AI weapons are the way of the future; A moratorium is not going to change that. We must lead, not follow and not be put at risk.
From an energy analyst’s viewpoint, energy is a big component of meeting these needs. We have learned from the recent diesel-fuel crisis that short-sighted energy policies—closing refineries, shrinking capacity, and treating so-called climate change as a bigger threat than it actually is—have done a lot of damage to the poor and the middle class.
Keep this in mind: here in the United States, because of technology and partly because of the coming artificial intelligence boom, official poverty fell to 10.2 percent in 2025, the lowest rate on record, with 34.5 million people in poverty and a record median household income of $87,460. That is absolutely amazing. The reason poverty is at the lowest level is because of capitalism. All you people pushing this socialist agenda and talking about unfairness: there has never been a socialist country on earth that has a lower poverty level than the United States when you consider the size of the country on a per-capita basis.
Today energy prices are trying to get back under control. President Trump has a huge decision to make when it comes to Iran. In other words, is President Trump ready to give the knockout blow to the Iranian regime? We know militarily the Iranians cannot compete with the U.S. military. They can only use terrorist acts, and they are trying to ramp up attacks in the Strait of Hormuz just to remain relevant. Plenty of people speculate they are trying to keep the war going until the midterms, with the hope and prayer that they can get some of these leftist Democrats in power who sort of support them over the United States.
If we look at the numbers this week, workarounds on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline are supposed to bring about half of that capacity back online sooner than expected, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright saying should be flowing again in a matter of days. At the same time they did warn customers in Europe that they would not be getting any of that oil this month. Oil prices have cooled a little bit— is back around the high $90s to low $100s after trading above $107 earlier in the week, and WTI is in the mid-to-high $90s. Going into the weekend there is going to be a lot of nervousness about what comes next.
The Federal Reserve just raised rates a quarter point to a 3.75 to 4 percent target range, the first hike in years, and that is really a sign that the economy has been pretty resilient and able to withstand this energy shock. There has been a lot of talk about so-called demand destruction. We have seen demand moderate in China by about 2 percent. Here in the U.S. it is relatively flat. When we talk about real demand destruction we talk about businesses going out of business because they cannot afford fuel. I know we are seeing some real pain at some companies—I do not want to dismiss that—but as a whole we are not seeing the type of demand destruction we saw during the oil-price spikes of the 1970s.
Nobody likes paying these record-high prices for diesel. U.S. retail diesel has been running above $5.50 and has already printed all-time highs near $5.85 to $6 a gallon, and it hurts everybody. At the same time, if there was ever a time in America when the economy was able to absorb this price shock, this is it. I am not just saying that because businesses so far have been largely unaffected. This recent spike has not been fully priced into every market, and we are going to have to see how businesses react to these high prices. We have to see if we see bankruptcies declared or airlines get shut down. Keeping our fingers crossed, we are hopeful that if we can see the price of oil moderate, we are not going to see the bad impact.
remains locked in a very tight range as shoulder season arrives and we come to the official close of summer. October natural gas is hovering near $2.85 this morning after Thursday’s $2.901 settlement — a classic late-September grind with cooling demand fading and heating demand not yet in the picture.
Celsius Energy notes that with yesterday’s EIA-reported nat-gas storage injection, the to-date build stands at +1,437 Bcf. That has dropped just below 2023’s +1,439 Bcf and now stands as the third-smallest to-date injection in the last five years. Next up: 2021 at +1,298 Bcf. With 2021 seeing large injections the rest of its season, it is possible the current season can improve to the second-smallest to-date build by mid-October.
The latest print for the week ended September 11 was a +44 Bcf injection, lifting working gas to 3,298 Bcf. That was a modest build for this time of year and one reason the market could not hold the four-day bounce. Surplus versus the five-year average is still there, but it is no longer growing the way the bears wanted. Production remains robust, LNG feedgas is the swing factor, and the tape is waiting for weather to pick a side.
The National Hurricane Center is tracking a small area of low pressure a few hundred miles east of Bermuda (Invest 98-L), but development odds have been cut to about 10% over the next several days as the system drifts west over the subtropical Atlantic. This has been a historically late season for a first hurricane, with El Niño helping keep the basin suppressed. For gas, that means less storm-driven demand destruction risk in the Gulf and less of a weather premium in the prompt contract.
Bottom line: range-bound gas until either a real cold shot shows up in the 6- to 10-day or storage starts to look tighter into October. Until then, this is a weather market in name only.
