Texas Energy Report NewsClips archives May 2026

Texas Energy Report NewsClips

Friday May 1, 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 rose on Friday as efforts to resolve the Iran war remained at an impasse, with Tehran ‌still blocking the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. Navy blocking exports ‌of Iranian crude.

West Texas Intermediate futures rose 37 cents, or 0.4%, to $105.44.

Brent crude futures for July were up 89 cents, or 0.8%, at $111.29 a barrel by ​0808 GMT.

The Brent benchmark was poised for a 5.7% gain over the week while WTI was on track to finish the week up 11.7%. Brent’s June contract hit $126.41 a barrel before its expiry on ‌Thursday, marking the highest level ⁠since March 2022.

Oil prices have been on the rise since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February, resulting ⁠in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and disruption of shipments of about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

A ceasefire has been in ​place since ​April 8, but on Thursday evening Iranian ​Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said ‌it was unreasonable to expect quick results from U.S. talks, the official IRNA news agency reported.

 

Top Stories

 

Texas Monthly – April 30, 2026

He Was One of the Texas GOP’s Biggest Donors. Where Did He Go?*

These were once the months of Farris Wilks, the time when the far-right billionaire’s fortune would shape Texas GOP primaries. Since 2015, when Wilks, his brother, and their wives made a record-breaking $15 million donation to a super PAC supporting Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, the fracking tycoon has injected a mountain of cash into Republican groups and primary candidates, working with Midland oil billionaire Tim Dunn to steadily pull the state and national GOP toward their hard-line religious and political views.

But this cycle, Wilks has been all but missing. The longtime Republican kingmaker appears to have given just one large donation. And while it is possible that he has continued to cut checks to untraceable, dark-money groups, numerous sources have said that Wilks has largely pulled back from politics following a private break with Dunn. Why might one of the state’s most prolific donors have stepped away from his movement at the ostensible height of its power?  Neither Dunn nor Wilks have responded to interview requests or publicly discussed the status of their relationship. But those close to them point to fallout from a white supremacist–related scandal from 2024 that they say frayed the billionaires’ already distant relationship, and may have added to mounting familial pressure on Wilks to curtail his political activity. Regardless of the cause, the result is a seismic shift for a state that he once bent to his will.

…Then in October 2023, while still working at The Texas Tribune, I staked out a secretive meeting in Tarrant County between Nick Fuentes, the prominent anti-Semite and white supremacist, and Dunn and Wilks operatives. Among those present was Jonathan Stickland, the rabble-rousing leader of Defend Texas Liberty, the billionaires’ main political action committee. The confab prompted serious backlash: Most of the House Republican caucus called for the Texas GOP to sever ties with the billionaires. After I reported that several other white supremacists were working for their operation, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced he would reinvest the $3 million he had recently received from the billionaires into pro-Israel bonds; after months of debate, the Texas GOP’s executive committee eventually passed a resolution that explicitly barred neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and anti-Semites from the party. Perhaps just as consequentially, Stickland was removed as president of Defend Texas Liberty….

But over the next few months, there was a slow trickle of signs suggesting behind-the-scenes acrimony. That June, the network was again thrust into controversy after one of its main groups, Tarrant County–based True Texas Project, announced plans to hold a pro–Christian nationalism conference that had ties to extremists and included a panel on combatting “a war on white America.”

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World Oil – April 30, 2026

SM Energy closes $950 million South Texas asset sale

SM Energy Company has completed the sale of certain South Texas assets for $950 million, advancing the company’s broader portfolio repositioning strategy. The transaction delivers approximately $900 million in net proceeds and represents a major step toward SM Energy’s goal of exceeding $1 billion in asset divestitures. The company said the move is aimed at strengthening its balance sheet and optimizing its asset base.

“The closing of our South Texas asset sale marks decisive progress on our 2026 strategic priorities,” said CEO Beth McDonald, noting the company’s focus on improving its capital structure. While specific details of the divested properties were not disclosed, the sale reflects a continued shift by U.S. operators to streamline portfolios and focus capital on higher-return assets.

