Has Oil Stopped Reacting to Politics – and Started Steering It?
4 August 2026 Brent and WTI rebounded on Tuesday, clawing back part of Monday’s sharp sell-off, with Brent trading back above $84 a barrel. Traders were left questioning whether the market had priced in a diplomatic breakthrough that, according to Tehran, does not exist. It is the latest lurch in a pattern that has defined the Strait of Hormuz crisis for months: political announcements moving crude by five, six, even seven per cent in a single session, only to reverse within a day. Monday’s decline followed President Trump’s claim that talks with Iran would resume. It unwound within twenty-four hours once Iran’s foreign ministry denied any such negotiations were under way, and a vessel was struck near Hormuz for good measure. The rhythm is now familiar enough that analysts increasingly suspect political messaging is being timed to the market itself, rather than the market simply reacting to political fact. As Kyle Rodda, senior market analyst at capital.com, put it: “Fridays are for fighting but Mondays are for the markets in Trump’s world.” It is a wry line, but it captures something real – the choreography of threat and climbdown looks increasingly calibrated to price, not the reverse. Tehran itself has accused Washington of using announcements to move financial markets rather than negotiate in good faith. Whatever the accusation’s merit, it reinforces the sense that political rhetoric is now tracking the oil price rather than setting it. Layer in OPEC+’s steady supply increases and forecasts from Goldman Sachs and Kotak Securities pointing to a cooling market into 2027, and a fragile picture emerges: crude’s fundamentals argue for lower prices, while its politics argue for volatility. For traders, distributors and buyers across the commodities and chemicals supply chain, the lesson is discipline. Headlines can move price faster than verified cargo data ever will, and a rally built on a denied negotiation is not a rally built to last. At Gapuma, we watch the shipping lanes and the barrels – not just the briefings.
From Dialogue to Delivery: Gapuma Applauds ASIS 2026’s Drive for Local Content across Africa
28 July 2026 The fifth edition of the Africa Social Impact Summit (ASIS 2026) has once again shown what is possible when purpose meets partnership. Co-convened by Sterling One Foundation, the United Nations in Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, and the Lagos State Government, the summit brought together over 2,000 leaders, investors, policymakers and changemakers in Lagos under the theme “Financing for Development: Building Resilience and Transforming Emerging Economies.” At Gapuma Group, we welcome ASIS 2026’s renewed commitments from partners including UNFPA, Seplat Energy, IHS Towers and The Coca-Cola Company, and the summit’s clear message that Africa’s development will be built through collaboration and local ownership, not isolated effort. It is a message that sits close to home. Through GLB, our Nigerian business, and across our chemicals and commodities operations and distribution networks in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, Gapuma has long championed local content as the foundation of sustainable growth. For us, that means local teams, local partnerships and local capacity built to last, whether we are supplying industry in Lagos or building presence elsewhere on the continent. ASIS 2026’s shift from dialogue to delivery reflects exactly the approach we take to our own markets: real investment, real presence and real accountability to the communities in which we operate. Africa’s growth will not be financed from the outside looking in. It will be built by businesses and institutions rooted in the continent, working together towards common goals. We congratulate Sterling One Foundation, the United Nations in Nigeria and all this year’s co-convenors and partners on a summit that has once again turned ambition into action. Gapuma remains committed to playing its part, one market, one partnership and one community at a time.
Mining the Sea: America’s Answer to China’s Critical Minerals Grip
21 July 2o26 China’s grip on the world’s critical minerals has long been a source of quiet unease in Washington. Beijing refines roughly 85 to 95 per cent of the world’s rare earths and dominates cobalt, nickel and lithium processing besides, leaving the United States dangerously exposed should the tap ever be tightened. Now a team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) believes the answer may be sitting, quite literally, on America’s doorstep. Their newly developed co-flow reactor draws high-purity magnesium hydroxide straight from seawater, cycling it alongside sodium hydroxide until the mineral precipitates out where the two liquids meet. The method strips out several of the stages older techniques required, and the team has already filed a patent. “Just 0.1 percent of seawater contains enough critical minerals like magnesium and lithium, if we can fully extract them, to meet humanity’s needs for the next 50,000 years or more,” says Jessica Cross, a chemical oceanographer at PNNL. The scaling potential is what makes this genuinely interesting. Paired with an existing facility such as the Carlsbad desalination plant in California, PNNL’s own analysis suggests the reactor could yield some 1.16 million pounds of magnesium hydroxide a day – more than triple US domestic demand from a single site. Nickel extraction, researchers say, may follow. It is not a new idea: America mined magnesium from the sea for fifty years before imports took over in the 1990s. What has changed is the chemistry, and the urgency. Independent reporting on the project notes that PNNL scientists increasingly view the oceans as one of the largest untapped reserves of the lithium, manganese, cobalt and rare earth elements that clean energy and electronics manufacturing depend upon. None of this displaces China’s refining dominance overnight. But it points to a slower, steadier shift: away from a single-source supply chain and towards one where the sea itself becomes a domestic mine. For an economy that still imports the bulk of its magnesium hydroxide, that is not a small thing.
