Equinor is essentially betting that the world will still want a lot of oil and gas well into the 2030s and beyond, and it’s reorganising Norway’s offshore sector around that assumption. The company’s CEO, Anders Opedal, has laid out a plan to drill about 250 new exploration wells on the Norwegian continental shelf over the next decade, with annual investment of around 60 billion Norwegian crowns, roughly $6 billion a year.

The explicit goal is to keep Equinor’s production in 2035 at roughly the same level it was in 2020, despite the natural decline of mature fields. On an ageing shelf where output would normally fall steadily, that is a very ambitious industrial mobilisation, and Opedal himself described it as one of the biggest industrial efforts in Norway’s history rather than “business as usual.”

MP Materials’ newly sealed partnerships with the U.S. Department of Defense, Apple, and General Motors represent a pivotal moment in the reshaping of America’s rare earths supply chain, and a decisive step toward ending decades of dependence on China, which currently dominates about 90% of the global market for rare-earth magnets.

These magnets are mission-critical components in electric vehicles, aircraft, electronics, defense systems, and emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles and robotics. The deals are strategically significant for multiple reasons.

Negotiations between the European Union and China to establish a comprehensive agreement replacing tariffs on electric vehicles (EVs) have made limited progress in recent weeks. While both sides acknowledged some headway during talks in Beijing earlier this month, significant differences remain unresolved, and there…