While Europe spent the week fine-tuning the price of carbon, China’s biggest coal region announced plans to manufacture more of it. Inner Mongolia intends to build the country’s largest base for converting coal into oil, gas and chemicals, a project framed explicitly as a response to import dependence in wartime.

The announcement, delivered by the region’s second-ranked official Huang Zhiqiang with a promise to scale up coal-to-oil, coal-to-gas and coal-to-chemicals capacity in the name of self-sufficiency, is short on detail but unambiguous in direction. Four months of war in the Gulf and a strangled Strait of Hormuz have done what no five-year plan quite managed: they have made turning coal into petroleum products a strategic priority rather than a niche experiment.

In December, Russia’s oil shipments from its western ports are anticipated to decrease, influenced by a surge in refinery operations and the recent removal of the state’s fuel export ban. The offline primary oil refining capacity is projected to drop to 700,000 metric tons, marking the…

The enforcement of China’s export restrictions on gallium, a vital material in chipmaking, has led to a rapid 50% price increase within just seventeen days since the regulations came into effect on August 1st. Gallium is a critical element used in chip production, particularly in the creation of advanced semiconductors like gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN). China dominates the gallium production landscape, accounting for as much as 80% of the global output, giving it significant leverage in the ongoing economic tensions between the U.S. and China.