The world’s biggest oil tanker has begun a 12,400-mile voyage to a fuel-storage zone in Asia, the latest movement of a vessel that’s intrigued the shipping market and fuel traders for months. More than 1,200 feet long, 16 years old, and able to hold roughly a day of France’s and Britain’s combined oil consumption, Oceania will arrive at Sungai Linggi in Malaysia at the end of September, according to recent signals from the vessel. Its depth in the water and previous movements indicate the so-called ultra-large crude carrier, owned by Antwerp-based Euronav NV, has cargo on board.

A flurry of coverage about the gloom and outright calamity in the shale oil business appeared last week. Low prices continue to dog the industry. But so does lack of investor interest in financing loss-making operations for yet another season. Plunging stock prices portend more bankruptcies if circumstances don't change.

Oil prices have struggled for direction over the past week, torn between the two key fundamental forces—weakening global oil demand growth and uncertainties over supply. So have hedge funds and other money managers whose speculative positioning in the oil market has seen little overall change in the net position since June, despite weekly fluctuations in buying or selling in the six month important petroleum futures contracts.

Australia is on track to surpass Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter, according to Australia’s Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science (DIIS). Australia already surpasses Qatar in LNG export capacity and exported more LNG than Qatar in November 2018 and April 2019. Within the next year, as Australia’s newly commissioned projects ramp up and operate at full capacity, EIA expects Australia to consistently export more LNG than Qatar.

Iran will restructure its budget in a way that should reduce the country’s dependence on oil revenues to zero, a senior government official told Mehr news agency. “Given the difficult times of sanctions, we will be losing a considerable amount of budget resources; therefore, it is necessary to make sure that the reforms in the budget structure for the next year will be able to cut down direct dependency on oil revenues to zero,” Mohammad-Bagher Nobakht, the head of Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization, said.

Silicon has been to the solar power industry—not to mention the IT industry—what oil has been for the car industry: an essential element without which there would not have been an industry. Yet now there are challengers to the material that may turn out to be more efficient and one day replace it.

Oil prices have given up some of the gains from last week’s oil tanker attack in the Gulf of Oman, with recession fears outweighing geopolitical tension and the risk of supply outages. “The response of oil prices to the latest escalation in the Middle East has been comparatively subdued given that 30% of global oil shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz and only a small proportion of this total could be rerouted through pipelines in the event of a conflict,” Commerzbank wrote in a note.

Two recent explosions at hydrogen fueling stations may have soured the fuel’s reputation, but there is increasingly optimistic sentiment for it, with two reports last week claiming it will have an important role to play in the energy mix of tomorrow. One of these, led by the UK Institution of Engineering and Technology, said hydrogen could come to replace natural gas as a fuel for heating in the country.