Trade, Regulation and the Value of Agility
14 July 2026 Two headlines this week tell an interesting story about two very different approaches to doing business in Europe. On one hand, the European Commission has conditionally approved the Baker Hughes-Chart Industries merger, subject to a series of remedies following a detailed competition review. That is the EU’s institutional model at work, comprehensive, rules-based and regulatory. On the other, the UK has concluded a new trade agreement with Switzerland. It is another reminder that, post-Brexit, Britain is able to pursue its own commercial relationships and trade priorities. For those of us involved in international commodities and supply chains, the contrast is noteworthy. Commodity markets thrive on certainty, speed and the ability to respond quickly to changing market conditions. Traders need governments that facilitate commerce, open markets and remove unnecessary friction. While robust competition rules have an important role to play, there is also a strong case for agile trade policy that enables businesses to seize opportunities as they arise. Switzerland has long demonstrated how a relatively small nation can punch well above its weight by championing free trade, commercial pragmatism and international connectivity. The UK’s growing engagement with Switzerland suggests an ambition to embrace more of that outward-looking mindset. From the perspective of businesses operating across global commodity markets, this is an encouraging direction of travel. Success increasingly belongs to economies that can move quickly, build trusted partnerships and provide the confidence businesses need to invest, trade and grow. At Gapuma Group, we welcome policies that strengthen international trade, reduce barriers and create an environment in which businesses can compete, innovate and deliver value across global supply chains.
The Barrel: The last place the story shows up
9 July 2026 When the US–Iran ceasefire collapsed in the Strait of Hormuz this week, the headlines went straight to price. Brent ticked up, then wobbled either way, and most commentary moved on. But for the companies that actually move oil, gas and chemicals through that water, the price is not the problem. The problem is everything sitting underneath it. Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG. That makes route reliability a commercial contract in its own right, and it is precisely the thing a trader cannot hedge. You can hedge crude. You cannot hedge a captain who refuses to enter a severe-risk zone, an insurer who rewrites a war-risk exclusion overnight, or a payment rail that quietly narrows while your cargo is still mid-voyage. That last point is the one keeping people up. A US general licence opened a legal corridor for Iranian oil on 21 June. Within roughly a fortnight it was revoked and replaced with a wind-down order. Legal permission, it turns out, is not the same as bankable confidence, and each transaction now carries a lifecycle risk that is far harder to price than the commodity itself. This is why so many commodities businesses are in a genuine tailspin right now. The instinct is to watch the screen. But the screen is a lagging indicator. A vessel that turns back, an insurer that hesitates, a bank that declines a settlement, none of it registers immediately as a shortage. It registers as friction. Friction compounds quietly, and by the time it reaches the price, the decision you needed to make was already late. The firms that come through this well will not be the ones with the best price call. They will be the ones who treated the route, the licence and the counterparty as three separate clocks, and started tracking all three before the market did. Strategy in this environment is not prediction. It is knowing which questions to ask, and asking them early. Gapuma Group | Trading commodities and speciality chemicals across international markets, with a clear read on the ground beneath the price.
Coatings For Africa 2026: Gapuma Returns to Johannesburg
24 June 2026 The doors are open. Coatings For Africa 2026 begins today at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, and Gapuma Group is here, on the floor, exhibiting for a second time at Southern Africa’s largest gathering of the coatings industry. Held in association with the South African Paint Manufacturing Association (SAPMA), the event runs from today, 24 June, through to 26 June, bringing together more than 150 exhibiting brands from over 15 countries. For three days it becomes the place where the industry does business: manufacturers, raw material suppliers, distributors, buyers and technical specialists such as chemists and formulators, all under one roof, meeting face to face. We are here in force. Our delegation is led by Group Managing Director Jack Bardakjian and Operations Director Stephen Harris, alongside our full South Africa team, including Gary Hayes and Dave Steward. Their presence reflects the importance we place on this market and on the relationships that underpin our work across the region. The timing could not be sharper. Southern Africa’s paint and coatings market, valued at around USD 770 million, is forecast to grow steadily through 2031, driven by construction activity, infrastructure investment and rising demand for more sustainable coating technologies. Running alongside the exhibition, ChemTalks opens today too, with a focused programme spanning regulation, formulation and the latest technical innovation. For everyone working within coatings, this is the moment to gather insight, exchange ideas with industry leaders, explore new opportunities and forge stronger relationships across the region. We are on the floor now. If you are here in Johannesburg, come and find us.
