Asian rice prices logged their biggest monthly gain in nearly two decades in May, as a Gulf energy shock collides with an expected El Niño event later this year. The spike adds to the mounting risks of a broader food price shock that could emerge as soon as six months from now.
Any time rice prices spike, it is a major concern because the grain feeds more than half the world's population, estimated at 3.5 to 4 billion people.
Thailand white rice, a regional Asian benchmark, surged 20% in May, the largest monthly increase in data going back to 2008, according to Bloomberg. Chicago rice futures rose 15% last month.
Seasonality:
BMI analyst Bin Hui Ong warned that an expected El Niño event later this year will unleash adverse weather conditions across major rice-growing belts in Asia, including hotter, drier conditions. She noted this adds further upside to rice prices in the months ahead.
It is not just the threat of a severe El Niño event on analysts' radars. There are also continued elevated diesel and fertilizer costs tied to disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. This will further weigh on rice production yields across import-reliant Asia.
Rice farming is already highly fertilizer-intensive, while irrigation systems often depend on diesel-powered pumps.
In Vietnam's Vinh Long province, a farmer told Bloomberg that he plans to skip one of his usual three annual crops due to rising input costs and extreme heat.
Fertilizer prices in Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines have soared by nearly 50% since late February, according to the International Rice Research Institute.
The Philippines has warned that a strong El Niño could cut rice production by up to 700,000 tons, or 3.5% of its annual production target.
Already, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of globally traded food commodities, is trending upward and risks a further leg higher.
Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, warned in mid-March that disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz would spark shortages of energy and fertilizers, translating into higher food prices in "six to nine months from now."
Related:
We Are 6 Months From Global Food Shortages Because Farmers Are Facing A Quadruple Whammy Crisis
Everyone Talks About The Cost Of Gasoline... Soon Everyone Will Be Talking About The Cost Of Food
Last month, ZeroHedge Debates held a roundtable to ask: How bad will the food inflation mess get?
View here:
Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld outlined where food inflation is expected to hit the hardest, on a country-by-country level, this year (see report)
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2026 - 04:15By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com
A potential strike over wages could threaten smooth operations offshore Norway, Western Europe's top oil and gas producer, at a time when the world is scrambling for oil and gas supply amid the Middle East crisis.
Almost 8% of oil and gas workers offshore Norway could go on a strike from June 5 if trade union negotiations with industry fail to reach an agreement in a government-brokered mediation process, according to data from the labor unions on Monday.
More than 600 workers out of about 8,100 in total offshore Norway could begin a strike later this week, Reuters reported on Monday, citing the office of the government-appointed mediator.
Negotiations between the offshore industry and the workers organized in the Styrke, Lederne, and Safe trade unions continue.
At the end of last week, talks between Offshore Norway, which represents the oil industry in the wage talks, and the unions broke down.
Offshore Norway and the trade union Styrke held negotiations on May 27 on the onshore base agreements, which cover approximately 875 employees at supply bases along the Norwegian coast. But they failed to reach agreement on a new collective agreement for supply base employees.
“By evening, the parties remained too far apart, and the negotiations ended in a breakdown,” Offshore Norway said last Thursday, citing disagreements over advance payment of sickness benefits, parental benefits, and care benefits.
While talks continue, the possibility of a strike is looming over the oil and gas operations offshore Norway. It’s not clear how a strike would affect Norway’s oil and gas output, if at all.
Norway produces more than 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, with oil and gas nearly equally divided at 2 million boepd each. Norway is shipping crude as far as Asia, which struggles without a large part of the Middle Eastern supply. Norway is also Europe’s single biggest gas supplier, having replaced Russia in 2022 when Putin invaded Ukraine.
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2026 - 03:30More than 200 people are suspected to have died in Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, according to the latest figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 29.
The vast majority of these are in the DRC.
With no vaccine available for this strain, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern on May 17.
As Statista's Anna Fleck details below, Ebola is a severe and often fatal disease which is spread through direct contact with blood, secretions or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or through contact with contaminated surfaces.
There are six strains of Ebola, four of which are known to cause disease in humans, with varying fatality rates.
The Zaire ebolavirus, commonly known as just the Ebola disease, is the most lethal strain, with historical case fatality rates reaching up to 90 percent among those who have not been treated.
The Bundibugyo strain of the ebolavirus is currently causing outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
While the Zaire ebolavirus' basic R₀ value, which is the measure for counting how easily disease spreads, is lower than several other diseases, transmission through close contact makes it highly dangerous in healthcare settings.
