3-25-26

Texas Energy Report NewsClips

Wednesday March 25, 2026

Asterisk (*) denotes news stories that may be inaccessible because portions are behind a paywall

 

Good morning! Here are today’s Texas Energy Report NewsClips

Oil prices fell on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington and Tehran are “in negotiations right now” and indicated Iran is keen to reach a peace agreement, despite the Islamic Republic denying any direct talks with the U.S.

West Texas Intermediate futures were also down 3.22% at $89.39 per barrel.

International benchmark Brent crude futures declined 3.83% to $100.5 per barrel.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said he had pulled back from his earlier threat to launch strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure “based on the fact we’re negotiating.”

“They’re talking to us, and they’re talking sense,” Trump said when asked to elaborate on the shift.

Later Tuesday, The New York Times reported, citing two unnamed officials, that the U.S. had sent Iran a 15-point proposal aimed at ending the war.

 

Top Stories

 

The Wall Street Journal – March 24, 2026

The Oil Supply Crunch Is Spreading From the Gulf to the Rest of the World*

For a glimpse of how much higher energy prices could still soar, look beyond the prices Wall Street analysts normally track for West Texas Intermediate in the U.S. and Brent in Europe. At the center of the supply squeeze in the Middle East, traders are paying an eye-watering $160 a barrel for the Emirati oil that can dodge the Strait of Hormuz, far above those global benchmarks. Those sky-high prices, traders say, are a harbinger of where the rest of the market could be heading if the Persian Gulf isn’t reopened soon. That is because Asian customers are scouring the world for similar varieties of crude to keep churning out diesel and jet fuel.

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Reuters – March 24, 2026

China is mapping the ocean floor as it prepares for submarine warfare with the U.S.*

China is conducting a vast undersea mapping and monitoring operation across the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans, building detailed knowledge of marine conditions that naval experts say would be crucial for waging submarine warfare against the United States and its allies. In one example, the Dong Fang Hong 3, a research vessel operated by Ocean University of China, spent 2024 and 2025 sailing back and forth in the seas near Taiwan and the U.S. stronghold of Guam, and around strategic stretches of the Indian Ocean, ship-tracking data reviewed by Reuters shows. In October 2024, it checked on a set of powerful Chinese ocean sensors capable of identifying undersea objects near Japan, according to Ocean University, and visited the same area again last May. And in March 2025, it criss-crossed the waters between Sri Lanka and Indonesia, covering approaches to the Malacca Strait, a critical chokepoint for maritime commerce.

According to the university, the ship was carrying out mud surveys and climate research. But a scientific paper co-written by Ocean University academics shows it has also conducted extensive deep-sea mapping. Naval-warfare experts and U.S. Navy officials say the type of deep-sea data being collected by the Dong Fang Hong 3 – via mapping and placement of sensors in the ocean – is giving China a picture of the subsea conditions it would need to deploy its submarines more effectively and hunt down those of its adversaries.

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Yahoo! News – March 24, 2026

Chevron’s CEO says oil prices are still too low—and the effects of the Strait of Hormuz closure are not ‘fully priced in’

Related: US-Iran war damaged global oil markets more than Russia-Ukraine war, Chevron CEO says — Politico

Oil and natural gas futures prices—despite trading 60% higher since before the Iran war—remain well below the physical supply shortages facing Asia and spreading around the world that will take many months to replenish, the chairman and CEO of Chevron said March 23.

The large CERAWeek by S&P Global conference is attracting many of the world’s energy leaders from around the world in Houston this week and a top theme is the potential disconnect between energy markets and the greatest global energy supply shock ever with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which typically funnels nearly 20% of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas each day.

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Bloomberg – March 24, 2026

Chevron Warns California Risks Fuel Crisis Unless Iran War Eases*

Chevron Corp. is warning that California is careening toward an energy crisis because of the Iran war and that the company may quit refining oil in the state unless officials roll back taxes and regulations. California, the most populous US state, is highly exposed to the disruption rippling across commodity markets because it imports about 20% of its refined fuels from Asia. Now shipments from China, South Korea, Singapore and elsewhere are at risk of slowing significantly as Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, leaving Asian nations struggling to meet their own demand at home. Chevron’s oil refining head Andy Walz said the potential for fuel shortages in California is his “worst fear.”