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Houston Chronicle – April 30, 2026

This Texas billionaire’s nuclear-powered data center company faces collapse: Chris Tomlinson*

Fermi is Neugebauer’s second startup where investors rebelled as the company crashed. As Fermi’s largest shareholder, Neugebauer is trying to cash out after its stock price fell 81% since it was listed in October on the NASDAQ and valued at $12.5 billion. Critics say Neugebauer is at best a bad manager and accuse him of misleading investors. Neugebauer and Fermi executives did not respond through multiple avenues to multiple requests for comment. But in a press release, Neugebauer expressed his belief that “Fermi is creating the most efficient and effective solution for the AI energy crisis” and “continues to be aligned with what is in the best interest of all shareholders.”

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CNBC – April 30, 2026

Trump signs order authorizing Bridger’s Canada-Wyoming crude pipeline

U.S. President ‌Donald ​Trump on Thursday ​signed an order ​authorizing a proposed project to transport Canadian oil across the border as part of an effort to revive parts of the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline. South Bow, the Canadian pipeline company behind the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline, is partnering with U.S. company Bridger Pipeline on the proposed project. South Bow is considering reviving some of the already built line in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Bridger Pipeline is pursuing construction of a potential 1,038-kilometre pipeline beginning near the U.S.-Canada border in Phillips County, Mont., and transiting to Guernsey, Wyo. As Trump signed the order, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told the president, “This is a trans-border pipeline similar to the old Keystone XL pipeline.”

 

The Latest TERse Tips

The national average price for regular gasoline stood at $4.23 per gallon Wednesday, based on data from AAA, the highest price since July 2022

Ukrainian forces on May 1 reportedly launched yet another attack on the Tuapse oil refinery in southern Russia’s Krasnodar Krai, where fires have been blazing for days amid a series of devastating strikes — the reported strike marks the fourth attack against the facility in the past two weeks. Ukraine previously confirmed attacks on Tuapse on April 16, 20, and 28. Following the third attack, a state of emergency was declared in the municipal district — Kyiv Independent

Russia has emerged as the main supplier of oil to Syria, Reuters reporting shows, despite the new government’s alignment with the West and widespread distrust of Moscow over its military support for fallen leader Bashar al-Assad — Reuters*

Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Josh Riley (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday introduced a bill aimed at addressing rising utility costs, adding to a growing list of proposals meant to tackle affordability as party members home in on an energy message heading into this year’s midterm elections — the “Lowering Utility Bills Act.” would close what critics call loopholes allowing for-profit utilities to claim higher returns on investment than they are owed, according to a summary of the bill — E&E News By Politico*

INEOS Acetyls and Sandpiper Chemicals, LLC today announced the formation of a strategic collaboration in support of Sandpiper’s low carbon methanol production facility in Texas City, and INEOS will become a shareholder and an anchor customer of Sandpiper — Fuel Cell Works

The Trump administration has released more than $421 Million dollars to states, tribes and territories on April 23 to support the Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program — NPR

NuScale Power Corporation, the industry-leading provider of proprietary and innovative advanced small modular reactor nuclear technology, Wednesday announced that it has opened a new office space at CityCentre in Houston — see the press release

Iran said on Thursday it would respond with “long and painful strikes” on U.S. positions if Washington renewed attacks, and also reasserted its ​control over the Strait of Hormuz, complicating U.S. plans for a coalition to reopen the waterway — Reuters*

Russian oil facilities in Perm and Orsk struck as Ukraine’s drones follow up Tuapse attacks — Kyiv Independent

The Economist supposes that the Strait of Hormuz could be closed “indefinitely” — The Economist*

The Trump administration on Tuesday ratcheted up economic pressure on Iran, warning financial institutions not to allow independent Chinese refineries to buy Iranian oil and cracking down on Iran’s “shadow” banking sector — The New York Times*

 

Oil & Gas Texas

 

Oil Price – April 30, 2026

Valero Swings to Profit on Strong Refining Margins in Q1

Related: Global conflict, Venezuela oil boost Valero’s bottom line in the first quarter — San Antonio Express-News*

Related: Valero is running its 13 refineries in the United States and Britain at up to 95% of their combined total throughput capacity of ​3 million barrels per day (bpd) — Reuters*

Valero Energy Corporation posted a strong turnaround in first-quarter 2026 earnings, as robust refining margins and improved operational performance lifted the U.S. downstream giant back into profitability. The company reported net income of $1.3 billion, or $4.22 per share, compared with a net loss of $595 million a year earlier, when results were weighed down by impairment charges tied to its California refining assets.

