Sunday, 19 July 2026

Two subsidiaries of deep-sea mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) have gone to court to stop an International Seabed Authority (ISA) investigation into their conduct, according to Climate Home News.

The subsidiaries, Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd and Nauru Ocean Resources Inc, brought their case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in June, Climate Home News reported. Both firms want the inquiry frozen until the tribunal rules.

ISA secretary-general Leticia Carvalho pushed back on the challenge to the regulator's authority over ocean governance. "The deep seabed belongs to no single country and no corporation; it belongs to all of us," Carvalho said, calling its resources the "common heritage of humankind," according to Climate Home News.

The legal fight comes after TMC secured a separate green light outside ISA channels. In May, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) certified the company's application to explore 120,000 square kilometers of sea floor, Climate Home News reported.

Talks on the ISA rulebook that would govern commercial extraction remain stuck. The body has spent more than 12 years drafting a mining code for the deep ocean floor without reaching agreement, according to Climate Home News.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the EU Methane Emissions Regulation (EU MER) to cut the pool of tradable crudes available to European Union refiners by over half once the import rules apply on January 1, 2027.

In force since August 2024, the regulation obliges importers of crude oil, natural gas, and coal to show that upstream producers meet monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) standards on par with EU requirements, or reach Level 5 of the United Nations Environment Program's Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP 2.0).

Drawing on OGMP 2.0 data, the IEA puts roughly 22.5 million b/d of global output as meeting Level 5 criteria in 2027. That volume marks the ceiling on crude EU refiners could source once the import provisions bite.

North American exports supplied 23% of EU crude imports in the second quarter of 2026, the IEA said.

No EU-accredited third-party verifiers are yet in place to confirm MRV compliance, according to the IEA. As a result, a producer operating at OGMP 2.0 Level 5 standards still has no route to certify its compliance under the EU MER.

A UK energy industry coalition sent a letter to all 403 Labour members of Parliament on Tuesday, pressing them to support continued North Sea oil and gas development, according to World Oil.

The letter told MPs that choices made by the new government would shape how far the UK sustains its own production against rising reliance on imported oil and gas, World Oil reported.

David Whitehouse, chief executive of Offshore Energies UK, said domestic energy production should be kept alongside greater investment in renewable and low-carbon technologies. He tied that mix to "energy security, economic resilience and reindustrialization," according to World Oil.

GMB General Secretary Gary Smith said keeping oil and gas produced at home is essential to cutting dependence on imported energy while protecting jobs, communities and national security, World Oil reported.

The coalition backed the letter with coordinated displays on offshore installations and industrial sites. The campaign signage read, "Back North Sea oil and gas. Not imports."

US President Donald Trump abandoned a plan to charge a 20% toll in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Semafor. The retreat came a day after a White House official told Semafor that Trump was "very serious" about the fee.

Analysts were skeptical about the proposal because it would double the cost of moving oil through the strait, Semafor reported.

Hours after the retreat, Washington restarted its naval blockade of Iranian ports and launched fresh strikes against Iran, according to Semafor.

The Wall Street Journal described the moves as Trump's latest shift in military strategy after aerial attacks, the original blockade, and a ceasefire failed to force Tehran into surrendering.

The International Maritime Organization said the Strait of Hormuz remains too dangerous for commercial vessels to transit, according to Rigzone.

Dominguez said 6,000 seafarers are still stranded. He also said there is no basis under international law for imposing tolls or mandatory payments on the waterway.

Shortly after a temporary accord in June, the IMO created a ship-evacuation program to rescue seafarers who had been trapped on ships inside the Persian Gulf, according to Rigzone. The UN agency scrapped the plan as Iran continued to attack commercial vessels in the waterway.

American Deep Sea Minerals is seeking the Trump administration's approval to lease 25 million acres of international waters for mining exploration just outside the exclusive economic zones of French Polynesia, the Cook Islands and Kiribati, according to Grist.

The target zone, called Eastern High Seas Pocket 3, is entirely surrounded by waters over which the three nations hold exclusive rights. Grist reports the area has an abundance of albacore, yellowfin, and bigeye tuna and is visited by dozens of fishing vessels each year.

The application is one of at least a dozen the Trump administration has received, and it is available for public comment until August 3, according to Grist. Trump announced that the United States would not await international permission and would begin allowing deep sea mining in the high seas under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, a law passed during the Carter administration that lets the US permit mining in international waters.

Graham Goulet initially submitted his bid under the name Kraken Metals in August 2025 and paid USD 100,000 to submit the application, Grist reports. In April, the company hired Wouter Duijnstee, an environmental engineer who previously worked with Allseas, a Netherlands-based contractor that has provided deep sea mining equipment to The Metals Company.

The bid runs against recent moves by one of the neighboring nations. Last summer, at the United Nations World Ocean's Conference, French Polynesia established the world's largest contiguous marine protected area, reinforcing its 2022 ban on seabed mining, according to Grist.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero launched the UK carbon management innovation challenge in July 2026, the first of a series of cleantech innovation challenges, according to the department's programme overview.

