Governments are tightening control over tungsten supplies, creating an opening for Almonty Industries as Western buyers seek alternatives to China's quasi-monopolistic market position on not just tungsten but rare earths. Tungsten and other critical materials underpin defense production, semiconductor manufacturing, AI data center buildouts, power grid upgrades and industrial tooling, basically some of the building blocks of the modern economy.
First, US banning tungsten scraps export
Second,UK government investing in Tungsten West
Third, Zimbabwe banning Tungsten concentrates export
Forth, Vietnam does the same
Who's next?! https://t.co/zmPs1K5rJM
The latest developments point to growing competition for shrinking available supply. The US has restricted tungsten scrap exports, the UK has backed Tungsten West with up to £71 million, and Zimbabwe has suspended exports of tungsten and antimony in all forms, including ores and concentrates. Vietnam is also considering restrictions on ore and concentrate shipments to support domestic processing. This all suggests resource nationalism will make deliverable tungsten ex-China even harder to source.
With China accounting for roughly 80% of global tungsten production and having throttled exports of this critical metal for over one year, resource nationalism will only broaden from here.
The supply crunch strengthens the investment case for producers, not necessarily speculative junior miners, because deliverable tungsten is urgently needed today ahead of a massive rearmament supercycle across the US and Europe. It also positions Almonty as the largest and only North America-based producer of conflict-free tungsten for the West.
Almonty began processing ore at its Sangdong mine in South Korea in June, marking its transition to scalable tungsten ore production, with throughput potentially increasing to 1.2 million tons of tungsten ore in 2027.
In July, Almonty expanded its agreement with Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders, extending the term to 21 years, increasing total contracted volumes by 40% and improving pricing by approximately 6.3%. This establishes a direct route into US industrial and defense supply chains.
Almonty's most recent presentation describes itself as becoming the leading Western tungsten producer following Sangdong's Phase II expansion and an extension at Portugal's operating Panasqueira mine.
Almonty is pursuing that higher-value processing opportunity through a planned South Korean tungsten oxide plant with an initial annual capacity of 4,000 tons, then expanding to 6,000 tons.
This new source of tungsten is urgently needed because, last week at the Jefferies Industrials Conference, MSC Industrial executive Martina McIsaac warned of a tungsten supply shock rippling through the company's supply chain and continuing to drive up industrial tooling costs.
McIsaac warned that the "ripples through the supply chain aren't over yet" and that the tungsten supply crunch will remain a major headache.
Almonty's opportunity is to establish an early lead in supplying the US and its allies with conflict-free tungsten, reinforcing our broader decoupling theme.
China's dominance of critical-material supply chains gives Beijing leverage over Washington, and any further tightening of export controls on critical materials would only reinforce the decoupling theme.
Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 16:15Authored by Michael Toth via RealClearEnergy,
Thousands of judges across the nation have sat through climate-science training and received literature from trusted federal bodies and scientific institutes. Those judges had every right to expect that the information they received was neutral, objective, settled science.
They were mistaken.
My latest research paper presents the first full taxonomy of a coordinated, multi-year campaign designed to shape how the American judiciary understands climate litigation. It documents how the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) built an extensive educational apparatus to train judges on climate issues - in the words of one session attendee - "from what would effectively be the plaintiff's side."
ELI routinely portrays itself as a neutral arbiter committed to "insightful and impartial analysis." In 2018, it launched the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) to provide judges with "authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science." Yet, as my report details, CJP shares multiple donors and advisors with Sher Edling LLP, the San Francisco-based law firm behind more than two dozen climate lawsuits against energy companies.
The training methodology CJP deployed is striking. The goal was not merely to educate judges about complex areas of law and science, but to encourage them to develop and execute their own climate "action plans." Slide presentations and emails obtained between ELI staff and attendees show judges being coached on how to spread that influence to colleagues on the bench.
Attendance forms show judges from California, Delaware, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and even Puerto Rico attended CJP trainings - all jurisdictions with active climate suits.
CJP's reach extended to established judicial and scientific gatekeepers. A 2020 CJP curriculum draft identified the Federal Judicial Center's (FJC) Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Extreme Weather Attribution Report as publications judges could rely upon. Both would go on to bear the project's fingerprints.
Released in 2025, the Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual included a climate change chapter for the first time. That section was later revealed to have lifted material heavily from the prior writings of a lawyer representing climate plaintiffs, Sher Edling's Michael Burger.
The chapters' listed authors, moreover, were both CJP presenters and the manual shared some of the same funders as the foundations bankrolling the public-nuisance suits targeting the energy sector. Following the public outcry over these conflicts of interest, the FJC and NAS took the unprecedented step of removing the climate chapter entirely.