The earnings rebound was led by Valero’s core refining business, where operating income surged to $1.8 billion from a loss of $530 million a year earlier. Throughput volumes averaged 2.9 million barrels per day, underscoring the company’s ability to capitalize on favorable margin conditions despite broader commodity market volatility.

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Midland Reporter-Telegram – April 30, 2026

Oncor moving quickly to expand West Texas power supplies*

Long before Permian Basin energy companies began electrifying their operations, and long before data centers and bitcoin miners began eyeing the area, Oncor, the state’s largest energy delivery company, was aware of surging demand in West Texas. Jared Gurley, senior manager of transmission planning at Oncor, told attendees at the Permian Basin Environmental Regulatory Seminar that two years before Winter Storm Uri sent the state into a deep freeze that almost collapsed the electric grid and resulted in a flurry of legislation, Oncor had been studying demand in the area.

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Edge (Malaysia) – April 30, 026

US seeks to loan up to 92.5 million barrels from Strategic Petroleum Reserve

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Texas Tribune – April 30, 3036

High gas prices eating into Texans’ budgets, fueling inflation

The large signs outside of gas stations across Texas intended to catch drivers’ eyes are lately doing so for all the wrong reasons. At a Valero gas station in Edinburg, Reynaldo Zarazoa, who installs tile for a living and has to haul tools and equipment around in his gray GMC pickup, watched Thursday as the display on the gas pump reached $78 — nearly a fifth of his weekly income. “My work is cheap and the gas is expensive,” said Zarazoa, a father of two living in Peñitas, a small city in the Rio Grande Valley. “But I have to drive every day, every day for work.”

The price of fuel has risen significantly since the U.S.-Israel war on Iran began on Feb. 28, closing a key international shipping lane for oil and gas, the Strait of Hormuz. The average price for a gallon of gas in Texas was $2.55 in early February, according to AAA. It had risen to $3.78 on Wednesday morning. Texans who rely on cars to get around are bearing the cost of the war at the gas pump, and high diesel prices are fueling rising inflation in other sectors of the economy.

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Substack – April 28, 2026

The Crude Life Vault: Texas Railroad Commission Weighs Historic Production Cuts Amid Oil Crisis

In 2020, Bruce Bullock, Director of the McGuire Energy Institute at SMU’s Cox School of Business, joined The Crude Life to recap the Texas Railroad Commission’s proceedings on crashing oil prices. Bullock, who monitored most of the day’s hearings, noted a noticeable shift in momentum as the meeting progressed. “I came into it thinking there was maybe a 25% chance the Railroad Commission would act,” Bullock said. “By the end of the day, I’d put the odds closer to 50-50 that they will take a serious look at this by the end of the week.”

The discussion centered on whether the RRC should exercise its long-dormant regulatory authority — last widely used before 1970 — to prorate (limit) oil production across Texas to help stabilize crashing oil prices. Proponents argued that voluntary cuts by producers and even OPEC+ would be too slow, while a regulatory action could remove barrels from the market as early as May 1.

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My RGV – April 27, 2026

New ‘drought-proof’ desalination plant planned on South Padre Island

World class, transformational, drought proof. On Thursday, officials from Cameron and Hidalgo counties together with representatives of US Desalination LLC and IDE Technologies hailed a partnership between the latter two companies that will see the construction of a $1 billion desalination plant on South Padre Island. The companies formed RGV-Desal LLC, described in a news release as a joint venture to design, develop and finance the plant with private funds.

The plant is planned to produce around 50 million gallons per day using seawater from the Gulf of Mexico, and will be designed to serve the entire Rio Grande Valley. A rendering on the RGV-Desal website, however, shows the facility being capable of producing 100 MGD.

