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The week in brief · Week 45 · 2–8 November
Crude oil fell by more than a tenth in two trading days as markets bet on a negotiated end to the Iran war. Gas did not follow: the International Energy Agency warned that Europe enters winter with its thinnest storage in more than a decade and may still be competing for cargoes in 2027. In Brussels, the EU's energy regulators published three reports in three days on what Europe's grid bottleneck costs, and the IEA concluded that energy security, not climate policy, now drives the global renewables build-out.
The turn came on Monday. Brent spot, which had closed at $120.15 a barrel on Friday 30 October, fell to $107.39 on Monday and $107.03 on Tuesday, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA, 2026). The first leg followed reports of progress in Qatari-mediated talks on a proposal to reopen Hormuz. The second followed Tuesday's US midterm elections, in which the Democrats won both the House and the Senate, a result traders read as raising the pressure on Washington to settle. By Friday, front-month Brent futures had fallen below $100 a barrel.
Gas tells a different story. The IEA's Global Gas Security Review, published on Tuesday, found that LNG loadings from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates fell by more than 60 bcm year on year between March and October. Global LNG supply is set to fall 3%, or almost 20 bcm, this year, while gas demand shrinks by about 1.5%, or 65 bcm, as Middle Eastern consumption weakens, European industry uses less and Asian generators switch to coal. For the November–March winter the agency expects LNG supply to fall by 10–25 bcm year on year, depending on how quickly Hormuz shipments recover: about 9 bcm if the strait starts reopening in January, about 20 bcm if it stays shut until the end of March. New projects outside the Gulf should add some 18 bcm over the winter, which is not enough to replace the lost volumes (IEA, 2026a).
