Energy is the one price that hides inside every other price. A barrel of crude, a therm of gas, the figure on the forecourt: they quietly set the cost of the food you buy, the parcel that arrives, the heating you'd rather not think about in January. My take: the interesting story in energy right now isn't the day's oil price at all. It's two slower things happening underneath it. Renewables have quietly become the cheapest electricity most of the world has ever built, and a growing slice of the oil trade has started settling in currencies that aren't the dollar.
01 · THE FOSSIL BASELINE
Three fuels on one scale. Note how gas (the spikiest line) ran away from the rest in 2022, then fell back.
Learn more: WTI crude · Henry Hub gas · US gasoline (FRED)
02 · THE CROSSOVER
Strip out the politics and put every way of generating a megawatt-hour on the same axis: its levelised cost, the all-in price over a plant's life. A decade ago that comparison was a rout in favour of fossil fuels. It isn't any more.
Green = renewable, red = fossil. Lower is cheaper. Solar and onshore wind now sit below new coal and gas.
Learn more: IRENA renewable cost report · Lazard LCOE+
03 · THE CURRENCY OF OIL
For fifty years almost every barrel was priced and paid for in dollars; that "petrodollar" plumbing is a big part of why the dollar runs the world. It's still overwhelmingly true. But since 2022 a measurable slice of the oil trade has started settling in yuan, rupees and dirhams instead, and the line only points one way.
There is no official figure for this, so read it as a trend rather than a precise number. The drivers are Russia's pivot to Asian buyers and growing yuan-settled cargoes.
Learn more: BIS on currency invoicing · estimates compiled from JPMorgan and Reuters reporting
04 · THE VERDICT
Put the day's barrel, the falling cost curve and the currency drift together, and a longer story comes into focus.