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We have been fearing the Apocalypse for 100 days due to the closure of Hormuz. The blow is going to be given to us by a heat wave in China

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At the end of February, the clocks in the financial markets seemed to stop. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was not a simple geopolitical skirmish; It meant amputating, from one day to the next, the main energy artery of the planet. Classical economics manuals dictated that the abrupt disappearance of 20% of the world’s crude oil would trigger industrial paralysis, widespread shortages and an imminent recession. However, more than one hundred days after the start of the blockade, Western economies are still standing and the barrel of crude oil, far from reaching the catastrophic 200 dollars that some investment funds even predicted, has been contained below the $100 barrier. We have survived what, on paper, is the greatest threat to energy security in history. The question that now resonates in the European chancelleries is unanimous: how have we achieved it and, above all, how long will the truce last? The architecture of an unexpected rescue The fact that the world has not collapsed is due to a complex network of counterweights that have absorbed the blow. The first revealing data it is provided by the agency Reuters: The production of OPEC countries has fallen this May to its lowest level since 2000 (16.13 million barrels per day) as a direct consequence of the siege of Iran. Despite this massive hole in supply, global supply has been reorganized in record time. The analyst Javier Blas unfolds in his column of Bloomberg the keys to this logistical miracle. The main lifeline, paradoxically, has arrived from Beijing. China has plunged its oil imports by ship to decade lows (nearly 40% less than last year’s average). According to Blas, this unexpected destruction of Asian demand has acted as a huge escape valve: “If Beijing were buying the same amount of oil as in the past, global inflation would be out of control.” Added to Chinese containment is a tectonic shift in energy hegemony. As documented Reutersthe United States has taken advantage of the chaos to become the largest oil exporter in the world, overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia by shipping nearly 10.5 million barrels per day in May. Furthermore, the Gulf countries have not sat idly by. The producers They are using a network of pipelines less known through Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that circumvent the Hormuz bottleneck, keeping some five million barrels a day alive, in addition to maintaining “hot” extraction infrastructures for an eventual rapid restart. The silent blow The fact that there are no kilometer-long lines at service stations has generated a false sense of immunity. Hormuz’s economic blow is landing, but it is doing so through the financial system. The war conflict has blown up the roadmap by Christine Lagarde and the European Central Bank (ECB), since the sustained rise in fuel prices has caused eurozone inflation to rise to 3.2% in May. Given the fear that this extra cost will permanently spread to the shopping basket, the ECB has been forced to resume raising interest rates this June, placing them at 2.25%. The true price of the Iran war is already being paid by European households and companies through more expensive mortgages and restricted credit. And the scenario continues to be a powder keg: the extreme volatility of the markets after the latest crossed attacks between the United States and Iran, which have kept Brent crude stressed above $95. The Asian thermometer: the great threat to Spain While the global macroeconomy deals with interest rates, at the local level a perfect storm is brewing for the Spanish consumer in the coming months. And the trigger will not be military, but climate. According to the forecasts of the consulting firm Tempos Energía, collected by Europa Pressthe price of electricity in Spain this summer will not depend on what happens in the Strait of Hormuz, but on the temperatures in Asia. Until now, Europe has been importing American liquefied natural gas (LNG) without much competition because China was not demanding it. However, the general director of Tempos Energía, Antonio Aceituno, warns of an imminent reversal: “When the heat arrives and the thermometer soars in Shanghai, American freighters will be divided between demand from Asia and Europe.” If the Asian market absorbs the supply to feed its air conditioning networks, Europe will be left without cheap alternatives to cover its own summer demand peaks, and with tanks at less than half capacity. The consulting firm’s forecast for Spain is severe: if China breaks into the purchasing market, the electricity bill for July and August could rise to the range of 88 to 95 euros per megawatt hour. This represents an increase of up to 40%, which “would be equivalent to paying double what was paid in 2019.” A truce with an expiration date We have managed to avoid the precipice thanks to the inertia of pre-war inventories, a historic deployment of emergency reserves and the forced reconfiguration of the global market. If diplomacy triumphs, Blas explains how the intact infrastructure of the Gulf would allow 50% of production to be recovered in a matter of days. However, trusting economic stability to an imminent diplomatic agreement is a dangerous game. Emergency reserves are not infinite and the capacity to cushion shocks has a limit. The world has shown astonishing resilience in surviving without its main oil route, but the armor is cracking. If the situation continues and summer demand tightens, the apocalypse that we avoided in spring could arrive in the form of unaffordable bills and an induced recession. The Hormuz bill, sooner or later, will have to be paid. Image | Unsplash 1 and 2 Xataka | Ukraine turned drones into hunters. A helicopter shot down in Hormuz has transformed them into a Spielberg film

Aragon’s great plan to fill its reservoirs with solar panels has just collapsed due to a bureaucratic oversight