 

Oil & Gas National & International

 

Oil Price – April 30, 2026

Tankers Move from Fuel to Crude Trade as War Upends Flows

The war in Iran and the closed Strait of Hormuz are accelerating a major shift in the oil tanker market, in which smaller tankers carrying fuels are becoming crude carriers amid better economics as crude buyers scramble for supply that’s not trapped behind the Strait. As many as 68 so-called long range-2 (LR2) clean tankers that have transported fuels such as diesel and gasoline have become the so-called dirty tankers and started shipping crude so far this year, per data by ship-tracking platform Signal Ocean compiled by Bloomberg.

The phenomenon is not new, but the crisis in the Middle East has accelerated this move from clean to dirty tankers as switching to crude carriers has become more profitable. To compare, in all of 2025, a total of 49 tankers moved from clean to dirty trade, according to the data.

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The Wall Street Journal – April 30, 2026

These Oil Giants Had Written Off Venezuela. Now They Are Taking a Second Look.*

Rising above the din of voices in the lobby of the J.W. Marriott in Caracas is an unusual sound: Spanish spoken with a Texas twang. Engineers, lawyers and other emissaries of the U.S. oil industry have flocked to the heavily guarded hotel to pitch their Venezuelan counterparts on plans to revive the country’s rundown oil fields. Dozens have met with a receptive Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s acting president. One small Texas operator was recently heard boasting that his company is nimble enough to get oil flowing faster than the oil giants. Even Exxon Mobil , ConocoPhillips and other oil companies that just months ago deemed Venezuela too risky for business have come back to town for a second look.

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Politico – April 28, 2026

The oil market’s jawboner-in-chief

Donald Trump may have discovered a new solution to bring down energy prices — using the White House megaphone to sow uncertainty in the oil market. Oil analysts are agog as to why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has resulted in a historically steep cut in traffic out of one of the world’s crude supply centers but has so far failed to meet their worst-case scenario when it comes to prices. U.S. oil at $100 a barrel certainly isn’t nothing — in fact, it’s more than $30 higher than the day before the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran that caused the Strait to close down — but it’s still nowhere near the forecasts of $150 or $200 oil that some analyst shops predicted.

What’s causing the relatively sanguine market? Oil traders are chalking it up at least partially to a relatively new role that’s emerged in the White House: the Oil Market Jawboner-in-Chief. Or more specifically, Trump’s creation of an “uncertainty discount,” the converse of the usual “uncertainty premium” that a fog of war can add to prices. Kevin Book, head of ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm, recently used the phrase to describe Trump’s ability to fire off messages on Truth Social that make oil traders think the war against Iran may be winding down on any given day. The result is that oil prices haven’t risen as high as a Hormuz closure might warrant, even with the war in its second month with no peace deal in sight.

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The New York Times – April 28, 2026

The World Needs Natural Gas Now, but the U.S. Is Exporting All It Can*

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off a significant source of liquefied natural gas, but the United States, the biggest exporter of the fuel, is unlikely to pick up that slack because it has no spare capacity. A two-month pause on L.N.G. shipments from Qatar, a Persian Gulf country near the strait, has caused prices to surge across Europe and Asia. That is spreading significant economic pain because places like Italy, Taiwan and South Korea depend on the fuel to produce electricity, heat homes and run industrial plants.

This is the second time in less than five years that global natural gas markets have been severely disrupted. In 2022, Russia began choking off the piped gas it used to send to European countries around the time of its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. companies went to Europe’s rescue and are expected to bring new L.N.G. capacity online in the coming months and years. But analysts said those efforts would not nearly be sufficient to make up for the loss of Qatari gas if the strait did not reopen soon, forcing importers to ration and turn to other sources of energy.

“All of the L.N.G. that is exported from the U.S., it’s at full capacity,” said Massimo Di Odoardo, vice president of gas and L.N.G. research at Wood MacKenzie, an energy research firm. Since the war in Iran began on Feb. 28, prices for L.N.G. shipped to Europe and Asia have climbed to as much as six times the price of natural gas in the United States. In the months before the war, they were less than four times as high.