Gapuma at Chevron Oronite’s 2026 Distributors Seminar
Among the few: Gapuma at Chevron Oronite’s 2026 Distributors Seminar 18 June 2026 GLB Chemical Services Limited, Gapuma Group’s Nigerian subsidiary, was represented at the 2026 Sales Representatives and Distributors Seminar at Chevron Oronite in Paris earlier this month. Prakash Ramchandani, Managing Director of GLB, and Thompson Longe attended on Gapuma’s behalf. The seminar brought together Chevron Oronite’s distribution network for three days of technical exchange and strategic dialogue. For GLB, appointed Chevron Oronite’s authorised distributor in Nigeria in 2020, these gatherings remain central to a partnership now in its sixth year, one strengthened further in 2025 with Gapuma’s selection as Chevron’s Group II base oils distributor in the Nigerian market. The programme also included a visit to Chevron Oronite’s plant at Le Havre, where a newly constructed, fully automated warehouse has been brought into operation. The facility holds up to 8,200 pallets, a clear signal of the scale and sophistication underpinning Oronite’s European supply chain. Our thanks to the Chevron Oronite team in Paris and Le Havre, among them Eric De Goustine and Daren Barnes, for their hospitality and for another valuable opportunity to deepen a relationship built on technical excellence and shared commitment to the Nigerian market.
Biofuels: Where Policy Writes the Market
5 June 2026 A report by Transport & Environment (T&E), the Brussels-based clean transport campaign group, featured this week in Le Monde, projects that global biofuel demand could rise by 30% in 2026 and as much as 70% by 2030, well above earlier forecasts of 40%. The drivers are familiar to anyone watching energy markets closely. Amid instability in the Middle East and rising fossil fuel prices, countries with strong agricultural sectors are lifting their blending mandates. Indonesia is raising the palm oil content of its biodiesel to 50% from July; India, Malaysia, Brazil and the United States have all revised their targets upward. It is a moment that rewards a steady hand and genuine market literacy. As Gapuma’s own biofuels trader Charles Percheron told Le Monde: “It’s a market that wouldn’t exist without political will. Regulations can stimulate demand, but they can also curb it.” This is a market built on political will, then, where regulation can accelerate demand just as readily as it can restrain it. Reading those signals – anticipating where mandates move next, and pricing the second-generation feedstocks that may follow – is precisely the kind of judgement that defines good trading. That a national newspaper of record turned to Gapuma for that read says something about where the firm now sits in the conversation. We’re proud to see our people’s instinct and expertise recognised on the international stage. Read the full piece (In French) here: https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2026/06/04/la-ruee-vers-les-agrocarburants-un-risque-pour-la-securite-alimentaire-mondiale_6696904_3234.html
Gapuma Switzerland: At the Heart of European Biofuels
26 May 2026 Rafael Fraletti, Charles Percheron and Fabrice Brunet – Managing Director, Switzerland – recently attended the 10th European Biofuels Conference – organised by Dropet, a division of Marex – held at the Pestana Cidadela Cascais in Portugal. Now in its tenth year, the conference has established itself as a landmark gathering for buyers, sellers and companies active in the European biofuels markets. The three-day programme combined substantive keynote sessions with extensive networking. Argus Media’s Giulia Squadrin and Joshua Thomas Michalowski opened proceedings with an overview of European biofuels market trends, pricing and outlook, while Andreas Bodenmueller of Verbio examined the implications of RED III through the lens of the German experience. Beyond the formal sessions, the format allowed for the kind of frank, informal dialogue that rarely happens in a purely transactional setting – something Gapuma Group values highly as we continue to build our presence in this space. For us, conferences such as this one are not simply networking events. They are an essential part of understanding where markets are heading, and of positioning ourselves to serve our clients well. We look forward to the conversations already in progress as a result.
