Diesel hits a record, data centres wait for power, and war cuts the internet

Diesel in the United States reached a record above $6.50 a gallon this week. Only nine tankers crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, against a ten-day average of 18, and a barrel of oil ended the week near $105.

A farmer in Pennsylvania pays about $6 a gallon and his combine harvester burns 150 gallons a day. France extended fuel subsidies for farmers and fishermen to the end of the year, and Germany renewed a 17-cent-a-litre cut in fuel tax from 1 October.

India ordered 112 factory-owned coal plants to run flat out from 1 October because power demand is surging. Bangladesh raised fuel prices by up to 17.4%, and more than half of its surveyed clothing factories have lost orders to gas and power shortages.

Iran says the Strait of Hormuz stays shut until every one of its conditions is met. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump turned down Iran's seven-day plan to reopen it and told aides he expects to bomb Iran again after the election on 3 November.

Oracle told the builder of Project Jupiter, an $18 billion data centre in New Mexico, that it may delay its payments because the gas pipeline and permits are late. Investors would not buy shares in SB Energy, the company that supplies OpenAI's power, at a price of $50 billion, because its main customer is one company.

Nvidia, the chipmaker, is buying shares in SB Energy at 10% below the price that company had planned for its stock market listing, which it has now delayed. In Alberta, Canada, more than 100 data centres are proposed, and a poll found 68% of Canadians would oppose one near them.

Calls and internet stopped across Tigray, a region of Ethiopia, late on Thursday as fighting with the government resumed. Russian strikes on data centres cut the internet to about 100,000 households around Kyiv on Wednesday, and five people died in the city.

Utels, an internet provider in Kyiv whose main data centre lost power in the strikes, had most of its customers back online within about two hours. Datagroup, another provider whose centre was hit, kept running from backup sites.

Ethio Telecom, the state phone company, cut Tigray off from calls and the internet as the fighting returned. The rest of Ethiopia stayed connected.

Official aid from rich donor countries fell 23% last year, the steepest drop on record. Twenty times more people are now crossing from Sudan into Chad, and the UN refugee agency says its money is not keeping up.

The UN refugee agency has received 18% of the $1.6 billion it needs for Sudan this year, as 400 people a day cross into Chad. A new fund for child malnutrition, Operation End Starvation, says it needs seventeen times its $100 million to buy enough food.