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There is an image that sums up our times: reservoirs covered in solar panels floating like technological water lilies. It was the Government’s great bet to squeeze clean energy without consuming soil. However, that landscape has just collided head-on with the Supreme Court. According to the national climate roadmapBy 2030, Spain has to achieve a renewable penetration of 42% in final energy consumption and 74% in electricity generation. Swamp water, free of conflict over agricultural or forest land use, seemed the ideal setting. But the legislative rush has truncated the plan. The Supreme Court agrees with Aragón. The Fifth Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court has declared null Royal Decree 662/2024, of July 9. It has done so by upholding an appeal filed by the Autonomous Community of Aragon. The ruling annuls the regulations by operation of law and condemns the State to pay the procedural costs. The Aragonese regional executive had full legitimacy to appeal, since, as the court confirmed, the execution of this decree directly affected its powers in territorial planning, the environment, tourism and hydroelectric development. But what did it consist of? Published in the Official State Gazettethe objective of the text was to develop the regime to which the installation of these plants in state-managed reservoirs should be subject. The preamble of the standard strongly defended the technology, ensuring that these systems have better energy performance due to the cooling effect of water, reduce evaporation by casting shade, and slow down the growth of phytoplankton in waters at risk of eutrophication. To put order in this deployment, the Government articulated a strict system of temporary concessions that limited the exploitation of the plants to a maximum of 25 years, including extensions. The regulatory text also imposed space limits according to the ecological state of the waters. Likewise, the conditions required the promoters to provide a provisional bond of 4,000 euros per megawatt (MW) installed only for the application – which became up to 12,000 euros per MW to respond for damage to the public domain -, all conditional on the presentation of environmental studies, monitoring of invasive species and a continuous monitoring program to evaluate water quality. The legal stumbling block: legislating without asking. The central problem was not the content of the norm, but how it was approved. The Government omitted the process of prior public consultation with affected citizens and groups. This is a procedure that the ruling considers inexcusable, and its omission has been the nail in the coffin of the decree. The State tried to justify this legal shortcut in the courts with two arguments that the Supreme Court has dismantled. Firstly, the State Attorney’s Office alleged that there was an extraordinary situation of public interest due to the increase in energy prices due to the war in Ukraine. The High Court rejected this premise, recalling its own doctrine: to skip public consultation, it is not enough that there is urgency; the rule must also be of a purely organizational or budgetary nature, something that does not happen in this case. Secondly, the Government tried to rely on an “urgent processing” route. The response of the magistrates It was forceful.: “In this case, the aforementioned procedure cannot be dispensed with because there is no declaration of urgency nor was the procedure developed on that legal basis.” There was no agreement from the Council of Ministers that supported the rush; therefore, the shortcut was illegal. Why it matters: form, not substance. There is a crucial nuance that changes the reading of this news. The Supreme Court has not ruled that putting solar panels on water is a bad idea or that it is harmful. In fact, it rejected the rest of the complaints presented by Aragón, resolving that the text did not violate the principles of good regulation or legal certainty. We are facing what jurists call a formal procedural defect. The law falls only because the Government did not listen to the parties involved before acting. It is especially ironic that the Council of State itself I would have already warned to the Executive during the draft phase that this matter was going to need, in the medium term, a much more complete and systematic regulation. And now what? The renewable energy sector, which saw floating platforms as an unbeatable alternative to avoid the controversy over the consumption of agricultural land, is left in limbo. All the regulations of the decree disappear, including the modification of the Regulation of the Public Hydraulic Domain of 1986 that articulated these concessions. Meanwhile, in the affected territories, caution is already a reality. The Ebro Hydrographic Confederation, for example, had previously vetoed the installation of these floating plants in the Cinca swamps. The legal basis that allows these facilities continues to exist in the Water Law. What has fallen is the regulatory development, so the Government can go back to square one and draft a new regulation. But he will have to do it by scrupulously complying with the steps that he ignored this time. It has been shown that the rush in the energy transition has a high legal cost. The decree that was going to order solar panels on water has been shipwrecked. For not having listened before. Image | RawPixel Xataka | Europe throws away 16 billion a year in electronic waste. Spain has just turned on the first oven in Europe to recover them

Princeton had not monitored its students in exams for 133 years due to an “honor code.” AI just broke that pact

