Goldman Sachs expects Brent crude to moderate as Middle East supplies recover, in a forecast first reported on October 12 and recirculated in Nigerian and Indian business press over the weekend. The bank raised its December 2026 forecast to 90 dollars a barrel from 85 dollars, kept its 2027 average at 80 dollars, and expects the global market to move into surplus in the fourth quarter of 2026 and remain in surplus in 2027. It estimated that Persian Gulf oil exports had recovered to around their 2025 average by late September, including approximately four million barrels a day of so called dark exports on tankers with transponders switched off, while global oil demand in the third quarter fell by 3.3 million barrels a day year on year, with much of the decline in China, the Middle East and developed Asian economies. The bank expects about 80 percent of that demand shortfall to be recovered by the fourth quarter of 2027.
The European Commission’s energy directorate published a renewables stocktake on Monday putting the share of renewable energy in EU consumption at 26.2 percent in 2025, up from 12.5 percent in 2010, against a legally binding target of at least 42.5 percent by 2030 and an aspiration of 45 percent. The feature focuses on community benefit mechanics: projects supported by Ireland’s Renewable Electricity Support Scheme must contribute at least 2 euros per megawatt hour to community benefit funds, and developers in Greece must pass 40 percent of a special levy to electricity consumers living near installations. The Commission published a public inclusion toolbox in July 2026 to support national authorities in involving communities earlier in project planning. Separately, the International Energy Agency said its Electricity Security Advisory Board convened in Paris to address power system challenges, a one line agency notice in the feed pool with no further detail published.
Egypt is shifting towards fuel oil to power electricity plants rather than natural gas, an official source in the petroleum sector told Egypt Independent, as global gas prices reached approximately 28 dollars per million British thermal units. Fuel oil currently accounts for 10 percent of the fuel mix used to operate the plants. Former Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation vice chairman Medhat Youssef put the cost of fuel oil at approximately 16.10 dollars per million British thermal units against about 30 dollars for natural gas including transport, a difference of approximately 50 percent, and gas demand has fallen by nearly 14 percent compared with the summer season. He called for importing crude oil and refining it domestically rather than importing finished fuel oil at a higher cost.
The New York Times published an investigation on Monday into how illegal gold enters the global market, under the headline “How a Trillion-Dollar Industry Launders Illegal Gold,” with a companion piece reporting that regulators have not been looking for criminal and child exploitation in gold mines, with Madagascar among the cases examined. The full text could not be opened for this edition, so the investigation is flagged here on its headline and not summarised further. In copper, Bloomberg reported that a Trump backer is betting on Armenia copper as the United States expands its regional sway, and that Ivanhoe Electric is in talks to sell Arizona copper amid data centre demand; both items are carried on their headlines in the feed pool and are flagged for the mining beat’s fuller treatment. China’s third quarter growth of 4.5 percent, published today on the rates beat, is the demand side context for the industrial complex in this edition’s dashboard.