🛢️ GAPUMA GROUP | MARKET INTELLIGENCE | 20 MAY 2026
Hormuz, Beijing and Moscow: The Geopolitics of Oil Are Being Rewritten in Real Time The movement of two Chinese supertankers through the Strait of Hormuz today – the Yuan Gui Yang and Ocean Lily, carrying approximately 4 million barrels of crude after waiting in the Gulf for more than two months – has sent an immediate and unmistakeable signal to commodity markets. Brent crude fell to as low as $110.16 a barrel on the news. This is not merely a shipping story. It is a geopolitical statement. The vessels’ passage comes as President Trump and President Xi concluded a two-day summit in Beijing, with a White House official describing the talks as “good.” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that China would work behind the scenes to help reopen the strait, noting that Beijing has “a much bigger interest in reopening the strait than the US does.” Beijing, characteristically, said nothing publicly about Hormuz – Chinese state media reported only that the leaders “exchanged views on major international and regional issues, such as the Middle East situation.” Silence, in diplomacy, is often the loudest language. Iran has reportedly sought to implement a toll system for vessels crossing Hormuz – a brazen assertion of sovereign authority over an international waterway that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply. That Chinese-flagged supertankers are now moving freely while broader restrictions remain in place is a pointed reminder of where true leverage lies. Meanwhile, closer to home, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has authorised the import of Russian-refined diesel and jet fuel into the UK indefinitely, alongside a temporary licence permitting the maritime transport of Russian LNG from the Sakhalin-2 and Yamal terminals. The government frames it as pragmatism. Treasury Minister Dan Tomlinson told Sky News the government was “acting pragmatically to insulate British citizens from the economic fallout of the Middle East conflict.” Critics – not least opposition leader Kemi Badenoch – see it differently: as analysts have noted, from Moscow’s perspective, it demonstrates that Western countries are “not that committed to a sanctions regime” when their own consumers feel the pinch. The broader picture is stark. Global oil supply has declined by 12.8 mb/d in total since February, with output from Gulf countries affected by the Strait’s closure running 14.4 mb/d below pre-war levels. The IEA projects a decline of 3.9 mb/d on average across 2026, assuming flows gradually resume from June. The United Nations has already cut its global growth forecast to 2.5% this year, against an estimated 3% last year, citing higher energy costs and weaker trade. For commodities and futures desks, the key questions now are whether today’s tanker movements represent a genuine reopening or a bilateral Chinese carve-out – and whether the gap between the two matters less than markets think. Wood Mackenzie has estimated Brent could approach $200 a barrel if the Strait remains largely shut until the end of the year. The downside scenario, by contrast, assumes a rapid diplomatic resolution that supply chains are ill-prepared to absorb smoothly. At Gapuma Group, we are watching these developments closely across energy, commodities and futures markets. The rules of the game are changing – and the players setting them are not all where they used to be. For market intelligence, trading insights and strategic analysis, connect with the Gapuma Group team.
Gapuma exhibiting at WAMPEX 2026
19 May 2026 West Africa’s largest mining industry gathering takes place from 3rd to 5th June at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra – and you will find us on the show floor. Gapuma is a premier provider of sourcing, procurement and logistics for a wide range of chemicals, solvents and other commodities, with products integral to leading industry sectors globally. In the extractives sector, that means supplying a comprehensive range of chemicals for ore processing and waste treatment, backed by strategically positioned warehouses and an efficient supply chain infrastructure to ensure timely delivery and uninterrupted production. Through our recent partnership with Servaco PPS Limited – one of West Africa’s foremost industrial and mining supply companies – we have deepened our operational roots in Ghana and across the region. Our stand at WAMPEX gives us the opportunity to build on that momentum, meeting clients, forging new partnerships and showcasing what Gapuma Ghana can deliver. Manning the stand will be Obert V J Chikwature, Bernice Boahene and Moses Gadabor. Joining them on one of the days will be Vaibhav Raj Thakkar (Senior Purchasing Manager) and Ash Unadkat (Quality and Compliance Manager) from our London office. WAMPEX brings together over 6,000 mining professionals from more than 25 countries – come and find us there. 📍 La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Accra 📅 3rd – 5th June 2026
The Emperor Comes to Beijing — Without His Clothes