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For more than a century, Princeton has based its academic trust on an honor code, an oath its students signed not to cheat on exams. Even the teachers left the classroom. Nobody watched, because honor was enough guarantee. That model just disappearedand artificial intelligence is largely to blame. What has happened. Princeton faculty voted earlier this week to have all in-person exams proctored starting July 1. The measure throws away a policy that dates back to 1893, when students themselves asked to eliminate supervision in exams. With only one vote against, the decision ended up being practically unanimous, making it the most significant change to the university’s honor system in 133 years. Why now. Generative AI has radically transformed students’ ability to copy without detection. According to the proposal presented by Michael Gordin, dean of the faculty, tools such as ChatGPT They allow copying in a way that is almost impossible to identify with the naked eye, especially during an exam. If before cheating required some effort (finding someone who would let you cheat, taking a cheat sheet in the middle of the exam, etc.) now there are a thousand and one ways to do it digitally. Numbers. In one student newspaper survey Of more than 500 seniors, almost 30% admitted to having cheated on an exam or assignment during their time at Princeton. 44.6% claimed to have known people who had violated the code, without telling them. Only 0.4% filed complaints. The number of cases investigated by the Honor Committee reached 60 this year, and the president of that committee, Nadia Makuc, believe They are just the tip of the iceberg. Nobody says anything. Princeton’s honor system historically relied on students themselves denouncing their peers. That doesn’t work anymore. According to the approved proposal, the fear of being publicly pointed out on social networks or in anonymous applications such as Fizz (the campus social network) discourages any complaint. Additionally, the way the AI ​​works makes the traps much less visible to whoever is sitting next to you. There are no more little papers or little glances or those stories. What exactly changes. According to account the faculty newspaper, professors will be present in the classroom during exams, but not to actively intervene. Their role is as witnesses, referring any possible infractions to the student Honor Committee if they detect something. On the other hand, the code oath (“I promise on my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this exam”) remains. The difference is that now there will be someone watching. Trust. Professors such as David Bell or Anthony Grafton, from the Princeton History Department, have recognized that the change alters the relationship of trust with their students. The former dean of the faculty, Jill Dolan, counted to the student newspaper that “I think it’s a shame, but it’s necessary.” AI has forced a spiral that is difficult to break. And the more people believe that others copy, the more tempted people feel to do it. Christian Moriarty, professor of Ethics and Law at St. Petersburg College in Florida counted to the Wall Street Journal that “what is at stake is not just the soul of education, but the genuine development of critical thinking.” Further supervision. Princeton has more measures than proctors to supervise the work of its students. In the last year, the number of at-home exams has been reduced by more than two-thirds. Furthermore, according to they count at The Atlantic, the Economics department will introduce oral defenses of term papers. Other teachers have also started to require that essays be written in Google Docs, to be able to review the editing history and verify that the text has been written progressively. Cover image | Roxana Crusemire and Ben Mullins In Xataka | Some Chinese humanoid robots are already going to “school”: the mission is to teach them to work in real life

Europe feared an apocalypse due to Hormuz. A cocktail of batteries, rain and reactors is saving us in extremis

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The world seems to be burning from all sides and global logistics has gone into panic. We had been holding our breath for weeks before the Third Gulf War, the fear of a crisis identical to that of 2022 has materialized in tangible disasters: airlines like Lufthansa they had to cancel up to 20,000 flights for this summer due to the shortage and extreme rise in aviation fuel prices (jet fuel). However, in the midst of this oil cataclysm, something counterintuitive is happening that defies all predictions. As the expert Javier Blas sharply points out In his recent opinion column for Bloomberg“despite the oil shock due to the Iran war, Europe’s electricity markets are calm.” This is the great anomaly of 2026. Breaking down the phenomenon To understand the miracle, you must first understand the threat. In a normal scenario, the logistical shock that means that 20% of the entire planet’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz should have shredded European domestic economies. The contagion mechanism has a clear theoretical culprit: the marginalist system of the electricity market. In this model, the most expensive technology that comes in to cover demand (historically, gas) is the one that sets the final price of all electricity. Therefore, if the missiles in Qatar make global gas more expensive, the electricity bill in Madrid, Paris or Berlin should be through the roof. But surprisingly, this time the drive belt has broken. The invisible shield The backbone of this European resistance focuses on what energy analyst Javier Blas defines it as a miscalculation: many continue to look at the market “through a filter focused only on oil that belongs to a bygone era”, when today electricity is the true pulse of the economy. The current shielding is the result of a conjunction of factors that act as a providential recovery. First, the rescue in extremis of French nuclear energy. If in 2022 the French country had dozens of reactors stopped due to cracks and was operating at 30-year lows (less than 21 gigawatts), Today it is injecting between 45 and 55 GWproviding a vital energy base not only for France, but for its neighbors, including Germany. Added to this is the end of the drought. The heavy rains in southern Europe and normal rainfall in the rest of the continent has revived hydropower, the EU’s fourth largest source. But the real protagonist is someone else. Solar energy is breaking records, sinking short-term prices to negative levels on weekends in Germany, or to just 18 cents in Spain. In fact, the “fiscal shield” of the Spanish Government, together with the record deployment of 30 GW of solar and wind energy since 2022, have managed to sink the wholesale market to a low €41.5/MWh, allowing the regulated rate to drop by almost 5% year-on-year. The final piece of this puzzle is provided by a report from the IRENA agency: the miracle of batteries. Its cost has plummeted by 93% since 2010. Today, the combination of solar and wind farms with batteries is already capable of offering uninterrupted electricity at prices that compete head-on with Chinese coal or new global gas plants. The cracks in the shield. Despite this triumphalism, European armor is not titanium; It has significant cracks. Although Javier Blas emphasizes that the post-2022 investments in the electricity grid are bearing fruit, the system hangs by a thread every day when the clock strikes eight in the afternoon. Our “Spanish green shield” has a blind spot: the sunset. As the sun disappears, and as there is still no massive deployment of batteries nationwide, the gas combined cycles have to be turned on to sustain the network, returning tension to prices (with nighttime peaks that in March reached €247/MWh). Furthermore, experts agree that the hydroelectric mattress It will evaporate with the heat of the imminent summer. To this we must add that the French nuclear “miracle” hides some worrying fine print. France has broken its historical record by exporting 92.3 TWh, but it has done so, in part, because its internal consumption is stagnant and they continue to lag enormously behind in electrification. Worse still, in its eagerness to protect the profitability of its pharaonic atomic industry, the Elysée acts as a protective wall: it deliberately blocks interconnections with the Iberian Peninsula to prevent hyper-cheap Spanish solar energy from flooding Europe. Finally, structural problems plague the entire continent. According to platform data Earth40% of European transmission lines are more than 40 years old. They were designed for large fossil plants, not to integrate millions of solar rooftops. Without urgent modernization, the network could become our biggest Achilles heel. The new security doctrine. What this Third Gulf War makes clear is that the ecological transition has mutated. It is no longer a mere question of saving the planet; It is a matter of geopolitical survival. Renewables are being explicitly redefined as “weapons of energy security.” The figures speak for themselves: in the first weeks of the war in Iran alone, the European solar fleet saved more than 110 million euros per day in imported gas costs. This is why the European climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, insists in statements to Euronews that Europe must be “more radical”. This involves accelerating electrification using heat pumps and betting on deep geothermal energy, capable of replacing up to 42% of current fossil generation operating 24 hours a day. War as a catalyst. As Blaise’s central thesis concludesEurope is resisting what many call the worst energy shock in history with an electrical fortitude that was unthinkable four years ago. However, catalysts alone do not guarantee results. Inflation and interest rate increases derived from this same war threaten to make more expensive financing future clean infrastructure. It is clear that we have bought a valuable truce thanks to the rain, the efforts of French nuclear power and the sweat of solar panels. This crisis has impressed upon us a definitive lesson: always It will be infinitely … Read more