“We have refineries in Asia that are having to cut crude, and so they’re going to make less products,” Walz said in an interview Tuesday. “What if San Francisco doesn’t have the jet fuel it needs? Or Los Angeles? Or maybe gasoline?” California is disconnected from the US fuel-making centers of Texas and Louisiana, essentially making it an energy island. That’s compounded by multiple refinery closures in recent years due to increased costs driven by regulations designed to fight climate change and cap oil industry profits.

As a result, California consumers are more exposed than most other Americans to surging energy prices because of the Iran war. They already pay nearly $6 for a gallon of gasoline, compared with a national average of close to $4. It’s a growing political problem for Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is expected to run for president in 2028. “California has decided that they’re going to rely on imports,” Walz said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “It’s a dangerous game.”

 

The Latest TERse Tips

HSBC analyst Kim Fustier raised the firm’s price target on Exxon Mobil to $158 from $135 and keeps a Hold rating on the shares — Tipranks

Dow is announcing prices increases for chemicals used in plastics — Green Chemical Industries

Iran’s Houthi Allies Lie in Wait on Another Key Oil Route: the Red Sea — The Wall Street Journal*

Ukraine hits major Russian oil port near Finland — the satellite images appeared to show fires and smoke rising from several cylindrical fuel tanks at the site, and appear to be as far north as Ukraine has ever attacked — Euractiv

Berkshire Hathaway has disclosed in a 13F SEC filing that it purchased 8,091,570 shares of Chevron during Q4 2025 — the purchase brought Berkshire’s total Chevron stake to approximately 130 million shares, one of Berkshire’s top five holdings — Motley Fool

Texas judge issues restraining order against utility district involved with Islamic development — Fox 14

Baker Hughes Company Monday announced that it has been selected by ST LNG, LLC to supply critical gas compression, power generation equipment, and project development support for the latter’s proposed 8.4 million tonnes per annum liquefied natural gas export terminal offshore of Matagorda — RTT News

Higher tax refunds are likely to be swallowed up by surging gas prices, economists say — KFOX

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman calls it ‘treason’: $580 million in suspicious oil futures traded minutes before Trump’s Iran reversal — Fortune

Former uranium site in Ohio to house 10-gigawatt data center — Associated Press/CBS News

Tesla Powerwall, the home energy storage system designed to provide backup power and improve energy efficiency, will be installed across all 50 states by partner Charge Home Solutions, a nationwide platform connecting homeowners with licensed electricians — see the press release

 

Oil & Gas Texas

 

S&P Global Platts – March 24, 2026

CERAWEEK: Technology to be integral part of shale development in US

Technology will continue to play a pivotal role in the US’ multibillion-dollar shale plays, as operators focus on increasing efficiencies and lowering well-drilling and completion costs — rather than adding new barrels — even as output starts to plateau, operators said late March 24. “If you look back at history, even in the Permian Basin, drilling and completion efficiencies have been 50% across the industry in the last five years,” Nick Olds, executive vice president for the Lower 48 states at ConocoPhillips, said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston.

ConocoPhillips has achieved some 15% efficiency improvements in 2024 and 2025, with “more feet/day and more stages/day” and drilling longer laterals, Olds said. As a rule of thumb, longer laterals — along with multi-stage fracking — significantly increase recoveries of tight shale resources, with multiple producers in the Permian Basin in southern Texas drilling over 4-mile laterals, operators said.

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S&P Global Platts – March 24, 2026

CERAWEEK: Williams to use modular gas units in early data center power projects

Midstream company Williams sees modularization of smaller natural gas-fired power generating units as a solution to the reliability and speed requirements of data centers, its head of power innovation, Jaclyn Presnal, said March 24. Williams announced Feb. 10 a 6 gigawatt backlog of its ‘power innovation’ projects for data centers by the early 2030s, in addition to the roughly 1.4 GW of capacity already under development.

“That 6GW is what we think we can reasonably achieve between now and the early 2030s,” Presnal said in an interview on the sidelines of CERAWeek by S&P Global Energy conference in Houston. The initial power innovation projects in development will use small open-cycle turbines to ensure speed to market and reliability. “We have multiple generation units that are all tied together from an electrical infrastructure perspective, and that’s what’s able to deliver the full load of the plant,” Presnal said.