The challenge aims to accelerate the development, demonstration and commercialisation of innovative solutions for carbon capture and greenhouse gas removal in the UK, according to the department's notice.

The expression of interest form for the challenge coalition closes at 11.59pm on 23 August 2026, the department said.

The cleantech innovation challenges were announced in the Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan in October 2025 and launched in July 2026, according to the programme overview. Additional challenges are expected to be launched across 2026 and 2027.

The European Commission intends to adopt recommendations next week that would postpone penalties on energy imports that fall short of the bloc's methane emissions rules, according to World Oil.

The rules require fossil-fuel shipments entering the bloc to meet monitoring, reporting and verification standards for methane starting in 2027.

Celine Gauer, the European Commission's new director general for energy, said the guidelines would "urge member states not to apply penalties for a certain period of time, letting time for the market to adjust," World Oil reported.

Last month, 17 of the EU's 27 member states pressed for targeted changes to the import provisions of the regulation. The Commission held the rules in place and issued non-binding guidance rather than amending them.

At a meeting of energy ministers, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Sweden were among those urging the Commission to weigh a three-year delay to the importer obligations.

The pressure comes with supply leverage attached. The U.S., now Europe's largest supplier of liquefied natural gas, has signaled its cargoes would go elsewhere if the bloc declines to soften the regulation, World Oil reported.

The regulation targets methane because the gas traps roughly 80 times more heat than CO2 over its first 20 years in the atmosphere.

Nearly 190,000 hectares of forest in Africa were converted to mines between 2001 and 2020, according to researchers at the universities of Cambridge and Sheffield.

The study found that each hectare cleared within a mine's immediate footprint drove an additional 34 hectares of forest loss, usually to build roads or new urban settlements serving the mine.

The effect runs deeper in DR Congo, which holds more than half of the world's cobalt used for lithium batteries in electric vehicles. There the multiplier reaches as high as 58 hectares of deforestation for every hectare lost to a mine.

Writing in The Conversation, the researchers said the minerals needed for climate technologies could speed up ecological collapse in biodiversity hotspots.

The Delaware River Basin's fracking ban held on Tuesday when a Republican-backed amendment to the Water Resources Development Act never reached a vote in committee, leaving the restriction intact for now, Inside Climate News reported.

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote the measure, which sought to remove the Delaware River Basin Commission's power to regulate hydraulic fracturing across the 330-mile watershed, according to Inside Climate News.

Inside Climate News reported that the commission found fracking in the basin risked contaminating water relied on by some 15 million people in the region for drinking, agriculture and industry.

Had it passed, the amendment would have reversed a prohibition formally in place since 2021 and observed informally since 2010, the year the commission first put it forward, Inside Climate News reported.

Perry has pushed the issue through legislation before. Inside Climate News reported that he introduced the DRILL Now Act in 2025 to bar the commission from enforcing rules tougher than those set by the state applying them.

Congress created the commission by statute in 1961, according to Inside Climate News.

Industry voices have backed the repeal effort. Marcellus Shale Coalition President Jim Welty, whose group represents natural gas interests, told Inside Climate News the ban "has done irreparable harm to many landowners, and it is past time for Congress to remedy this injustice".

Organizers plan to announce USD 60 billion in commercial agreements between US companies and the Iraqi government and private businesses at a US Chamber of Commerce summit Friday, according to Semafor. The summit will feature Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Semafor reported that energy will dominate the agreements, spanning oil and gas, energy infrastructure, and power generation.

Steve Lutes, the US Chamber's vice president for Middle East Affairs, told Semafor the deal count surpasses what the Chamber had hoped for in terms of the number of deals.

Summit sponsors include GE Vernova, BP, Excelerate Energy, ExxonMobil, and Shell, according to Semafor.

Trump argued Iraq has tremendous potential because of its oil and said there are going to be a lot of deals, according to Semafor. He also suggested the US no longer needs a military footprint in the country, saying the relationship should instead center on economic partnership.

India has ordered ship owners, ship managers and recruitment agencies to stop deploying Indian seafarers on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz after an upsurge in attacks, according to Rigzone.

The Directorate General of Shipping said in a post on X late Wednesday that there should be no deployment of Indian crew on vessels transiting the waterway until further orders.

The directive affects a large share of the world's merchant crews. There are more than 310,000 Indian seafarers on merchant ships, making India the second-largest supplier of sailors, according to an estimate from BIMCO and the International Chamber of Shipping cited by Rigzone.

The order faces immediate doubts over its reach. Manoj Yadav, general secretary of the Forward Seamen's Union of India, said it can't be enforced because most ships are foreign-owned and foreign-flagged and India has no jurisdiction.

The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to global markets and used to carry about a fifth of daily global oil supply in peacetime, according to Rigzone.

India's move follows a similar step by the Philippines, which asked agencies to stop sending its nationals to the Persian Gulf and later eased that restriction, according to Rigzone.