Abu Dhabi is accelerating construction of the new West-East pipeline to Fujairah as it looks to expand its oil export capacity and bypass the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint.

The project, expected to come online in 2027, will double the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s (ADNOC) export capacity.

The second pipeline project comes as global energy supplies remain under pressure, flows through the Strait of Hormuz are severely limited, and repeated attacks on energy infrastructure and shipping have curtailed the UAE’s ability to restore normal output.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Friday called for faster delivery of the pipeline to meet rising global energy demand.

ADNOC is “well positioned as a responsible and reliable global energy producer, with the operational flexibility to responsibly increase production to meet market needs when export constraints allow,” the Crown Prince said during a meeting of the company’s executive committee.

The Emirates announced earlier this month it would depart the producer group OPEC, of which it was a member since 1967, before the UAE was even founded. The UAE has been investing heavily via ADNOC to increase its production capacity.

Before the war, the UAE was producing just over 3 million barrels a day — broadly in line with OPEC+ targets. Abu Dhabi has targeted a capacity to produce 4.9 million BPD. Now, due to the war, the UAE is producing between 1.8 and 2.1 million barrels per day.

The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (Adcop) — also known as the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline — is the only existing pipeline through which the UAE can export its oil and diverge from the Strait of Hormuz. It can carry up to 1.8 million barrels.

China will ramp its crude oil imports from the United States because the world’s two largest economies are natural trade partners when it comes to energy, Chris Wright told CNBC on Friday.

China is the largest oil importer in the world and the U.S. is the biggest producer. “There’s a natural energy trade there,” the U.S. energy secretary told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan in an interview at Port Arthur, Texas.

China relies heavily on the Middle East for its oil imports. Exports from the Persian Gulf have mostly been cut off for weeks now due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing has a massive strategic reserve that has helped it weather disruption so far.

“I suspect we’ll see a growth in their oil imports from the United States,” Wright told CNBC.

China and other Asian buyers will eventually buy more oil from Alaska as the Trump administration ramps up production there, Wright said. For now, Beijing will import more oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast, he said.

President Donald Trump told Fox News earlier that China had agreed to buy more oil from the U.S. Beijing so far has not confirmed whether there is such an agreement with the U.S.

“They’ve agreed they want to buy oil from the United States, they’re going to go to Texas, we’re going to start sending Chinese ships to Texas and to Louisiana and to Alaska,” Trump told Fox News. The U.S. president met with President Xi Jinping for a summit in Beijing this week.

Hormuz will lose its importance: Wright

Hormuz will lose its importance due to Iran’s blockade of the sea lane, Wright said. “This is a card you can play once,” the energy secretary said of Iran’s disruption to the strait.

About 20% of world oil supplies passed through the sea lane before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Iran’s blockade of Hormuz in response has triggered the largest energy supply disruption in history and deeply impacted the economies of the Gulf Arab states.

The Gulf states will build more pipelines to bypass Hormuz after the war, Wright said. The United Arab Emirates already plans to accelerate the construction of a new West-East pipeline that bypasses Hormuz.

“There’ll be other routes for energy to get out of the Persian Gulf,” Wright said. “We will see a decreasing importance from the Strait of Hormuz, but not a decreasing importance of those nations’ energy production and energy supply.”

Electric-vehicle maker Polestar told CNBC Thursday that “range anxiety” has been replaced by “pump anxiety,” amid worries around a Middle East crisis that has global energy prices soaring.

“People are concerned, ‘how much do I pay at the gas station?'” Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

The company is seeing increased demand for both used and new EVs as fuel prices have risen following the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that normally carries around a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

“In the past, people considered EVs for idealistic reasons, and now the decision is all about money,” Lohscheller said.

His comments come a week after the Chinese-owned, Sweden-based company reported a widening net loss of $383 million in the first quarter, hurt by pricing pressures, intensified competition, and EU and U.S. tariffs, even as volumes rose by 7% year-on-year.

“[The] automotive industry is super competitive… Look at what is happening in China, the market becomes hyper competitive,” Lohscheller said on Thursday, adding that Europe needs to “speed up.”

He also highlighted uncertainty in the U.S. market, including disappearing tax incentives and consumer concerns about rising costs.

Oil prices have soared since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February.

On Thursday morning, U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures with June delivery were at $101.27 a barrel, and the international benchmark Brent crude futures were at $106.31, up about 50% each since Feb. 27

Hello, this is Priyanka Salve, writing to you from Singapore.