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KHOU – March 24, 2026

Could gas hit $8 a gallon? What Houston’s biggest energy conference is saying about Iran

KHOU 11 energy expert Ed Hirs agreed that Iran needed to be neutralized, but cautioned that the ripple effects on global energy infrastructure could last far longer than many expect. “The damage that’s been done to energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, that’s long lasting,” Hirs said. Hirs warned that American consumers could face a painful reality at the gas pump. “If the market continues to get tight, we could see $8 a gallon gasoline across America. It’s already at that level in California,” he said.

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Reuters – March 24, 2026

Valero shuts Texas refinery after explosion, sources say*

Related: Fluid release ignited blast, fire at Valero refinery, filing shows — Reuters*

Valero Energy Corp has ​shut its 380,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) oil refinery in Port ‌Arthur, Texas, following an explosion and fire at a diesel hydrotreater unit, people familiar with the plant ​operations said on Monday. The fire has since ​been extinguished, and a shelter-in-place order lifted, ⁠according to the Southeast Texas Alerting Network. The ​cause of the explosion at the 47,000-bpd 243-diesel ​hydrotreater unit was not clear. The blast could be heard as far as 11 miles (18 km) away, the ​sources said.

In an emailed response to Reuters, ​Valero confirmed a fire in a unit at its Port Arthur ‌refinery ⁠and said all personnel had been accounted for…. Shutting the ⁠refinery was seen as necessary to contain the blaze and the refinery lost ​water supply and steam as firefighters worked ​to ⁠put it out, sources said.

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Bloomberg – March 20, 2026

Exxon Says Second Gas Pipeline in Guyana Would Cost $2 Billion

 

S&P Global Platts – March 17, 2026

Permian Resources Corp. Upgraded To ‘BBB-‘ On Increased Scale And Strong Credit Metrics

• Midland, Texas-based oil, gas, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) exploration and production (E&P) company Permian Resources Corp. continues to expand its scale and improve its operational performance while maintaining strong financial measures.
• Therefore, S&P Global Ratings raised its issuer credit rating on the company to ‘BBB-‘ from ‘BB+’ and the issue-level rating on its unsecured debt to ‘BBB-‘ from ‘BB+’.
• The stable outlook on Permian Resources reflects our expectation that its financial measures will continue improving as the company reduces debt, grows production in line with higher-rated peers, and maintains conservative financial policies. We expect funds from operations (FFO) to debt well above 60% over the next 24 months.

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Texas Tribune – March 24, 2026

After killing its desalination project, Corpus Christi explores buying water from a privately owned plant

Six months after scrapping their own seawater desalination plant project, Corpus Christi City Council voted Tuesday to consider an agreement with a private company to purchase water from its desalination plant to help stave off an impending water emergency. The council voted 7-1 to begin negotiations to acquire water from a desalination plant that’s under construction and owned by Corpus Christi Polymers, a plastic manufacturer. The plant will filter salt and other minerals out from seawater or salty groundwater to make it drinkable.

The city is in the grips of a historic drought and two of its main reservoirs have fallen to 8.4% capacity, sparking fears that the city within months may have to declare a water emergency — signaling that the city has just 180 days’ supply of water left. City manager Peter Zanoni has called desalination a drought-resistant, long-term solution to providing water to the 500,000 people across seven counties who depend on the water system.

 

Oil & Gas National & International

 

S&P Global Platts – March 24, 2026

CERAWEEK: Shell CEO warns road fuel crunch to follow jet squeeze over Hormuz blockade

Shell’s chief executive warned March 24 that tightening global jet fuel supplies could usher in a broader refined products supply crunch during peak summer driving season in the Northern Hemisphere if the Middle East crisis continues to hit oil flows. “Jet fuel is already being impacted. Diesel will be next to come after that will be gasoline,” Wael Sawan told the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “Of course, you’re moving into summer season, which is typically driving season in the northern hemisphere.”

Global jet fuel prices have been some of the hardest hit by almost a month of war in the Middle East, which has shut off roughly 14 million b/d of oil products and mostly medium sour crude, according to analysts at S&P Global Energy CERA. In Europe, jet cargo prices more than doubled to hit an all-time high on March 19, while US Gulf Coast prices hit a premium of 30 cent/gal on March 23, up from a 12 cent/gal discount on Feb 27.