many are missing flights due to the queues it generates

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Ryanair has sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, demanding the suspension of the Entry/Exit System (EES) until September. The low cost argues that the new border control, in force since April 10, is generating queues of one to two hours in the middle of the tourist season, and that the summer is only going to worsen the problem. What is the EES? It is about the new control system automated border crossing of the European Union for non-EU travelers. It records biometric data (fingerprint, facial image) at each entry and exit of the Schengen area. Its implementation is especially sensitive for Spain due to the high volume of British tourists, whose country no longer belongs to the EU. This system was put into operation on April 10, at the start of the high season. The problem at airports. According to Ryanair, waits at passport controls already exceed between one and two hours at the airports of Malaga, Alicante, Lanzarote, Tenerife South, Gran Canaria, Reus and Fuerteventura. The airline attributes the delays to a lack of staff, system outages and the lack of enough kiosks to absorb traffic. In some cases passengers are already missing flights. “Governments across Europe are trying to implement a half-baked computer system in the middle of the busiest travel season of the year, and passengers are paying the price,” counted Neal McMahon, Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair. Criticism of the Spanish Government. Ryanair emphasizes that the Spanish authorities have known for more than three years the date of entry into force of the EES. Despite this, according to the airline, neither the staffing, nor the technical preparation of the system, nor the installation of sufficient infrastructure was guaranteed. The request also comes at a time of strong pressure on airports, since according to According to the Airlines Association (ALA), companies have scheduled nearly 260 million seats for this summer in Spain, 5.7% more than the previous year. Greece has already gone ahead. The country has already suspended the application of the EES until September to face the summer season without collapses at its airports. Ryanair points out that this option is contemplated in Regulation (EU) 2025/1534 and that Spain could do the same. The airline has sent the same claim to the governments of the other 28 countries integrated into the system. It’s not just Ryanair. The EES warning is not just coming from the Irish airline. Organizations such as ACI Europe, Airlines for Europe (A4E) and IATA have already warned the European Commission of technical problems, staff shortages and limitations in automated systems. In a joint letter, they warned of what they described as “a total disconnect between the perception that the system works and the reality of passengers,” according to collect The Economist. The president of ALA, Javier Gándara, also asked to apply the EES with flexibility to avoid “endless queues” or travelers missing their flights in the middle of the summer campaign. In Xataka | Ryanair decided to “punish” Spain by withdrawing seats in El Prat. Vueling and Wizz Air have caught a fish in troubled waters

We know that all things are in crisis due to the closure of Hormuz, but the aluminum thing is truly worrying