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PBS – April 15, 2026

The Iran war created a global natural gas shortage — a windfall for U.S. companies

The recent market disruptions have been good for the U.S. LNG business, says Ira Joseph, international natural gas expert at Columbia University. He notes that U.S. producers have been buying natural gas to make the LNG they export at around $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu)—that’s the unit LNG is priced in. But, because of the war, in recent weeks those companies have been able to sell that LNG for around $20 per MMBtu in Asia and Europe.

“So that spread provides a huge influx of cash for all of these companies,” Joseph says. Natural gas prices in Asia and Europe are lower than they’ve been in recent weeks, but they still are much higher than when the war began. This windfall in profits is giving U.S. LNG companies momentum, Joseph says. “It certainly is good for them when they go to the banks and say, ‘We would like to expand.'”

 

Utilities, Electricity & Renewables

 

Texas Tribune – April 30, 2026

Proposed Fort Bliss data center could use more power than all of El Paso

The U.S. Army is proposing developing a gargantuan, 3-gigawatt data center complex on Fort Bliss property that within a few years would consume more electricity than all of El Paso Electric’s 460,000 customers combined — even as questions about its development, water usage and air pollution remain unanswered.

If built, it would be the third major data center project in the El Paso region, along with Meta Platform’s $10 billion facility in Northeast and the $165 billion Project Jupiter campus that Oracle and OpenAI are building in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The combined scale and size of the three facilities could quickly transform the Borderland into one of the nation’s core hubs of power generation and AI infrastructure. The publicly-traded investment firm Carlyle Group would pay to build and operate the Fort Bliss data center — one of several planned in a national rollout under President Donald Trump’s administration to rapidly increase artificial intelligence technology for the Department of Defense.

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Renewable Energy World – April 29, 2026

New Texas solar panel recycling facility could process up to 600,000 solar panels per year

Clean Earth, a provider of environmental and regulated waste management services, announced the launch of full solar panel recycling services at its Lancaster, Texas facility following approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The permit authorizes the site to receive and recycle solar panels alongside its “enhanced” electronic waste recycling operations. The Lancaster facility has served as a key hub for Clean Earth’s e-waste recycling operations, and the new TCEQ authorization now extends those capabilities to include end-of-life solar panel management. Clean Earth, a division of Enviri Corporation, is headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and operates a network of 93 locations across the United States.

At full capacity, the Lancaster facility can process approximately 600,000 solar panels per year, equivalent to 20 million pounds of material from sources including damaged panels at delivery, construction waste during installation, balance-of-system waste, and end-of-life panels at decommissioning, Clean Earth claims. The company applies material assessment, waste profiling, and regulatory insight to determine the outcome for each panel and component, providing recycling and reuse options based on material composition and applicable regulatory requirements.

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X (Twitter) – April 29, 2026

You cannot buy a new gas turbine until 2030: Gaurab Chakrabarti 

You cannot buy a new gas turbine until 2030. Order books at GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi stretch to 2029. Turbine prices have nearly tripled since 2019. Every AI data center needs power and every gas plant needs a turbine. And every turbine has one part that bottlenecks the entire industry: The blade. It has to survive in gas 500°C above the melting point of the metal it’s made from and spin at up to 20,000 RPM under 10,000 g of centrifugal force. Each blade is grown as a single crystal of nickel superalloy, pulled through a vacuum furnace at 3 mm per minute. A set of blades costs $600,000 and takes 90 weeks to grow. The same metallurgy powers modern jet engines.

Only 3 companies on Earth can build one. China spent $42 billion trying to catch up. They bought a Russian fighter engine, took it apart, and copied every part. Their copy ran 30 hours between overhauls versus 400 for the original. Modern Western engines run 4,000. You can reverse engineer the shape of a turbine blade. You cannot reverse engineer 60 years of metallurgy.