That controversy, however, did not stop NAS, which initially pushed back against criticism of the manual, from releasing the Extreme Weather Attribution Report.
The committee behind the report was similarly one-sided in favor of climate plaintiffs, which may explain why the 253-page document lays out theories for attributing the effects of climate change to specific energy producers without seriously dealing with the inconvenient fact that greenhouse gas emissions are largely driven by global demand for energy.
When private interest groups slip past the adversarial process to tilt the scales on contested issues, the rule of law is compromised. The findings in my report demonstrate an urgent need for updated disclosure requirements surrounding judicial education programs. Trusted institutional gatekeepers like the Federal Judicial Center must institute rigorous vetting mechanisms to restore their credibility.
Ultimately, federal and state officials should investigate how ELI and CJP gained such unchecked access over the bench and establish strict guardrails to ensure this cannot happen again.
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Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 15:50Summary:
A planned meeting for Monday morning between several Gulf nations and Iran has been postponed. The meeting was supposed to hammer out a possible deal on a temporary shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.
"In the interests of consensus, the regional meeting set for tomorrow in Salalah has been postponed. We remain committed to fostering dialogue that supports stability and lasting cooperation in our region," Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi wrote on X late Sunday.
In the interests of consensus the regional meeting set for tomorrow in Salalah has been postponed.
We remain committed to fostering dialogue that supports stability and lasting cooperation in our region 🇧🇭 🇮🇷 🇮🇶 🇰🇼 🇴🇲 🇶🇦 🇸🇦 🇦🇪
— Badr Albusaidi - بدر البوسعيدي (@badralbusaidi) September 13, 2026
However, the post was deleted soon afterwards, leaving oil traders on tenterhooks.
Even before the delay, the proposed Hormuz deal offered little relief: Iran said the arrangement would not fully reopen Hormuz and that it would retain control over which vessels could transit.
Earlier this weekend, Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian discussed de-escalation plans at the BRICS summit in India.
Ahead of the futures open in New York, here's a snapshot of markets via the blockchain-based trading platform Hyperliquid:
UAE Meets With Iran Leaders As Tehran Teases Oman Shipping DealEncouraging diplomatic signals emerged from the Gulf area this weekend as Abu Dhabi's crown prince met Iran's president amid efforts to secure a deal allowing more vessel transits through the highly contested Strait of Hormuz. However, the hopeful signs of de-escalation were overshadowed by days of mounting threats to alternative export routes, with Iran-backed Houthis capturing a strategic island inside another maritime chokepoint in the southern Red Sea and drone attacks shutting Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline.
Bloomberg cites the UAE's state-run WAM news agency, which reported Sunday that Sheik Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan and President Masoud Pezeshkian discussed de-escalation plans on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in India. The meeting comes as Oman seeks broader de-escalation by bringing Iran and Gulf Cooperation Council members together to discuss shipping access to the Hormuz chokepoint.
Pezeshkian has called for "balanced and rational" stances throughout the six-month conflict, Anwar Gargash, senior diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, stated on X.
A separate Bloomberg report earlier Sunday cited Iranian lawmaker and secretary of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Behnam Saeedi, who said on state television that Iran and Oman will soon announce an understanding on shipping transits through the Hormuz chokepoint.
Saeedi said the deal to reopen the strait with a temporary route "won't amount to the reopening of the Strait." A full reopening remains contingent on several conditions, including an end to the US naval blockade against Iran.
A full reopening of the strait, which would mean the US giving up its stranglehold on Iran through economic sanctions and the naval blockade, remains highly unlikely in the near term, as US planners continue at full tilt on a pressure campaign to topple the regime in Tehran.
But a full reopening might not need to occur because Vitol CEO Russell Hardy stated last week that 10 million barrels a day are still transiting Hormuz, while Goldman commodities strategist Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby recently said that figure could be much higher, between 15 million and 16 million barrels a day.
This only suggests that Tehran has lost part of its leverage over Hormuz and likely explains why Tehran had to accelerate its Houthi rebels' efforts to gain more control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the southern Red Sea and launch attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline.
Simultaneous disruption of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz creates a two-sided squeeze for the West and Gulf producer allies: less energy can leave the Gulf, while tankers that can move face longer, more expensive journeys. It also threatens Saudi Arabia's Red Sea terminal.
The US pursuit of toppling Tehran through economic warfare may only ramp up after the Trump-Xi summit later this month, and Kharg Island may become a target after the midterm elections.
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Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 15:50