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The Wall Street Journal –  March 22, 2026

$5 Diesel is Crushing Truckers. It Will Soon Be Felt Across the Economy.*

Long-haul trucker Miguel Caveda recently spent around $1,800 on diesel fuel during a week on the road, about 40% more than he typically paid before the Iran war began.  The sudden surge in diesel prices has eroded Caveda’s profit and upended his business in other ways, too. He has started searching out lighter hauls and avoiding hilly routes that guzzle fuel. He is also keenly aware that the steeper fuel costs will eventually trickle into the prices consumers pay for goods he is carrying—from tires to watermelon—assuming his business survives.

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CNBC – March 24, 2026

Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado calls for full privatization of oil industry

Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado called Tuesday for the full privatization of the South American nation’s oil industry in an address that laid out her vision to energy executives and investors. “The Venezuelan state will get out of the way and pave the way to give the conditions so that the oil and gas sector in Venezuela will go fully private,” Machado said at S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference in Houston, Texas.

Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was blocked in 2024 from running for president by the regime of former President Nicolás Maduro. She previously served in the National Assembly. Machado leads the opposition movement that seeks a transition to democracy and a market economy in Venezuela. The U.S. captured Maduro in a military raid in January, but has left the rest of the regime in place. The Trump administration has praised its cooperation with interim President Delcy Rodríguez, who served as vice president under Maduro.

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BBC – March 24, 2026

Philippines declares energy emergency over Iran conflict*

The New York Times – March 20, 2026

The U.S. Economy Is Insulated From High Oil Prices. Americans Aren’t.*

The defining narrative for the U.S. economy over the past several years has been one of remarkable resilience in the face of inflation, tariffs and all manner of uncertainty. For individual Americans, however, the same period has often been defined by frustration, insecurity and, in many cases, real hardship. The war with Iran looks set to repeat that pattern. The jump in oil prices to over $100 a barrel in recent weeks will push nearly every major economic variable in the wrong direction. Inflation will be faster. Growth will be slower. Unemployment will most likely be higher. If the war were to last longer than expected, or energy prices were to go higher — as they have in recent days — the damage would grow.

Still, unless the situation takes a significant turn for the worse, the impact will most likely be modest, measured in tenths of a percentage point of economic growth. Federal Reserve policymakers, at their first meeting since the war began, made only small adjustments to their economic forecasts for the year and left interest rates unchanged. In a news conference after this week’s meeting, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said it was too soon to predict how the war would affect the economy. But he noted that the economy had repeatedly exceeded expectations in recent years, including by defying the near-consensus view among forecasters that the Fed’s efforts to control inflation would lead to a recession.

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KWBU (NPR- Waco) – March 20, 2026

How the Iran war threatens global food supply

About a third of all fertilizer shipped globally goes through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Now, shipping traffic has been reduced to a trickle because of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and the prices of goods like oil, natural gas, and fertilizer have been rising. “Fertilizer prices are way up. They’re up around 30 percent more in some parts of the world, and that’s significant,” says Noah Gordon, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iran are big global producers of fertilizer, and they export the raw ingredients other countries use to make their own fertilizers, like natural gas and minerals.

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Associated Press – March 20, 2026

Iran war halts Qatar helium output, threatening global tech supply chains

Iran’s attack this week on Qatar’s natural gas export facility threatens to disrupt not just world energy markets but also global technology supply chains because the helium it produces is crucial for a range of advanced industries. Best known as the gas that makes party balloons float, helium is also a key input in chipmaking, space rockets and medical imaging.

Qatar supplies a third of the world’s helium, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but the nation had to halt production shortly after the war erupted three weeks ago. The latest Iranian strikes against the region’s energy producing infrastructure have added to supply worries, with Qatar’s state-owned gas company saying it would crimp helium exports by 14%.

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The New York Times – March 20, 2026

The Strait of Hormuz Was Supposed to Be Too Big to Fail*

The Strait of Hormuz is usually an idyllic place for a vacation. Expats stationed in Dubai travel by road to Musandam, the part of Oman that juts into the strait at its narrowest point. There they fish, snorkel in the turquoise waters and sleep on dhows. Mohamad el Khatib, who has organized tours to Musandam for 22 years, said that when the moon is not shining, it is “the best place to watch the stars.”

After all, for decades, the safety of the strait was considered more or less a sure thing, by everyone from vacationers to oil executives and gleaming, cosmopolitan Dubai. It was so strategically important to the world’s energy supply that the United States policed it for over 75 years. But when the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, tanker operators stopped sending their vessels through the strait. The halt has cut off a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply, causing oil and fuel prices to soar in what is turning into a global energy crisis.