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The world economy has come face to face with a scenario that no one wanted to foresee. The global aluminum market is facing what analysts and experts already classify as a “black swan” event. The Third Gulf War has caused a drastic closure in shipping routes, triggering a supply crisis of historic proportions. An unprecedented crisis. “The magnitude of the supply crisis that we are seeing in the aluminum market is probably the largest single supply crisis that a base metals market has suffered in the post-2000 era,” Nick Snowdon, head of metals and mining research at the trading firm Mercuria, summarized it forcefully. in statements collected by the agency Reuters. And the numbers support the alarm: the Persian Gulf region has a smelting capacity of 7 million metric tons annually. That is, almost 9% of this year’s global supply is at the epicenter of a war conflict. A logistical bottleneck. The implications of this blockage go far beyond financial speculation, as aluminum is the backbone of vital industries such as transportation, construction and packaging. Natalie Scott-Gray, Senior Metals Demand Analyst in StoneXfocuses on logistical asphyxiation. According to the expert, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz does not have an easy solution, since “there are no other maritime routes that have a similar capacity.” This disruption, Scott-Gray explains, has the potential to eliminate up to 50% of the Middle East’s aluminum supply, equivalent to a direct 5% hit to global production. In Europe, the impact has already jumped from offices to factories. According to the specialized portal Miningconsumers in the construction and transportation sector are being squeezed. In Rotterdam, the physical premium (the extra cost paid above the market price to ensure delivery) for aluminum extrusion ingots has more than doubled since the start of the war, rising from $530 to $1,100 per metric ton. And the perfect storm arrives. The market has reacted with panic. According to data from Reutersfear of shortages triggered prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) to a four-year high, reaching $3,672 per ton in mid-April. Since the start of hostilities, the reference price has risen by 14%, how it complements Financial Times. What follows this crisis is an imminent structural deficit. Mercuria estimates that the market will face a minimum deficit of 2 million tons by the end of the year, an alarming figure if we consider that visible global inventories are barely around one and a half million tons. The West is particularly vulnerable. The United States imported almost 22% of its aluminum from the Middle East last year, while Europe relied on the region for 18.5% of its imports. Safety nets are failing: Emirates Global Aluminum (EGA) has been forced to declare status of “force majeure” in several European contracts after suffering an Iranian attack on its foundry in the United Arab Emirates. Simultaneously, Kubal, the only Swedish foundry (owned by the Russian Rusal), has mysteriously stopped its deliveries in Europefurther straining short-term availability. The “kings” of chaos. This aluminum shock does not occur in a vacuum; It is the symptom of a greater illness. Daniel Yergin, vice president of S&P Global, warned in Bloomberg that we are facing “the biggest energy disruption we have ever seen.” The impact transcends oil, affecting natural gas, fertilizers and metals. Aluminum production is extremely energy intensive, so rising fuel prices are driving up the costs of foundries around the world. However, in a troubled river, fishermen gain. While manufacturers suffer, the giants of commodity trading are making a move. He Financial Times reveals that the Swiss firm Mercuria has begun aggressive expansion, investing more than $3 billion in base metals. In a strategic shift, they have gone from simply financing shipments to purchasing real assets, acquiring 25% of an aluminum smelter in Indonesia. “We have both the appetite and the capacity to do more,” he assured the British newspaper Kostas Bintashead of metals at Mercuria, confirming that the company is firmly committed to this metal in the midst of the chaos. The clock is ticking. The current crisis has mutated, In the words of Yergin to Bloombergin a clash between two blockades: American economic pressure versus Tehran’s ability to “wage war on the world economy”. The paradox is that this energy and logistics bottleneck will end up accelerating the transition to electric vehicles and will force countries to redesign their energy security. But in the short term, reality is stubborn. As the analysis concludes ReutersMiddle Eastern aluminum simply cannot be replaced overnight. China, the world’s largest producer, has a strict legal annual production limit of 45 million tonnes, and neither the United States nor Europe have enough idle capacity they can turn on to salvage the situation. The “black swan” has landed, and the global industry will have to learn to survive in a scenario where aluminum, once abundant, has become a treasure caught in the crossfire. Image | Magnificent Xataka | Iran has pulled out a “trick” to sell to China while avoiding the US: turning the ocean into its secret gas station

Volotea begins to charge extra due to the rise in oil prices on its flights. 97% of passengers have agreed to pay it

