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Oil futures fell sharply Friday, with U.S. benchmark WTI ending at its lowest since April 17 and global benchmark Brent at its lowest since March 5 on signs the U.S. and Iran are nearing a deal to extend a ceasefire and open the Strait of Hormuz. WTI dropped 3.2% to $84.88 a barrel, while Brent dropped 3.4% to $87.33, well off their respective peaks near $120 and $126 a barrel in the early days of the Iran war.
The U.S., Iran and Pakistan, which is serving as chief mediator, all agreed Friday that a peace deal to end the war was nearly complete, the Wall Street Journal reported, though an initial agreement would only kick-start the hardest part of nuclear negotiations over the coming months.
Around 20% of global oil production moved through the strait prior to the war, but flows may not have been curtailed as sharply as previously thought, news reports said. Reuters noted that adding up all non-Iranian Gulf crude exports comes to around 12 million to 15 million barrels – a massive and historic supply shock. But tankers have escaped through the strait, dampening the impact. President Donald Trump this week said over 100 million barrels had passed through the waterway, while shipping data firm Kpler estimated 136 million barrels of non-Iranian crude had moved through Hormuz and Gulf of Oman export channels since the start of April through June 10, the report said. That would equal around 1.9 million barrels a day.
The International Energy Agency has estimated Gulf supply was down by 14 million barrels a day as a result of the war, or around 14% of world supply. But the figure may be closer to 5 million to 6 million barrels a day, the Reuters report said, citing sources at two major trading companies.
JBS to shut Pennsylvania meat plant: JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker and the largest U.S. beef processor by volume, announced Friday it plans to close a plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, in response to short cattle supplies. The Wall Street Journal said the single-shift plant employs about 1,700 people and can slaughter roughly 2,000 cattle a day – making it one of the company’s smaller facilities. JBS is also planning to close a smaller meat packaging plant in Memphis that employs about 200 people, the report said, while maintaining plans for a $150 million investment in its much larger Cactus, Texas, beef plant. The news appeared to spark some profit-taking in cattle futures late Friday.
45Z update gets warm greeting: The Trump administration’s release of an update to the GREET model used to determine the value of the Clean Fuel Production Tax credit, widely known as 45Z, won applause from biofuel groups on Friday. Agri-Pulse reported that the revised model released by the Energy Department incorporates changes made by Congress to the credit in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including the elimination of of indirect land-use change penalties on U.S. renewable fuels. Biofuel groups had feared that a delay in that change to later in the tax year would leave companies unable to claim the credit, the report said.
“The new model marks an important step toward building a regulatory regime that unleashes the full potential of 45Z. We applaud DOE for its work and look forward to continued work by Treasury and USDA to implement final 45Z regulations that set American farmers and ethanol producers on a path toward future success.” said Emily Skor, chief executive officer for Growth Energy, a leading ethanol trade group.
GREET stands for Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies.
The first trillionaire: SpaceX shares began trading on the stock market Friday, a day after a record-setting $75 billion initial public offering that dominated Wall Street’s attention this week. Mega-IPOs from AI powerhouses OpenAI and Anthropic are in the pipeline amid questions over how investors will digest the supply. Stock-market bulls are no doubt encouraged by a process that went smooth, with the stock rising 19% from its issue price of $135 a share on its first day.
That also appeared to be enough to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. As MarketWatch’s Tomi Kilgore explained: Musk owns 6.42 billion shares of SpaceX, including 849.5 million the Class A shares that started trading Friday. With the stock at $172.25, the value of shares rose by $238.45 billion since the $135 pricing of the IPO on Thursday. He also owns 717.1 million Tesla shares, which were up 0.3% on Friday to add $745.8 million to his wealth. Together, that makes Musk $239.2 billion richer today than yesterday – and added to his estimated net worth of $971 billion as of June 11, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and Musk is the world’s first trillionaire.
El Nino and Indian monsoon: India’s weather bureau on Friday said moderate to strong El Nino conditions are likely to prevail during the June-September monsoon season, Reuters reported, raising concerns about rainfall and crop prospects in the world’s most populous country. Neutral conditions in the Indian Ocean Dipole, a key climate pattern that influences rainfall in the region, are likely to persist through the end of the monsoon season, the bureau said in its monthly bulletin. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday announced that El Niño has developed in the tropical Pacific.
Your weekend read: Even on freak days when the sky pissed rain, the farms of Patrick Esch and Ed Dean Jagers remained bone-dry. Parched became payday. In one of the most madcap crop insurance scandals on record, Esch and Jagers turned moisture misery into a multi-million-dollar heist. The Colorado cowboys stole $6.5 million worth of raindrops.
The farming duo manipulated U.S. weather—literally. They plugged, tipped, covered, and destroyed federal rain gauges in Colorado and Kansas, ensuring NOAA weather stations recorded zero-level rainfall. The result? A windfall in illicit gain.
Before landing in USDA crosshairs, via a bizarre narrative more fitting for Jerry Springer, rather than Taylor Sheridan, Esch and Jagers set the fuse on a powder keg of family intrigue, truck-stop hijinks, cash bribes, snitches, whistleblowers, prison escapes, and dead bodies…
Don’t miss Chris Bennett’s riveting tale of a real-life ag crime caper: Rain Robbers: How Four Farmers Faked a Drought and Stole Millions in Crop Insurance