US launches 'heavy' strikes on Iran after attempted attack on American troops

After a short period of relative calm when hostilities were paused, both sides have now restarted missile attacks.

bbc.co.uk

Iran (So Far Away) - Official Music Video

YouTube video by Dr Phoxotic

youtube.com

Iran (So Far Away) - Official Music Video

YouTube video by Dr Phoxotic

youtube.com

Inside Ukraine’s Kill Zone

Drones now dominate the war in Ukraine. Fly through the front line’s deadly “kill zone” and discover how surveillance, kamikaze drones and new tactics are reshaping modern warfare. An immersive Reuter...

reuters.com

How the sun rewrote Pakistan’s LNG strategy

**Double the contract price, in the middle of a war: that is what it has cost Pakistan to replace lost Qatari LNG cargoes in the spot market this summer to avoid gas shortages.** This week, two fertiliser plants in Pakistan were shut down as part of a government effort to ration gas supplies acutely tightened by the loss of Qatari LNG. Two weeks earlier, Pakistan’s largest gas utility warned state-owned power stations that regasified LNG (RLNG) supplies could not be assured from 14 July to 3 August. QatarEnergy’s force-majeure notice is biting Pakistan hard. Rationing scarce supply is not enough; Doha’s extension of the FM notice amid resumption of hostilities in the US-Israeli war on Iran removed another tranche of contracted cargoes from the South Asian country’s delivery schedule, forcing Pakistan back to the spot market at war prices. Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) secured a prompt cargo from TotalEnergies on 4 July at $17.37 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), equivalent to a 24% Brent slope at the June 2026 average of $73 per barrel. By comparison, Pakistan’s 2021 Qatar contract at 10.2% of Brent equated to about $7.44/MMBtu before fixed components, while the older 13.37% contract came to approximately $9.75/MMBtu. The pressure is intensifying. Pakistan’s three most recent spot cargoes were purchased at $18.23, $20.70 and $21.88 per MMBtu, representing a combined foreign-exchange outlay of roughly **$195 million**. For perspective, that was more than five times the **$36 million** received by the government as direct cash proceeds from the December 2025 privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines. ## Sign up for 💥 Energy Flux 💥 Fiercely independent energy market analysis Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ## From feast to famine Barely a year ago, Pakistan’s central LNG problem was surplus rather than shortage. Rapid solar PV deployment, weak industrial demand and declining power-sector offtake left gas utilities struggling to absorb contracted volumes. Pakistan arranged to defer or divert most of its Eni cargoes for 2026 and 2027, together with several Qatari cargoes, to alleviate rising financial and operational pressure on the gas network. **Only months later, Pakistan was replacing part of those volumes in the war-disrupted spot market at more than double the price of its cheaper long-term contracts. Demand had become flexible, but the LNG portfolio had not.** Pakistan is now short of deliverable LNG and structurally long on contracted LNG. The paradox captures a wider risk for emerging markets. A state can sign long-term commodity contracts, build terminals and promise demand for decades. But when geopolitics ruptures the market, cargoes still gravitate towards richer buyers with stronger credit. And when domestic consumers later find a cheaper route around the state system, the demand underpinning those contracts can disappear just as quickly. The rapid transformation of Pakistan’s energy complex raises knotty questions about where LNG demand is heading in a key emerging Asian growth market. * How did Pakistan lurch from dialling down contracted volumes to an acute scarcity crisis in the space of barely a year? * Who wins, who loses and who ends up paying when consumers build a parallel power system beyond the grid? * How many LNG cargoes a year is Pakistan’s DIY solar fleet now displacing, and how does that number alter the country’s procurement strategy? * Which of Pakistan’s two large Qatar LNG contracts is worth keeping, and which is the lever for renegotiation or exit? * How big is the cargo surplus Pakistan is forecast to carry through 2031, even if it walks away from its most expensive contract? * What does the LNG paradox mean for the Iran-Pakistan and TAPI pipeline projects that have loomed over Pakistan’s energy strategy for decades? The answers to these pressing questions stretch back through a decade of twists and turns. The lessons therein are a sober warning to LNG industry demand forecasts predicated on rapid growth in fiscally constrained, price-sensitive emerging Asian economies. 💥 _Article stats: 4,000 words, 15-min read time, 2 charts, 1 table_ Upgrade to __Energy Flux__ Premium to unlock the full Deep Dive — including our full displacement methodology, contract economics and pipeline feasibility scorecard. Unlock the Deep Dive 🔓 Credit card not an option? Need group access, or a corporate account? ****We offer flexible subscription options to suit all needs**** 👉 Get in touch 👈 ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

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The Hormuz clown show gets serious

