Friday, 11 September 2026

Brent crude closed out its strongest week since July, with escalating Middle East hostilities and fresh threats aimed at Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure keeping supply risk in the price, World Oil reported.

Riyadh took its East-West oil pipeline offline as a precaution, a move that put the vulnerability of alternative export routes into question, according to World Oil. Saudi output slid again last month to its weakest since 1990, the kingdom said, with regional disruptions continuing.

The benchmark gave back 2.8% on Friday, having hit a four-month high days earlier. Year to date, Brent holds a gain of more than 70% as the Iran conflict keeps disrupting regional energy flows. Prices still sit under the April wartime peak of just above USD 126 per barrel.

UK Maritime Trade Operations logged a report of two vessels hit by unidentified projectiles west of Khasab, Oman, on Thursday.

The IEA expects global oil demand to record its steepest annual drop since the Covid-19 pandemic, World Oil reported.

Invenergy and HA Sustainable Infrastructure Capital (HASI) have formed a strategic equity partnership covering solar, storage, and wind projects, according to Solar Builder.

The portfolio holds ten projects spread across seven states and totals 2.7 GW of electrical power, Solar Builder reported.

Invenergy, a project developer and independent power producer, will keep control and majority ownership of the projects and lead day-to-day operations at each one, according to the same report.

Latvenergo, Latvia's state-owned utility, is evaluating the purchase of up to 250 MW of wind or hybrid power projects in the Baltics, according to pv magazine.

The utility's approved Baltic renewable portfolio stood at 1,144 MW in the first half of 2026, split between 937 MW newly built and 207 MW under construction, pv magazine reported. Its medium-term strategy sets a target of 600 MW of new wind and solar by 2026.

The largest single asset delivered so far is the 265 MW Aizpute solar park in Latvia, which Latvenergo completed in 2025 and which started generating electricity by the first quarter of 2026, per pv magazine. On the wind side, the company bought the 124 MW Telšiai wind farm in Lithuania from developer Utilitas Wind in May 2024.

Battery capacity is advancing in parallel. Seven storage projects totaling 233.4 MW and 551.2 MWh were under development as of the end of June, pv magazine reported. That pipeline follows a plan announced in February 2025 to install 250 MW/500 MWh of storage by 2030 at existing hydro and combined-heat-and-power sites.

The same month, the Baltic states cut their connection to the Russian-controlled electricity grid and synchronized with the Continental European grid, according to pv magazine.