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Brent crude trade at $80.56 a barrel, may hit $100 year end—Traders
Brent crude oil price rose to $80.56 and major oil trading houses are predicting the return of $100 crude for the first time since 2014 as OPEC and its allies struggle to compensate for U.S. sanctions on Iran’s exports. With Brent crude already jumping to an almost four-year high, that’s exactly the kind of price surge President Donald Trump has been seeking to prevent by pressuring the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to raise production. Yet the cartel and its allies gave mixed signals at a meeting in Algiers on Sunday, ultimately showing little sign they would heed U.S. demands to rapidly push down crude prices.
OPEC’s reticence, combined with signs of accelerating supply losses from Iran, created a bullish mood the annual gathering of the Asian oil industry, traders, refiners and bankers in Singapore. “The market does not have the supply response for a potential disappearance of 2 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter,” Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. co-founder Daniel Jaeggi said in a speech at the S&P Global Platts Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference, knows as APPEC. “In my view, that makes it conceivable to see a price spike north of $100 a barrel.” When Trump in May announced plans to reimpose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, the market estimated a cut of about 300,000 to 700,000 barrels a day, said Trafigura Group co-head of oil trading Ben Luckock. However, the consensus has now moved to as much as 1.5 million barrels daily as the U.S. is “incredibly serious” about its measures, he said. Iran’s production “is going to be significantly less than it was, and probably lower than most people expected when the sanctions were announced,” Luckock said at the APPEC event. He sees $90 oil by Christmas and $100 in early 2019.
Brent crude, the benchmark for more than half the world’s oil, rose 2.5 per cent to $80.56 a barrel at in London, after earlier jumping to the highest level since November 2014. OPEC isn’t just grappling with U.S. sanctions cutting Iranian supply. Output in Venezuela is also slumping due to an economic crisis. The biggest source of new global supply, U.S. shale, is also experiencing growing pains as pipeline bottlenecks and workforce issues hamper growth. For all these urgent supply pressures, the world’s largest oil producers adopted a sit-back-and-wait approach at their meeting in the Algerian capital on Sunday. Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates insisted they had the spare capacity to satisfy the market’s needs, but wouldn’t tap it preemptively.
“Our plan is to meet demand,” said Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih. “The reason Saudi Arabia didn’t increase more is because all of our customers are receiving all of the barrels they want.” The kingdom does expect to pump more in September and increase again in October, he said, without pledging specific volumes. Major oil companies took some solace from OPEC’s assurances. While the group didn’t take action on Sunday, it seems set on making sure the market doesn’t get too carried away, said Mark Quartermain, Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s vice president for global crude oil trading and supply. Oil at $100 may not be sustainable in the longer-term because demand may be threatened by the U.S.-China trade war and supply, especially from the U.S., was seen sufficient in the next 12 months, said Janet Kong, BP Plc’s head of trading in Asia.
Francisco Blanch, head of commodities research at Bank of America Corp., said in a note to clients on Monday that signals from OPEC mean “the likelihood of an oil spike and crash scenario akin to the one observed in 2008 has increased.” A decade ago, Brent crude surged to nearly $150 a barrel, only to crash just months later as high fuel prices and the global financial crisis triggered a slump in demand. This time, the deepening trade war between the U.S. and China threatens economic growth in Asia and turmoil in emerging countries could amplify the impact of higher prices on global demand growth. Bank of America’s main scenario is for oil prices next year of around $80 a barrel, according to the note. Citigroup Inc. sees crude at that level in the fourth quarter, but sees risks that it will go higher. “Balances are precarious and the lack of spare capacity could see crude pricing well above $90 or even $100, should all of the potential risk in the market materialize,” analysts including Ed Morse said in the note.
A new technology transfer agreement between the Nigeria–China Strategic Partnership (NCSP) and the Presidential Implementation Committee on Technology Transfer (PICTT) is expected to open more job opportunities, improve local skills, and expand access to advanced technology for ordinary Nigerians.
In a press statement reaching Vanguard on Friday, the MoU aims to strengthen industrial development, support local content, and create clearer pathways for Nigerians to benefit from China’s growing investments in the country.
PICTT Chairman, Dr Dahiru Mohammed, said the partnership will immediately begin coordinated programmes that support local participation in infrastructure and industrial projects.
Special Adviser to the President on Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr John Uwajumogu, said the deal will help attract high value investments that can stimulate job creation and strengthen Nigeria’s economy.