## Unserious seriousness **Markets are, finally, looking beyond the clown show. The car with the doors falling off has stopped raising a bonhomie chuckle – not because the blunders have ceased, but because the audience has clocked where the vehicle is heading. And it is not a fun place.** Behind the slapstick sits the strategic incoherence that steered America into this Iran quagmire, and it is the reason there are no palatable off-ramps: by clinging to impossible maximalist war objectives, failing to define achievable outcomes and chronically underestimating its enemy, the Trump administration has painted itself into a corner. The only ways out are further escalation or outright capitulation, and both carry intolerable political costs. Until now, markets were content to hedge on the reasonable assumption that a climbdown was mutually beneficial. The 17 June peace memorandum gave perfect cover for that trade, even though it was always less a peace deal than a Hormuz deal – one that left ‘arrangements’ for safe passage through the Strait dangerously ambiguous, and largely in Tehran’s hands. Its collapse was entirely predictable. Now it is official: Iran’s foreign ministry says it has no plans for negotiations and no longer considers itself bound by the MoU. Hedging for peace no longer makes sense; the relief trade is dead until further notice. Diplomacy has taken the back seat in the clown car. ## Sign up for 💥 Energy Flux 💥 Fiercely independent energy market analysis Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ## Guardian of the Strait (just for a day) Nothing better captures the dearth of strategic thinking behind deadly serious events in Hormuz than the transit toll fiasco. On 13 July, Trump proclaimed that America would henceforth be known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT’, entitled to a 20% fee on all cargo transiting the waterway it is fighting to reopen. The scheme was unenforceable, in breach of the law of the sea, and demolished Washington’s own case against Iranian tolls – a gift Tehran gleefully accepted, with foreign minister Araghchi purring that Iran ‘has always been the GUARDIAN’ of the Strait and would charge less. Within 24 hours the plan was abandoned, swapped for vague promises of ‘MASSIVE’ Gulf investments into the US: no named countries, no numbers, no documents. Another risible TACO. The clownishness should not obscure the escalation. US forces have now struck Iran for six consecutive days, hitting coastal defence installations from Bushehr to Bandar Abbas, and the naval blockade of Iranian ports was reinstated on 14 July. Iran is answering by striking America’s allies: cruise missiles hit two Emirati tankers in the Strait, killing an Indian seafarer; air-raid sirens sounded over Bahrain and Kuwait; and Jordan intercepted four Iranian missiles entering its airspace. Each rung up the escalation ladder makes a climbdown harder to sell in either capital, and closes off what little remains of America’s exits. ## Chokepoint contagion Nor is Hormuz the only chokepoint under stress. The Houthis have entered the fray, launching reprisal strikes on Saudi Arabia and, per Reuters, deploying missiles and drones near Bab el-Mandeb after Tehran asked the group to prepare to close it. That threatens the safety valve that has kept Gulf barrels moving: some 7.4 million bpd of petroleum transited Bab el-Mandeb in June, up from 4.2 million a year earlier, as exports rerouted around Hormuz via the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Ukraine is rewriting the rules of maritime warfare. Ukrainian drones struck 136 vessels of Russia’s shadow fleet across the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea between 6 and 15 July, including 20 in a single night as the campaign pushed into deeper waters. If this is the model for 21st century warfare, all seaborne commodities will need to contend with a deeply hostile operating environment. Cheap drones have made crippling merchant shipping at scale look routine. Today it is Ukraine hunting Russia’s oil tankers; nothing says the tables won’t be turned tomorrow, with drones of a different allegiance hunting a different class of vessel. The entire architecture of seaborne trade – insurance, crewing, chartering – rests on the assumption that ships are not targets. That assumption is being shredded in the Azov, the Black Sea and the Gulf simultaneously. LNG will not be immune from this paradigmatic shift in operational risk. ## Qatar’s reckoning QatarEnergy has extended force majeure to September for some long-term customers in Europe and Asia, and halted its Ras Laffan mega-expansion project, after the projectile attack that set the laden Al Rekayyat LNG carrier ablaze in the Strait. Even Doha, the most determined optimist in this conflict, is having a reckoning with reality. _Energy Flux_ has consistently held the view that unbridled optimism in Qatar’s ability to restart liquefaction activities and ramp up output, following damage to two of its LNG trains at Ras Laffan, was misplaced. The engineers were never the constraint; the critical path has always been, and remains, the ability to safely and reliably transit Hormuz. Ramping up sent a reassuring message that the market is no longer able to take at face value. Well, those chickens are coming home to roost. ## Captive to the bulls All of which brings us to a European gas market now held captive by bullish sentiment. TTF has smashed through the €50/MWh ceiling that held since late March, and the price action suggests the market no longer treats that level as a ceiling at all. The fuel is a toxic mix: a ballooning EU storage deficit that must be closed at whatever price the market demands, mounting anticipation of resurgent Asian LNG demand competing for the marginal cargo, winter scarcity creeping ever deeper into the curve, and speculative capital redeploying real money into high-conviction length – all of it marinated in a relentless flow of dispiriting wartime headlines from the Middle East. The question that matters now is not whether the bulls are in charge (they are) but how much dry powder remains to stoke the rally higher, and what it would take to force them to back down. This week’s subscriber-only Chart Deck answers both. In this week's Issue This week’s deck runs to 125 slides of proprietary models and vessel-tracking intel. Upgrading to paid unlocks all of it, including: * ****TTF Sentiment Tracker**** – how investment funds and commercial hedgers are positioned after the €50 breakout * ****TTF Value-at-Risk**** – how much risk budget the bulls have left to fuel the rally, and what would force them to fold * ****TTF Risk Model**** – audited, reworked and back-tested this week, and now printing an emphatic new signal * ****The Storage-Speculation Nexus**** – where fund money meets Europe’s restocking task, plus a curious story unfolding in summer 2027 pricing * ****LNG Physical Balance Index**** – our price-gated read on how tight the global LNG market really is * ****Hormuz Closure LNG Supply Impact Model**** – when does new supply finally offset lost Gulf volumes? Three scenarios, out to 2030 * ****Notable vessel movements**** – trapped Qatari carriers, quiet diversions and some eyebrow-raising first voyages Upgrade now to get the full picture, and the tools to build your own scenarios. Unlock the Chart Deck + market analysis 🔓 Credit card not an option? Need group access, or a corporate account? ****We offer flexible subscription options to suit all needs**** 👉 Get in touch 👈 **Download this week’s Chart Deck** PowerPoint (.ppsx) Adobe PDF (.pdf) ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

energyflux.news

Iran war delays but does not end looming LNG glut - Gas Outlook

Supply outages from the Persian Gulf have pushed up prices. But the LNG glut is still expected to arrive later this decade, complicating commercial case for new terminals.

gasoutlook.com