14 May 2026 By: Shahab MOSSAVAT When Donald Trump first touched down in Beijing in November 2017, Xi Jinping laid on the full theatre of imperial hospitality: a private dinner in the Forbidden City, a parade through Tiananmen Square, and the announcement of $250 billion in business deals – a figure so grand it dwarfed the entire annual GDP of West Virginia, where one of its headline memoranda of understanding was supposedly centred. Almost none of it materialised. The symbolism, however, was exquisitely chosen. China was telling the world – and telling Trump – who was truly in charge. Nine years on, the pageantry at Beijing Capital International Airport on Wednesday – the honour guard, the schoolchildren chanting in Mandarin, the skyscrapers lit with welcoming characters – carried an almost identical message, delivered with rather more pointed subtlety. Air Force One landed, and a US president who had spent his first term threatening to break China, and his second term actually trying to, stepped onto a red carpet laid by a nation that had absorbed his blows, weaponised its advantages in response, and emerged from the encounter structurally stronger. Donald Trump is greeted at Beijing airport by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng The shift in the bilateral power dynamic is not subtle. It is measurable, documented and, for Washington, deeply uncomfortable. When Trump arrived in 2017, the United States still held most of the conventional cards: it was the world’s pre-eminent consumer market, the anchor of the dollar-denominated global financial system, and the unchallenged custodian of the rules-based international order. China was formidable but still, in important respects, dependent – on American technology, American markets and American acquiescence. Trump’s instinct, brutal in its simplicity, was to exploit that dependency through tariffs. What he did not foresee was that a decade of patient strategic investment had quietly altered the underlying geometry. Consider the arithmetic of the current summit. Trump arrives in Beijing wanting concessions: market entry for American companies, Chinese purchases of Boeing aircraft and US soybeans, a softening of rare earth export restrictions that brought his own industrial economy to the edge of a supply crisis. Xi, by contrast, wants stability – time to consolidate a technological and industrial position that has already, by most independent assessments, reached escape velocity. The asymmetry is telling. One leader is shopping for wins to take home to voters ahead of bruising midterm elections. The other is managing a civilisational project measured in decades. Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, put it with characteristic precision in CNBC on the day the summit opened: “China comes into this meeting far more confident than in 2017, when it feared even a small rise in US tariffs. In the last year, Xi has been able to push back and neutralise much of Trump’s actions.” 2017 v 2026: Change in Body Language? Central to China’s structural advantage is its commanding position in the global shipping and logistics system – a dominance so comprehensive that it shapes the price of practically everything that moves by sea. By mid-2024, China had invested in ports in 16 of the top 20 nations for shipping connectivity. Roughly 27 per cent of global container trade now passes through terminals partly or wholly owned by Chinese or Hong Kong-based companies. In 2024 alone, China’s largest state-owned shipbuilder produced more commercial tonnage than the entire United States shipbuilding industry has delivered since the Second World War. Shanghai handled 51.5 million TEUs in 2024, making it the world’s busiest port – five times the throughput of Los Angeles and Long Beach combined. When China flexes its position in containerised freight, it is not merely adjusting a commercial variable. It is moving a lever that governs global commodity pricing across industries from automotive parts to pharmaceuticals, from agricultural produce to consumer electronics. The United States, which conducts the overwhelming majority of its trade by sea, sits downstream of that lever. Underpinning this logistical supremacy is a strategic energy architecture that took shape long before Trump’s tariff wars began. China’s early and consistent investment in Iranian crude – formalised in the 25-year, $400 billion cooperation agreement whose foundations Xi Jinping himself proposed during a 2016 visit to Tehran – secured access to oil trading at an $8–10 discount per barrel below global benchmarks. While Western economies lurched from one energy shock to the next, buffeted by sanctions regimes and geopolitical crises they themselves often authored, Beijing was buying Iranian crude at predictable, heavily discounted rates through independent refiners insulated from direct sanction exposure. More broadly, Xi’s decade-long programme of energy self-sufficiency – wind, solar, hydropower, domestic drilling and diversified import partnerships – has positioned China to weather disruptions that send other economies into crisis. The current US-Israel war against Iran, which has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and sent global energy prices spiralling, is a case in point. China’s energy fortress, as analysts at Columbia University’s Centre on Global Energy Policy have noted, appears to be passing its sternest test. That cannot be said of the United States. Yangshan: The world’s busiest container port handling more than 50 million TEUs annually The technological transformation is perhaps the most significant shift of all. China is no longer, in any meaningful sense, the cheap-labour assembly floor of the global economy. Its “Made in China 2025” industrial strategy has delivered on its core promises with a thoroughness that has alarmed Western analysts. China now leads the world in industrial robotics installations, dominates the clean technology supply chain from lithium batteries to solar panels, and – with DeepSeek’s R1 model launching in early 2025 to international astonishment – has demonstrated serious, applied artificial intelligence capability that challenges American primacy in what was supposed to be a US-led domain. In rare earths, which sit at the chokepoint of every advanced technology from fighter jets to electric vehicles to AI semiconductors, Beijing controls 85–90 per cent of […]