 

Utilities, Electricity & Renewables

 

Houston Chronicle – March 24, 2026

Texas grid expansion splinters conservatives as data center backlash grows*

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Sierra Club – March 19, 2026

Texas Energy Policy Updates: ERCOT, PUCT, Data Centers, Transmission & Grid Reliability: Cyrus Reed, Sierra Club

Even as large loads consume space in the discussion, Texans are also facing gigantic transmission proposals to add Texas’s first 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines. Unlike some other states, Texas has never invested in such high voltage lines before. Last year, the PUCT approved an ERCOT proposal to build a series of high voltage transmission lines in response to legislation heavily supported by the oil and gas industry known as the Permian Basin Reliability Study.

As oil and gas has electrified their exploration and production, and as the population has also expanded their energy demand, bottlenecks in transmission have meant that generation is not reaching all areas of the state, including the Permian Basin. The PUCT approved plan would create three new 765 kV lines between east and west Texas as well as two more 765 lines in the future in the east (see map).

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Spectrum News – March 23, 2026

Amarillo data center project gets approval from environmental agency, despite community pushback

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) just gave the largest data center campus in the world the green light to move forward just outside of Amarillo. The nearly 6,000-acre campus has received pushback from the community, and the commission’s decision was met with disappointment from those against the project. The people of Amarillo have several reservations about Fermi America’s data center campus, called Project Matador, which include concerns about the air and water in that region. However, at the end of February, the TCEQ gave its final approval on America’s second-largest clean air permit.

Many Amarillo residents have opposed the project from the start. “It adds a whole other level of anxieties that I didn’t have a couple of years ago,” said Kendra Seawright, a longtime resident of Amarillo. “That wasn’t even on my radar.”

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Houston Chronicle – March 23, 2026

Texas could soon have more data centers than anywhere in the world: What residents should know*

Traditional data centers use about one to 20 megawatts of power to run the computer servers inside — roughly the amount used by a few thousand Texas homes on a hot summer day. AI data centers use much more power, from dozens of megawatts to more than 1,000 megawatts. At the upper end of that range, that’s as much power as large cities and even some states. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s main grid operator, forecasts peak electricity demand could jump 70% by 2031 as data center development increases — sparking concerns that the data center boom could lead to a higher risk of blackouts.

In an attempt to avoid grid issues, the Texas legislature passed a law that allows ERCOT to direct data centers to stop drawing power from the grid and use their own backup generators in times of strain. ERCOT’s CEO says this ensures that data centers won’t exacerbate grid emergencies. However, environmentalists note that many data centers rely on large diesel generators, which are noisy and highly polluting, for backup power. Those units could be an inconvenience or even a health hazard to nearby residents.

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Talk Business & Politics – March 20, 2026

Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. breaks ground on 850MW facility in Texas

The Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. (AECC) held a ceremonial groundbreaking for an 850-megawatt (MW) natural gas-based generation facility in Morris County, Texas, near Naples. Construction of the Naples Power Plant is scheduled to begin in summer 2026.

The plant is part of AECC’s plan to address wholesale generation needs. AECC plans to have the dispatchable generation resource in commercial operation by 2029. The two-turbine, simple cycle generation facility will encompass approximately 100 acres. The facility is located within the Southwest Power Pool regional transmission organization (RTO) footprint and will assist with reliability within the RTO.

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The Wall Street Journal – March 24, 2026

The Chinese Billionaire Who Says America’s EV Market Is Doomed Without Him*

NINGDE, China—Inside a headquarters shaped like a giant battery cell, the billionaire who runs the world’s largest battery company is confident the Americans will eventually come calling. Washington has spent the past few years ghosting Robin Zeng, China’s fourth-richest man. To the U.S. government, Chinese battery maker CATL is a geopolitical threat to be warded off with tariffs and national-security curbs. Yet CATL has grown to become the world’s largest electric-vehicle battery manufacturer thanks to its technology and low costs. It posted record profit of more than $10 billion last year, and an estimated one in three EVs sold around the world carries its batteries.

 

Regulatory

 

KIII – March 20, 2026

Governor Abbott’s office invokes disaster authority to fast-track Corpus Christi water permits

A letter from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality shows the state is taking extraordinary steps to accelerate emergency water access for Corpus Christi as reservoir levels continue to decline. 3NEWS obtained the letter, sent March 13, which directs regulators to suspend key permitting limits and procedures that would normally slow down emergency water approvals.