India’s Epsilon Advanced Materials is moving quickly to exploit a sudden opening in the U.S. battery supply chain after Washington slapped a 93.5% anti-dumping duty on Chinese graphite anode materials. With Chinese inputs now far less economical, Japanese and South Korean battery makers operating in the U.S. have shifted from “wait and see” to active procurement, and Epsilon says it expects to lock in contracts within the next two to three months.

Those offtakes would underpin a $650 million plant in North Carolina, sized for 30,000 tonnes a year of anode material and slated to start up by mid-2027. It’s a meaningful first step but still small versus an estimated 500,000 tonnes the U.S. market needs annually, demand that until now was met largely with material refined in China, which controls over 90% of global graphite processing.

The United States and its fellow Group of Seven (G7) nations have struck an understanding that will effectively shield U.S. firms from certain provisions of a global tax deal, according to a joint statement issued on Saturday by Canada, which currently holds the rotating G7 presidency.

Under this new arrangement, described by the bloc as a “side-by-side” system, Washington agreed to drop Section 899—a controversial retaliatory tax proposal embedded in President Donald Trump’s sprawling tax and spending package. In return, the G7 has crafted a mechanism that recognizes existing American minimum tax regulations and seeks to reinforce the stability of the international tax framework.

Norway’s Energy Minister Terje Aasland has announced plans to launch a new oil and gas licensing round on the Norwegian continental shelf, marking the first offer of exploration rights in previously untapped frontier areas since 2021.

The move represents a major policy shift following a four-year moratorium that limited new acreage awards to areas near existing fields, a compromise originally struck to secure parliamentary backing from a smaller left-wing party.