Welcome to the latest edition of “Inside India“ — your one-stop destination for stories and developments from the world’s fastest-growing large economy.

For more than two decades, consecutive U.S. administrations have seen India as a counterbalance to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific. But the current U.S administration’s stances seem to favour Beijing while punishing India. This week, I unpack how the U.S.-China summit could impact New Delhi’s equation with Washington.

Read on!

Any thoughts on today’s newsletter? Share them with the team.

India, whose significance to the U.S. foreign policy has been shaped by frictions between Washington and Beijing, will be keeping a close eye on the meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

When the summit between the world’s top two economies begins later in the day, India will be hoping that Trump’s softening stance toward China does not lead to a bargain that diminishes New Delhi’s role in the Indo-Pacific, experts said.

If Trump prioritizes a bilateral grand bargain with Beijing, India will have “reasonable concerns that the United States will treat China as the central negotiating partner in Asia rather than as the central strategic challenge,” Ronak D. Desai, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, told CNBC.

Therefore, “India will need to make its strategic value harder to overlook,” Desai said, adding this would mean the U.S.-India relationship must lead to more tangible outcomes in sectors like defense, maritime security, critical minerals, energy, and manufacturing.

Trump and Xi last met in Busan, South Korea, in November, where the U.S. president called Xi “a very tough negotiator,” and said that the two sides had “always had a very good relationship.” Meanwhile, Xi urges Beijing and Washington to be “partners and friends.” It was during this meeting that Trump also referred to China and the U.S. as G2.

“He [Trump] favors strong-armed leaders,” Nirupama Rao, former Indian ambassador to the U.S., China, and Sri Lanka, told CNBC’s “Inside India” on Monday, hinting at Trump’s conciliatory stance toward Xi in the recent past.

Redwood Materials, the electric vehicle battery recycling business started by Tesla board member and former CTO JB Straubel, is bringing on another former Tesla executive, Deepak Ahuja, as CFO, the company announced Monday.

Ahuja served as finance chief at Tesla from March 2017 to March 2019, his second term at Elon Musk‘s EV and clean energy company. He first joined Tesla in 2008, navigated it through an IPO in 2010, briefly resigned in 2015 and was recruited back two years later.

Ahuja told CNBC that his relationship with Straubel primarily influenced his decision to join the recycling startup.

“Knowing JB for the last 18 years, I have huge respect for him as a leader, an engineer and as a thinker. And knowing so many of the leadership team who are from Tesla makes it easier for me to step in with a sense of credibility and build the business,” he said. “There are different business models, different areas of growth and capital allocation, that it’s still going to be a learning experience for me.”

Straubel had originally started Redwood Materials in 2017, running it while concurrently serving as Tesla CTO until July 2019.

The Carson City, Nevada-based startup has raised over $2.3 billion in venture funding from an array of venture firms and strategic backers, including Google, Nvidia‘s Nventures, Microsoft, OMERS and Eclipse, among them, also securing a $2 billion loan commitment from the Department of Energy.

Redwood Materials now boasts a valuation of over $6 billion.

The incoming CFO also lauded Redwood Materials for work that ensures critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt, nickel and others, “stay within the country.”  Such minerals are crucial for the production of consumer electronics, vehicles, defense and energy products.

“That’s super motivating for me — the scale of how much this is going to grow, and the critical need for it in the country,” he said.

After he resigned from Tesla in 2019, Ahuja served as CFO of Verily Life Sciences, then in 2022 joined Zipline, the drone delivery company, where he worked as chief business and financial officer.

Zipline, ranked at #46 in the 2025 CNBC Disruptor list, is the world’s largest drone delivery company, and has logged more than 2.3 million commercial deliveries via drone to-date. The company recently closed an $800 million round of funding with a valuation of $7.8 billion. Zipline’s delivery drones are fully electric.

A Zipline spokesperson told CNBC that Ahuja remains a close advisor to the company.

Redwood Materials views the batteries from EVs, and other machines and devices, as some of the most valuable energy assets in the country. That’s because the batteries still have capacity to store energy when they reach the end of their useful life in vehicles and other devices, and in general, spent batteries contain critical minerals that can be extracted, and used in new products.

In its early years, Redwood Materials focused on “closed loop” recycling, taking…

The world’s energy system will change in big ways as a result of the Iran war, the CEOs of key oil and gas companies told investors on their earnings calls over the past two weeks.

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has resulted in the loss of nearly a billion barrels of oil, with the shortage growing worse every day the sea lane remains closed.