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More and more airlines are already taking measures to contain the energy chaos that has arisen as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. Although many of them have chosen to cancel a good number of flightsothers have chosen to make their tickets more expensive. One of them has been Volotea. And the Spanish airline has launched a price adjustment policy linked at the cost of fuel which can make the ticket already purchased more expensive up to a week before flying. Crisis in the Middle East. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuzthrough which it passes about 40% of oil consumed by European airlines, has skyrocketed the price of fuel and forced the sector to look for ways to avoid absorbing the blow on their own. Volotea has been the first Spanish airline to transfer this cost to the passenger explicitly and with its own mechanism. What exactly has he done. Since March 16, Volotea has applied what it calls the Fair Travel Promise: seven days before the departure of each flight, the airline consults the market price of fuel in public sources and, if it has increased compared to the time of the reservation, charges the passenger a supplement of up to 14 euros per person per trip. According to they count From 20 Minutes, most surcharges are between 7 and 10 euros. And the adjustment can also work the other way around: if the price of fuel drops, the company returns the difference. What options does the passenger have? The traveler who receives the surcharge notice has a period of 48 hours to decide what to do. You can pay the supplement and continue with your plans, request a full refund of the ticket, or take advantage of the time offered by the airline to modify or cancel the reservation for free up to four hours before takeoff. The company ensures that its customers are aware of this policy before booking, since they must accept it at the time of purchase. The numbers that Volotea manages. According to data from the airline itself, 97% of affected passengers have chosen to pay and keep their trip. The company interprets that percentage as a sign that the measure “is aligned with customer expectations,” in its own words. In addition, it has canceled a small percentage of flights due to higher fuel prices, although it assures that it affects less than 1% of its total schedule. Countermeasures. Not all airlines are acting the same. According to Expansioncompanies such as Air France-KLM, Qantas or Cathay Pacific already apply fuel supplements, while IAG (the group that owns Iberia and British Airways) or Ryanair do not do so at the moment. Groups such as Lufthansa or Ryanair itself have asked the European Union to study a joint purchasing model for kerosene, similar to the one that was launched with gas after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why can it go further? If the Strait of Hormuz blockade is prolonged, pressure on fuel prices could intensify. The Airports Council International (ACI Europe) and Ryanair already have warned that the problem of cancellations in the industry could worsen if supply suffers. Spain has some margin thanks to its national refining capacity (almost 9.9 million tons of kerosene per year, according to share El Mundo), but it is not a structural solution. Volotea has moved in a different way, and now we wonder if more airlines will join this strategy. Cover image | Dylan Agbagni (Wikipedia) In Xataka | Airlines are becoming more imaginative to save costs: Lufthansa is going to clean economy class less

Many airlines are canceling flights due to the fuel crisis

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The conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran hits the air sector squarely. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has triggered a colossal energy crisis that the airlines have not seen coming, which has resulted in thousands of flights canceledrising rates and an uncertainty that, for the moment, has no expiration date. Start. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched coordinated attacks against Iran, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a sea lane through which about 20% of the world’s oil trade transits. According to Kevin Bookco-founder of the analytics firm Clearview Energy Partners, when analysts study what can go wrong in global oil markets, this is “the worst thing that can happen at any single point of failure,” he told NPR. Iran did not achieve this with a naval blockade, but with cheap drones. A few attacks in the vicinity of the strait were enough for insurers and shipping companies to decide that it was too risky to cross it. The result: The price of Brent exceeded $100 per barrel on March 8 for the first time in four years, reaching a high of $126. The impact in commercial aviation. The closure of airspace over the Middle East has caused complete chaos in global aviation. According to CNBC, more than 25,000 flights over the Middle East have been canceled since the attacks began, and the price of aviation fuel skyrocketed 58% in just days, reaching more than 170 euros per barrel. Who is canceling and how much. There is a flood of airlines that have canceled flights around the world. Among the main ones are: The Americans: United (5% of capacity); Delta, which already accounts losses of more than 400 million dollars for fuel; American and Southwest, which are also exposed without price coverage. “The price of fuel has more than doubled in the last three weeks. If prices remained at this level, it would mean an additional expenditure of $11 billion a year on fuel alone,” counted Scott Kirby, CEO of United. The Europeans:SAS, canceling about 1,000 flights in April; the entire Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, Brussels Airlines), KLM, Finnair, ITA Airways, Wizz Air and easyJet, whose CEO publicly warned that the situation in Europe could become seriously complicated starting in mid-May. “Although we try to absorb cost increases as much as possible, it is a shock that directly hits the sector,” counted SAS CEO Anko van der Werff. Asia-Pacific: Air New Zealand, about 1,100 flights until May (affecting about 44,000 passengers); Cathay Pacific, which have applied supplements of fuel to all its routes; Thai Airways, which already plans to raise rates between 10-15%; AirAsia; Qantas, with price increases and suspending departures on specific routes, and Vietnam Airlines. Where it hurts the most. The crisis does not hit everyone the same. Southeast Asia is especially exposed due to its dependence on supplies from the Gulf. According to Aerotime, China and Thailand have restricted exports of fuel, and the possibility of further calendar disruptions and other potential problems looms over the entire Asia-Pacific region. On the other hand, the situation in Sri Lanka is particularly extreme. And the country not only faces rising prices, but also a real shortage of foreign currency to pay for it, to the point of having declared Wednesdays holidays to reduce fuel consumption throughout the country. What’s coming A recent assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) concludes that Iran could maintain the closure of the strait for between one and six months. kirby warned in its memo that United is preparing for a scenario in which oil reaches $175 per barrel and does not drop below $100 until the end of 2027. If this scenario comes to pass, the wave of cancellations and rate increases that we are seeing now could be just the beginning. Cover image | David Syphers In Xataka | The Government’s plan against the fuel crisis: lower the VAT on gasoline and diesel to 10%