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Utility Dive – April 30, 2026

Meta deal adds to Entergy’s $57B, 4-year capital plan

A Louisiana data center deal reached in March between Entergy and Meta calls for $15 billion in capital investment and accounts for a significant bump in the utility company’s four-year spending plan. With the Meta deal, Entergy is planning capital expenditures of $57 billion over the next four years, including $27 billion for new generation, the utility company said in its first quarter earnings presentation Wednesday. Rapidly growing power demand, including from hyperscale data centers and other large customers, is driving the need for new resources.

Entergy operates five vertically-integrated utilities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Its 2026-2029 capital plan is more than 30% higher than what the company announced three months ago in its full-year 2025 earnings report.

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Real Clear Energy – April 29, 2026

It’s Time for Texas to Get Competitive on Transmission Development: Barry Smitherman

…Thanks to customer choice and competition, electricity consumers in the ERCOT region of Texas have saved millions of dollars over the past 25 years. Yet one critical segment of the Texas electric market remains untouched by competition: the local transmission and distribution utilities (TDUs). These incumbents operate as a “Soviet-like” monopoly. When new transmission lines are needed, incumbent TDUs are automatically awarded the projects in their service territories with no competitive bidding. They recover all costs plus a healthy return on invested capital. A 2019 law reinforced this monopoly by restricting new transmission ownership and construction to companies that already own and operate transmission lines in Texas.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down this law, noting the absurdity with a pointed analogy: “Imagine if Texas—a state that prides itself on promoting free enterprise—passed a law saying that only those with existing oil wells in the state could drill new wells. It would be hard to believe.” The U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump’s first term supported the court’s ruling. Nevertheless, the status quo persists: only existing transmission owners get to build new lines.

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Austin Chronicle – April 30, 2026

How Data Centers Are Eating Up Rural Texas

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Utility Dive – April 29, 2026

MISO capacity prices fall as new supply outpaces demand growth

Outside of the winter season, capacity prices plunged across the Midcontinent Independent System Operator in its just-held Planning Resource Auction as new power supplies outpaced demand growth, MISO said in a report released Tuesday. Capacity prices fell sharply in the summer season — from $666.50/MW-day in all regions to $424.30/MW-day in MISO’s North and Central regions, $384.10/MW-day in Arkansas and Mississippi and $412.10/MW-day in Louisiana and Texas.

Annualized capacity prices across MISO’s 10 zones fell to a range of $116/MW-day to $126/MW-day for its 2026-27 Planning Year from a range of $212/MW-day to $217/MW-day a year ago, according to the grid operator.

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Utility Dive – April 30, 2026

At 106 GW, gas-fired generation leads PJM’s newly reopened interconnection queue

More than 800 generating projects totaling 220 GW have entered the PJM Interconnection’s reformed interconnection process, the grid operator said Wednesday. Projects entering the interconnection queue include 106 GW of gas-fired generation, 67 GW of storage, 18 GW of nuclear, 15 GW of solar, 9 GW solar-storage hybrid and 5 GW of wind, according to PJM.

Under its new interconnection study process, PJM expects to complete its reviews of the projects in one to two years, depending on the project. PJM will use an AI-enabled tool developed by Google’s Tapestry to help review the applications more quickly and efficiently, the grid operator said. PJM effectively closed its interconnection queue in 2022 so it could study backlogged projects. In the meantime, it shifted to a cluster-study process that imposes tougher financial and other standards on applicants in an effort to reduce speculative projects that have little chance of being built.

 

Regulatory

 

The New York Times – April 27, 2026

60 Countries to Meet on Phasing Out Fossil Fuels but Are Excluding the U.S.*

Ministers from nearly 60 countries are gathering this week in the Colombian city of Santa Marta for what is being called the first global conference on phasing out fossil fuels.The United States was not invited. The summit is taking place against the backdrop of the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, which has set off a global energy crisis. Shortages and price spikes have led governments to ration fuel, shorten workweeks and limit travel.

For some countries, the volatility of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas is transported, has prompted a reconsideration of their reliance on imported fossil fuels. But while for some that could mean more investment in renewable energy, for others it could result in a rush for more domestic energy reserves, like coal.

“The convergence obviously comes at a complicated time because the world is in the middle of the biggest energy crisis in history,” said Carlos Pascual, senior vice president and head of international affairs at S&P Global, a research firm.