The disruption has demonstrated the fragility of the global energy system, said Olivier Le Peuch, CEO of the big oilfield services company SLB.

“It’s going to drive fundamental structural change across the energy landscape,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, the CEO of Baker Hughes, a competitor of SLB.

Governments and industry will prioritize energy security, Le Peuch and Simonelli said. It is “no longer simply a talking point,” said Jeffrey Miller, the CEO of Halliburton, the other big oilfield services firm.

Investment in oil exploration and production will increase as a consequence, the CEOs said. Low carbon solutions like geothermal, nuclear and grid modernization will continue to see investment, Simonelli said.

“It’s not just about increasing energy supply,” the Baker Hughes CEO said. “It’s about the robust and resilient energy infrastructure and greater redundancy, diversifying infrastructure, reducing reliance on any single large-scale assets.”

Diversifying supplies

The closure of Hormuz has underscored the dependence particularly of Asian economies on the Middle East for crude oil and liquefied natural gas imports.

“Obviously, people are going to reassess their energy security and how they ensure that, going forward, they don’t have the same exposure,” Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said.

Governments will aim to diversify their energy supplies, the oilfield service CEOs said. They will also have to rebuild oil stockpiles that have taken a hit due to the war, the executives said.

“There’s going to be a rebuilding of global inventories above historical levels to ensure that energy security is at the foremost,” Simonelli said.

U.S. crude oil will become more important that it has ever been in helping the world preserve energy security, said Kaes Van’t Hof, the CEO of Diamondback Energy, one of the biggest U.S. shale oil producers. U.S. crude exports have hit record highs during the war.

The oil market is now “fundamentally tighter” due to supply disruption, Miller said. The market has shifted from expectations of a surplus this year to a big deficit, he said.

This will support elevated oil prices after the war is over, Le Peuch said. Higher prices will encourage investment in offshore and deepwater opportunities in Africa, the Americas and Asia, he said.

“Africa [represents] one of the most compelling long-term opportunities, with a significant base of underdeveloped oil and gas resources,” the CEO of SLB said. “We expect portfolio allocation to shift more favorably towards this region over time.”

For now, prediction market traders aren’t too worried about the hantavirus.

Kalshi data shows only a 21% chance of the hantavirus outbreak will be a concern this year. The prediction markets platform opened its market on the hantavirus on Wednesday night, noting it will be resolved if the World Health Organization verifies that the virus is “a public health emergency of international concern” in 2026.

Compared to other markets opened on the same day, trading in this market has been high. On Friday, volume related to the outbreak hit over $174,000, the highest out of any market that opened in that time.

The WHO identified the virus as an outbreak on May 4, according to the Associated Press, a few weeks after several passengers on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship sailing the Atlantic Ocean grew ill. An outbreak is when there are a higher number of people catching diseases than what is expected within a specific community, geographic location or season, the WHO’s website states.

The fatal and viral respiratory disease is transmitted through urine, feces or saliva of infected rodents and by touching contaminated surfaces, according to the WHO.

Spanish health officials said Friday that a woman in the country’s southeastern region has symptoms consistent with hantavirus, Reuters reported. In the Netherlands, three people with symptoms of the virus tested negative.

That said, the WHO said the public health risk for the virus is low. 

“While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low.” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the media. “It’s possible that more cases may be reported.”

The WHO reported that there were a total 147 passengers and crew members on board the cruise ship. A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official and another person familiar with the matter told CNBC this week that six states are monitoring passengers who were on the cruise and have since returned to the U.S.

Those states are Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and New Jersey. Health departments from Arizona, Georgia and Texas said the former passengers have not shown symptoms. 

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.

The Asian Development Bank $70 billion plan, backing new energy and digital infrastructure in the region, is set to boost Southeast Asia the most.

The program includes a pan-Asia power grid initiative, connecting national and subregional power systems, and an Asia-Pacific digital highway to close the infrastructure gap in the region, according to ADB that has set 2035 as the deadline for funding projects.

“Energy and digital access will define the region’s future,” said ADB President Masato Kanda said in a statement on Sunday.

That connectivity will build the systems Asia and the Pacific need to grow, compete, and connect, Kanda said. “By linking power grids and digital networks across borders, we can lower costs, expand opportunity, and bring reliable power and digital access to hundreds of millions of people.”

While the funds are for the entire Asia-Pacific region, experts say that Southeast Asia is expected to be the major beneficiary of ADB’s connectivity push.

The bank typically leans toward developing member countries based on growth needs, project readiness and mandate, beyond sheer market size, said Greg Statton, vice president and chief technology officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at AI-powered data security firm Cohesity.