NCSP Head of International Relations, Ms Judy Melifonwu, highlighted that Nigerians stand to gain from expanded STEM scholarships, technical training, access to modern technology, and collaboration across key sectors including steel, agriculture, automobile parks, and cultural industries.
The NCSP Director-General reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to measurable results, noting that the partnership with PICTT will prioritise initiatives that deliver direct national impact.
The MoU signals a new phase of Nigeria–China cooperation focused on practical delivery, local content, and opportunities that improve everyday livelihoods.
EU regulators launched an antitrust investigation into Meta Platforms on Thursday over its rollout of artificial intelligence features in its WhatsApp messenger that would block rivals, hardening Europe’s already tough stance on Big Tech. The move, reported earlier by Reuters and the Financial Times, is the latest action by European Union regulators against large technology firms such as Amazon and Alphabet’s Google as the bloc seeks to balance support for the sector with efforts to curb its expanding influence.
Europe’s tough stance – a marked contrast to more lenient U.S. regulation – has sparked an industry pushback, particularly by U.S. tech titans, and led to criticism from the administration of U. S. President Donald Trump. The European Commission said that the investigation will look into Meta’s new policy that would limit other AI providers’ access to WhatsApp, a potential boost for its own Meta AI system integrated into the platform earlier this year.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said the move was to prevent dominant firms from “abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors”. She added interim measures could be imposed to block Meta’s new WhatsApp AI policy rollout. “AI markets are booming in Europe and beyond,” she said. This is why we are investigating if Meta’s new policy might be illegal under competition rules, and whether we should act quickly to prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space.”
A WhatsApp spokesperson called the claims “baseless”, adding that the emergence of chatbots on its platforms had put a “strain on our systems that they were not designed to support”, a reference to AI systems from other providers. “Still, the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems.” The EU was the first in the world to establish a comprehensive legal framework for AI, setting out guardrails for AI systems and rules for certain high-risk applications in the AI Act.
Meta AI, a chatbot and virtual assistant, has been built into WhatsApp’s interface across European markets since March. The Commission said a new policy fully applicable from January 15, 2026, may block competing AI providers from reaching customers via the platform. Ribera said the probe came on the back of complaints from small AI developers about the WhatsApp policy. The Interaction Company of California, which has developed AI assistant Poke.com, has taken its grievance to the EU competition enforcer. Spanish AI startup Luzia has also talked to the Commission, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Marvin von Hagen, co-founder and CEO of The Interaction Company of California, said if Meta was allowed to roll out its new policy, “millions of European consumers will be deprived of the possibility of enjoying new and innovative AI assistants”. Meta also risks a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules.
Italy’s antitrust watchdog opened a parallel investigation in July into allegations that Meta leveraged its market power by integrating an AI tool into WhatsApp, expanding the probe in November to examine whether Meta further abused its dominance by blocking rival AI chatbots from the messaging platform. The antitrust probe is a more traditional means of investigation than the EU’s Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s landmark legislation currently used to scrutinize Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud services for potential curbs. Reuters
The spouses and children of billionaires inherited more wealth in 2025 than in any previous year since reporting began in 2015, according to UBS’s Billionaire Ambitions Report published on Thursday. In the 12 months to April, 91 people became billionaires through inheritance, collectively receiving $298 billion, up more than a third from 2024, the Swiss bank said. “These heirs are proof of a multi-year wealth transfer that’s intensifying,” UBS executive Benjamin Cavalli said.
The report is based on a survey of some of UBS’s super-rich clients and a database that tracks the wealth of billionaires across 47 markets in all world regions. At least $5.9 trillion will be inherited by billionaire children over the next 15 years, the bank calculates.
Most of this inheritance growth is set to take place in the United States, with India, France, Germany and Switzerland next on the list, UBS estimated. However, billionaires are highly mobile, especially younger ones, which could change that picture, it added. The search for a better quality of life, geopolitical concerns and tax considerations are driving decisions to relocate, according to the report.
In Switzerland, where $206 billion will be inherited over the next 15 years according to the bank, voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected 50 per cent tax on inherited fortunes of $62 million or more, after critics said it could trigger an exodus of wealthy people.
Switzerland, the UAE, the U.S. and Singapore are among billionaires’ preferred destinations, UBS’s Cavalli said. “In Switzerland, Sunday’s vote may have helped to increase the country’s appeal again,” he said. Reuters
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