Asia is hoarding all the world’s LNG due to Hormuz panic

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In global energy markets, alarm bells do not always ring loudly; Sometimes all you have to do is watch where the boats are sailing. Right now, the canary in the mine of the looming crisis is the frenzy of Asian liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers. As the conflict in the Middle East escalates, Asia’s major powers are preparing for supply disruptions that could last months. The prolonged paralysis at the world’s largest export plant is stifling global supply and skyrocketing prices. As Dai Jiaquan explainschief economist at the CNPC Economics and Technology Research Institute, companies should prepare “contingency plans” for a two- to four-month disruption. Far from expecting a quick resolution to the attacks between the United States, Israel and Iran, Asia is sweeping up all available gas. The Qatar blackout and the buying fever. The origin of this panic has exact coordinates: the Strait of Hormuz. The trigger was an attack with Iranian drones that hit the strategic facilities of Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, forcing the state company QatarEnergy to cease production. The impact is massive: Qatar supplies 20% of the world’s LNG and, without Hormuz, there is no alternative route. According to the consulting firm AMEthis stoppage removes 1.5 million tons of gas from the global market every week. Added to this is an unprecedented logistical blockade with some 150 ships paralyzed in the area. Faced with this abyss, purchases have skyrocketed. According to BloombergTaiwan has already fully secured its supply for March and April, and is now actively purchasing to cover the month of May. Bangladesh managed to secure shipments for April and is already evaluating purchases from May onwards. For their part, Thailand and South Korea seek to ensure immediate deliveries, while in India, the company Gail India Ltd. barely managed to reserve a shipment in March after several failed attempts. Europe vs. Asia. What is coming is a direct trade war: Europe and Asia fighting for the same gas. According to Financial Timesthe contest is a chilling reminder of the crisis of 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To this battle, Europe arrives with its defenses low: its gas storages are barely 30% because companies did not fill them due to high future prices, a phenomenon known as backwardation. Furthermore, Spain, despite having regasification plants, cannot act as a total lifeline for the continent due to its lack of interconnections through the Pyrenees. Historically, Asia consumes more gas in summer due to air conditioners, creating a desperate urgency that is already reflected in prices. As explained BloombergLNG spot prices in Asia are around $18 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). This represents an 80% increase in price compared to pre-conflict levels, despite having fallen from a recent peak of $25. The Asian benchmark JKM index doubled to $24.80. In Europe, the reaction was one of panic: the TTF benchmark index jumped sharply from below 40 euros to almost 47.5 euros, marking an increase of 55% in recent days. In fact, it is projected that a 90-day closure in Hormuz would raise the TTF to €92/MWh. And this is where the alarms go off for the real economy, As the report explains Kpler, The profitability threshold for intensive European industry (chemicals, fertilizers or ceramics) is usually between €50 and €60/MWh. If prices stagnate there, we could see a new wave of factory closures and a resurgence of inflation. Change of course at sea. According to monitoring data collected by Bloombergat least nine shipments bound for Europe have been redirected to Asia since the fighting began. Atlantic ships like the Clean Mistraloriginally destined for Spain, or the BW Brusselswhich was going to France, have redirected their compasses towards the Pacific in the face of lucrative Asian offers. This maritime chaos is not exclusive to gas. In the oil sector, about 30 giant supertankers They crowd off the Saudi coast of Yanbu in the Red Sea to collect crude oil transported by land, in a desperate attempt to avoid the Iranian blockade. Vulnerabilities and “buffers”. Not all countries face this crisis with the same weapons. According to an analysis of A.M.E.Taiwan is the most exposed and vulnerable player: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates provided it with 35% of its imports in 2025, and after the closure of its nuclear park, it has almost no options to use other fuels. South Asia is also on the line. The report of Kpler highlights that Qatar and the Emirates account for 99% of Pakistan’s LNG imports, 72% of Bangladesh’s and 53% of India’s. However, powers such as China and Japan breathe a little easier. According to Vortexa analyst Ken Lee cited by oil priceBeijing and Tokyo’s exposure to Qatari LNG is just 6% and 5% of their gas mix, respectively. Furthermore, Japan has a good reserve inventory and the restart of its nuclear plants gives it a strategic “cushion.” Asia as a global buffer. In the end, the market will rebalance, but the pain will be uneven. Faced with the impossibility of paying stratospheric prices, very price-sensitive countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh will have to resort to demand destruction, industrial cuts or return to burning coal. According to AMEJapan and South Korea will seek to replace between 70% and 90% of Qatar’s lost volumes in the spot market, while China, confident in its inventories, will only seek to cover 50%. As pointed out KplerSouth Asia and its industry will operate as the “buffer” (shock absorb) of this crisis. By cutting their own consumption due to not being able to pay, they will leave gas available for the Asian and European giants, but at the cost of maintaining relentless upward pressure that will make the entire world’s energy bill more expensive in the coming months. Image | Photo by Chris Pagan on Unsplash Xataka | The $200 per barrel scenario: when geography suffocates the world economy

