people have died • Tropical Storm Dujuan is barreling toward Japan, where it threatens flooding and landslides in Tokyo and Chiba.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Oil prices dip as U.S. meets with Houthis
When the Houthis stormed Yemen’s Red Sea coast last week, the Iran-backed rebels gained new ground from which to attack boats passing through the vital shipping lane, extending Tehran’s reach from the Persian Gulf’s hotly contested Strait of Hormuz to the waterway on the opposite side of the Arabian peninsula. In response, oil prices surged. But the price per barrel of crude is slipping again as the United States has rebuked Saudi Arabia’s requests for help routing the militants, instead seeking a deal that keeps the Bab al-Mandab Strait open to American and Israeli ships. Over the weekend, U.S. diplomats met with Houthi officials in neutral Oman, Reuters reported. Following the talks, the Times of Israel reported that Houthis promised not to attack any Israeli or commercial ships of any kind, only those linked to Saudi Arabia, which has funded the Yemeni government’s campaign against the rebels.
Satellite images published by the investigative site Hunterbrook showed workers building a bypass on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, its main conduit for circumventing oil exports around the Strait of Hormuz, to get around the pumping station damaged by a Houthi attack. But the promise of free movement through the Red Sea sent the price of oil down by between 1% and 4% on Thursday.
2. Trump’s move to gut endangered species protections draws a swift legal challenge
Just yesterday, I told you that the Trump administration had moved to drastically change how the government interprets the Endangered Species Act to only consider deaths of protected animals illegal if the creatures were intentionally targeted. Such a shift would exclude the vast majority of deaths linked to energy companies, such as when birds land in toxic oil ponds or collide with wind turbines. Whether federal enforcement ultimately reflects that interpretation depends on the outcome of a forthcoming lawsuit. Already, Earthjustice has vowed to file litigation challenging the Trump administration’s legal memo directing federal agencies on its new view of the nation’s bedrock conservation law. “The government’s new legal position is a prescription for extinction. It says that as long as you claim you didn’t mean to kill an endangered species, the law can’t and won’t stop you,” Earthjustice attorney Ben Levitan said in a press release. “That’s ridiculous — and a totally illegal, active misreading of the Endangered Species Act. We’ll see the Trump administration in court about this.”
The toll wind turbines take on migratory birds is a favorite talking point of the energy source’s opponents. But relief from the responsibility to avoid killing birds would be cold comfort to the wind industry as developers wait for the Trump administration to follow a court ruling requiring it to continue processing applications for turbines. As my colleague Jael Holzman wrote yesterday, the administration has continued delaying. At least one other legal fight within the offshore wind industry has, meanwhile, come to a conclusion. Vineyard Wind and its turbine supplier GE Vernova, announced an “amicable settlement” this week that resolves “all outstanding litigation,” the New Bedford Light reported. The developer sued the supplier in April, accusing GE Vernova of an $800 million breach of contract following a blade failure in 2024.
3. Trump pumps the brakes on a controversial pumped hydro storage facility
How the Seminoe pumped hydro project would work.rPlus Hydro
The U.S. needs more long-term energy storage, and few technologies are better tested by time than using excess electricity to pump water into a reservoir, where it can be released downhill and run through turbines to generate huge bursts of power when it’s needed. Back when the U.S. had lots of nuclear power, pumped hydro plants harvested the unused electrons during the night. With solar now producing more electricity during the day in some parts of the country than the grid demands, pumped hydro is seeing a potential renewal. But the U.S. hasn’t built any pumped hydro facilities since the 1990s. A project that looked likely to break that dry spell is now on pause as the Trump administration heeds opponents’ concerns and orders a new study on its environmental impact.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has delayed its decision on whether to license the $3 billion project to add a pumped hydro facility to the Seminoe Reservoir, a lightning bolt-shaped waterway in southern Wyoming. The Bureau of Land Management said it will conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement and open the door to more public comments and input from local officials. “This feels like a small victory,” CiCi Oliver, a fly-fishing shop owner who opposed the project over its potential disruptions to the ecology of the reservoir, told WyoFile this week.
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4. China’s oil stockpiling bodes ill for Taiwan
At the start of the Iran War, some interpreters of President Donald Trump’s supposed four-dimensional geopolitical chess moves suggested that shutting down the Strait of Hormuz was an intentional move to show China’s vulnerable underbelly: Beijing’s dependence on oil imports. And yet, China’s vast oil stockpiles and refining capacity, plus its array of alternative energy sources, allowed the country to slash oil purchases by 23% in the first six months of the war compared to the same period last year, according to a New York Times analysis of customs data. “This is a power that nobody thought China had,” said Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “Going forward, it’s going to be really interesting to see: What does China do with this newfound power?” The heaviest answer to that question now weighing on Western officials involves China considering the ramifications of a potential invasion of Taiwan to be less worrying than before.
That’s especially true because Taiwan, by contrast, is more vulnerable to losing access to oil and gas imports than ever before. After completing its decades-long mission last year to shut down the nuclear fleet that powered the island’s 20th century transformation into the world’s premiere chipmaker, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party — which advocates for the republic’s continued de facto independence — left the nation dependent on imported liquified natural gas and crude for the vast majority of its energy. Now, according to Nikkei, the government is hastening its efforts to potentially bring at least one nuclear station back online.
5. Maryland’s governor vows to ban data centers if the legislature passes a bill
Yet another state is considering a moratorium on data centers — one close to the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom. Maryland, which shares a grid and a border with northern Virginia’s data center megacluster, could see a ban come into effect as early as next year if state legislators pass a bill in the next session. Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, said he “will absolutely sign” a statewide ban “if it’s coming from local legislators.” Speaking to Punchbowl News, he suggested that any moratorium would come with loopholes for projects that meet high standards. “I believe local jurisdictions should have a say. There are certain local jurisdictions who want it,” he said. “I just need them to understand I have very strict guidelines for what is actually going to get state approval.”
THE KICKER
A startup founded by members of the team of U.S. government scientists that first achieved net-energy gain from a fusion reaction has hit a new milestone that should raise the eyebrows of even skeptics of the so-called holy grail of clean power. Less than two months after publicizing its roadmap to commercial fusion, Inertia Enterprises ran a simulation demonstrating that its first commercial plant will be capable of producing 25 times more energy than the laser needed to trigger the reaction, the company told my colleague Katie Brigham in an exclusive.
How the Seminoe pumped hydro project would work.rPlus Hydro