Statton noted that unlike Southeast Asia, China has largely moved away from ADB financing with its own finance institutions and policies in place. India has strong access to capital markets and runs many domestically financed projects, even though it still receives a fair amount of funding from ADB, while Japan itself is a major funder of ADB.

“Larger economies such as China, India, and Japan already have more established domestic capital markets, deeper infrastructure financing channels, and greater fiscal capacity to fund large scale projects internally,” said Chasen Nevett, managing partner of principal investments at GMA Capital Partners, adding that Southeast Asia remains structurally underbuilt in both energy interconnection and digital infrastructure.

“That combination creates a more efficient deployment environment for capital, where each dollar can unlock broader private sector participation and accelerate regional integration, Nevett said.

The Iran war appears to have supercharged the clean energy transition, providing a catalyst for wind power giants as countries reassess the role of renewables in shoring up energy security.

Danish wind turbine maker Vestas reported an unexpectedly large first-quarter profit rise on Wednesday, citing improved execution of its onshore and offshore businesses despite growing political uncertainty.

Danish utility Orsted also posted stronger-than-expected profit through the first three months of the year, while Norway’s Equinor, which is primarily an oil and gas major, told CNBC that the Middle East crisis is set to deliver a boost to returns in its clean tech division.

Torgrim Reitan, chief financial officer at Equinor, said that the drivers behind the energy transition have clearly shifted amid the Iran war, moving from a focus on decarbonization to issues such as energy security, self-sufficiency and independence.

“In Europe, we see that there is clearly big momentum behind that,” Reitan told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition.”

Equinor, which posted its strongest quarterly profit in three years on Wednesday, has three large offshore wind developments in the U.S., Poland and U.K., with the latter slated to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm when it enters production.

The oil and gas giant joined its industry rivals in reporting bumper first-quarter results, benefitting from soaring fossil fuel prices since the U.S. and Israeli-led war against Iran began on Feb. 28.

Analysts expect the fallout from the Iran war energy shock to prompt countries to direct even more investment toward clean energy resources — a trend likely to benefit companies with exposure to green tech.

“Our priority is to deliver the projects we have under development and beyond that clearly we will have to see significant return from that business to invest — but we do believe that what is going on now will actually help the returns in sort of the transition industries,” Equinor’s Reitan said.

Hello, this is Priyanka Salve, writing to you from Singapore.

Welcome to the latest edition of “Inside India“ — your one-stop destination for stories and developments from the world’s fastest-growing large economy.

Rising incomes and a large population base make India a key market for global consumer-focused companies. But now, celebrity endorsements and wide distribution are not enough to reel in customers. Viral social media videos are influencing consumer choices — and brands are responding.

Read on!

Any thoughts on today’s newsletter? Share them with the team.

Social media influencers are ushering in a massive change in India’s packaged food and beverages space, as they urge consumers to read labels, pushing big brands to make healthier products or risk being replaced by new entrants.

One of the world’s largest packaged food and beverages companies, PepsiCo, is the latest to respond to changing customer preferences.

“Today, more than 50% of our beverage portfolio in India comprises low- to no-sugar offerings,” said Nitin Bhandari, vice president and general manager of beverages at PepsiCo India, adding that the company aims to “scale low- and no-sugar options to 90% of our beverage portfolio over time in India.”

PepsiCo gathers consumer insights through engagement forums, social media, as well as its WhatsApp-based consumer loyalty platform, PepGenie, Bhandari told CNBC in an email.

In the next five years, India’s income per capita is expected to grow at the highest rate among the top five emerging markets for consumer products, including China, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia, according to Bain & Company, making it a priority for global consumer product companies.

Global companies already dominate the world’s fastest-growing major consumer market across 20 product categories from soft drinks and spirits to savory snacks, detergents, and diapers, the report said.

Indian market opportunity, however, comes with the pressure to pivot strategy based on consumer preferences. And social media has emerged as a key platform for public advocacy over the past few years, raising awareness around food safety and mislabeling in India.

Celebrity endorsement-driven brand trust has shifted to “community-verified trust,” because of social media influencers, said Shamik Kumar, a veteran food safety expert who has worked with multinational companies in India.

Social media influencer Revant Himatsingka, who goes by Food Pharmer on social media, has millions of subscribers, and has faced pushback from consumer companies, says his content makes people read labels and, as a result, companies are making better quality products.

Over the past few years, several brands, including Mondelez-owned Bournvita and…