Russia set up a secret network to sell 90 billion in oil. It has fallen due to using the same mail server

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In the geopolitical chess of international sanctions, where Western governments design complex legislation to suffocate Vladimir Putin’s war machine, sometimes checkmate comes not from a brilliant diplomatic maneuver, but from corporate stinginess. An entire global smuggling network, designed to the millimeter to be invisible to the eyes of Washington and Brussels, has fallen like a house of cards for not wanting to pay separate email bills. A simple saving in computer infrastructure has exposed a monumental flow of black money. a colossal IT blunder (a huge computer error) has brought to light a smuggling network that has moved at least $90 billion worth of Russian oil. As revealed by extensive research of the Finance Timesthis plot is mainly responsible for financing the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine. The British media has identified a network of 48 companies which, on paper, operated completely independently from different physical addresses. However, in practice, they acted in unison to disguise the origin of the crude oil, especially that of Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. The need to hide these exports became life or death for the Kremlin in October 2025, when the United States imposed direct sanctions to Rosneft and Lukoil. From that moment on, a previously unknown company called Redwood Global Supply was suddenly crowned as the largest exporter of Russian crude oil in the world. This firm, along with the rest of the network, is linked to a group of businessmen of Azerbaijani origin with privileged access to the leadership of Rosneft, led by figures such as Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub. The independent Russian media The Moscow Times has been echoed of this discovery, highlighting a devastating fact: in November 2024, more than 80% of Rosneft’s maritime exports They moved through this network. Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft and current researcher at the Carnegie Center, explained to this medium that using fifty shell companies is “an old trick from the 90s” to evade taxes, but he confesses his surprise at the fact that a single network has become so immensely crucial for a giant like Rosneft. The triumph of shadow intermediaries The existence of this network means, quite simply, that the Western sanctions system is full of holes and that Russia has managed to industrialize evasion. According to the investigationthe success of this $90 billion network was based on strict separation of roles to erase the money trail. The network used a group of shell companies exclusively to buy crude oil shipments in Russia, and another group of companies, totally different on paper, to sell them in key markets such as India or China. In this way, the initial buyer and the final seller almost never coincided in customs documents. Furthermore, in most cases, the crude oil was labeled under generic names such as “export mix”, which destroyed any possibility of tracing its origin or checking whether the price cap imposed by the G7 was being respected. As we already explained at the time in Xatakathis modus operandi It is not new and it relies on an architecture of evasion that has been brewing for years in places like the United Arab Emirates. Something very similar happened with the case of Christopher Eppinger, a young trader German that perfectly illustrates how this underworld works. As we detailed in our report, while Europe boasted of energy sovereignty, an army of new intermediaries moved to Dubai—a jurisdiction that does not apply sanctions to Moscow—to make gold. The network now discovered by the British media uses exactly the same tools that we already analyzed: the express creation of opaque companies, the use of the “ghost fleet” (aging ships that turn off their transponders when approaching to load Russian crude oil) and transfers of oil on the high seas to mix it and falsify its origin. The only difference is that the Rosneft network uncovered by the FT was operating on an unprecedented industrial scale… Until they made a rookie mistake on the internet. The rookie mistake This entire sophisticated international network collapsed due to an absurd detail that borders on comedy. He Finance Times discovered that these 48 multi-billion dollar companies shared a single private server for their emails: mx.phoenixtrading.ltd By pulling this digital thread, the journalists of the FT they managed to identify 442 web domains who shared administrative functions of back office on that same server. The next step was pure data mining: they compared the names of those domains with the customs records of Russia and India. Thus, they discovered that the domain foxton-fzco.com It corresponded to Foxton FZCO (based in Dubai), buyer of $5.6 billion in oil; and? advanalliance.ltd It was Advan Alliance, which sold 1.5 billion to India. The desire to create and destroy companies quickly to mislead sanctioners—according to The Moscow Timesthe average lifespan of these signatures is only six months—led the network to centralize your IT infrastructure to reduce costs. A saving that has cost them their anonymity. The show must go on In the short term, the strategy of those involved is denial and adaptation. How to collect Finance Timesboth Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub have categorically denied their involvement in sanctions evasion, calling the accusations “baseless” (curiously, Eyyub sent his denial from an email address hosted on the compromised server). The original company that founded the network, Coral Energy (now 2Rivers), has also disengaged from operations. However, behind the scenes, the machinery is already looking for new avenues. A senior Russian energy executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up the situation in the investigation starkly: “It creates additional costs and inconveniences. But at the end of the day, the show must go on.” The United Kingdom has already reacted to the investigation of the British media, sanctioning nearly 300 entities linked to this “dark web”, blocking Russian ships and banks. The fall of this immense $90 billion network shows that, in the 21st century, bank secrecy and flags of convenience are useless if the system administrator decides … Read more

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