According to data published by Encyclopædia Britannica, the average number of people infected by an individual with the Ebola disease is 1.5 to 2.5.
You will find more infographics at Statista
By contrast, the Omicron variant of Covid-19 had a basic R₀ value of spreading to eight to 10 people from every infected individual.
Measles is even more contagious, with a value ranging from 12 to 18.
It is spread by droplets released into the air by coughing and sneezing, with the virus able to remain in the air for up to two hours.
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2026 - 02:45Authored by Felicity Bradstock via OilPrice.com,
Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C are expected to play a major role in expanding Britain’s nuclear generation capacity and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
Both projects have faced concerns over delays and rising costs, with Hinkley Point C’s estimated price nearly doubling from its original forecast.
The U.K. aims to increase nuclear capacity to 24 GW by 2050, supported by large-scale reactors and emerging small modular reactor technologies.
The United Kingdom is focused on diversifying its energy mix away from fossil fuels to boost energy security and support decarbonisation aims.
This includes expanding its nuclear power capacity with the development of two large-scale nuclear plants - Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C, as well as developing small modular reactors (SMR).
However, its nuclear ambitions have not quite gone to plan, following years of delays and rising construction costs.
Sizewell C in Suffolk, eastern England, received its planning approval in 2022, was greenlit in 2025, and is expected to be operational by around the late 2030s. Investment for the development comes from the government, EDF Energy, Centrica, La Caisse, and Amber Infrastructure Limited. The project is expected to create 17,000 jobs during peak construction, including 7,900 in Suffolk. Once operational, the nuclear plant will produce up to 3.2 GW of clean electricity to power up to 6 million homes.
The government expects the plant to cost around £38 billion to develop and says it could provide around £2 billion a year in savings from the electricity system, compared to using other low-carbon technologies. However, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the National Audit Office (NAO), warned that “Sizewell C is a project of exceptional scale, complexity and significance for taxpayers… Experience from comparable nuclear projects in the UK and overseas highlights their vulnerability to delays and cost overruns.”
To date, the French nuclear firm EDF has invested £1.1 billion for a 12.5 percent stake in the project, while the U.K. government has invested £14.2 billion as the majority stakeholder. The NAO fears that if not properly managed, construction could run significantly over budget, as seen with other nuclear developments in recent years. This would make the break-even time much longer for consumers footing the construction costs through their taxes.
The NAO has, therefore, urged the government to mitigate the risk by using “close monitoring, greater transparency to parliament, and by securing value for money from the significant public and private investment”.
Lessons for building Sizewell C come from the construction of EDF’s Hinkley Point C plant, the first nuclear plant to be developed in the U.K. in over a decade. Hinkley Point C was approved by the U.K. government in 2013 and was greenlit in 2016. It is expected to begin operations in 2030, a year later than originally planned.
The project has faced several delays and price increases, the most recent of which was announced by EDF in February, adding a projected £2.16 billion. The plant is now expected to cost around £35 billion in total, almost double the original £18 billion 2016 estimate. EDF’s CEO, Bernard Fontana, said the new forecasts were “more realistic” and said that the 2030 launch of operations was “within a range that has not changed” since 2024, when it said operations would start between 2029 and 2031.
Once operational, Hinkley Point C is expected to provide around 7 percent of Britain’s electricity demand. While EDF’s two U.K. nuclear projects could help diversify the country’s energy mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, critics worry that the development of the two plants will face further delays and come in significantly over budget. EDF’s only other nuclear project using the same reactor type, at Flamanville in France, became fully operational in December after a delay of over 12 years; meanwhile, costs soared from an initial estimate of £2.85 billion to over £11.4 billion.
In 2025, the U.K. was deemed the “most expensive place in the world” to build nuclear power plants in a government review.
This was largely owing to “overly complex” bureaucracy around the sector. Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce said that “radical reset” of the rules around nuclear power could save Britain “tens of billions” in costs and reverse the industry’s “decline” in recent years. This suggests that the government must work to streamline bureaucratic processes without compromising safety and consider other cost-cutting options to avoid cost increases in nuclear development.
At the time, the Taskforce chair, John Fingleton, stated, “Our solutions are radical, but necessary. By simplifying regulation, we can maintain or enhance safety standards while finally delivering nuclear capacity safely, quickly, and affordably.”
In 2024, the U.K. government announced a target to increase the country’s nuclear power capacity fourfold, to 24 GW by 2050.
This will be achieved through the development of Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C, as well as through the deployment of innovative small-scale nuclear technologies.
This is an ambitious target, but through the development of a wide range of nuclear technologies, it could be achievable.
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2026 - 02:00