Bloomberg Oil and natural gas exploration plunged to an all-time low as the economic and industrial dislocations from the Covid-19 pandemic snuffed out the remnants of the American shale boom. Drilling in US oil and gas fields retreated by 34 rigs this week to 374, led by a precipitous drop in crude exploration that sank to levels not seen since ...

Bloomberg Italy’s electricity demand jumped as lockdown restrictions were loosened, signaling that an economic recovery may be on its way. While consumption rose in France and Britain and held steady in Germany and Spain from the previous week, it’s not clear how quickly demand will recover or if it’ll ever reach pre-crisis levels as the threat of a deep recession ...

As the United States’ confrontation with China escalates, the Trump administration may be making a classic American mistake: overestimating its adversary’s technological competence and ability to control events. The outbreak in Wuhan of the novel coronavirus shows how ragged and disorderly the Chinese police state was in the initial weeks of the pandemic. Beijing’s response was to suppress and manipulate ...