Steve LeVine

Israel’s cabinet has finally approved a big increase in natural gas drilling in the east Mediterranean. Now, the full Knesset must sign off on it. While the agreement seems likely, the months of tussling that proceeded it means the drillers could be forgiven if they were to develop second thoughts about fully committing to plans to invest $1.5 billion over the next two years.

After years of accidents, Shell today (Aug. 17) received a final okay to drill for oil in the depths of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. The approval from the Obama administration means that Shell can drill deep under the Chukchi Sea in an area that may contain as many as 15 billion barrels of oil.

The latest bout of Teslamania–the carmaker’s stock is up more than 9% in 2015—is due to CEO Elon Musk offering another $642 million in company shares. No matter that he will be even later with his electric SUV crossover, and will sell fewer cars this year than he promised.

Over the last five years, few large companies on the planet have been as existentially challenged as BP. Yet, the hits keep coming, often outsized and self-inflicted.

This post has been updated.

In the 1970s, a fury broke out in the United States: Air France and British Airways had flown maiden flights of their jointly developed supersonic Concorde jet, and critics demanded to know how the French and British had stolen a march on a new technology expected to produce $25 billion in sales by 1990. Making the blow even worse—the Soviets had rubbed salt in the wound by flying their own supersonic jet, the TU-144, to Paris in 1971.

Today, it’s hard to grasp just how big a deal the Suez Canal was in its day and for decades beyond—although the illustration above, painted the day of the canal’s inauguration in 1869, gives some indication. In effect it was transportation’s version of the Internet: Along with the opening of the Panama Canal 45 years later, the Suez transformed the economics of making products, and of selling and buying them, building national economies in the process. At once, you could move stuff between Europe and Asia much faster, and much cheaper.

A bomb blast in Turkey today (Aug. 4) damaged a pipeline that takes natural gas to Turkey from a BP-operated field in Azerbaijan. No one was reported injured, but the explosion has again undermined Washington’s energy pipeline strategy to weaken Russia’s hold on its neighbors.

A nightmare scenario may be unfolding for Russia and some OPEC members: Low oil prices, rather than being a fast way to hobble upstart US shale oil, seem likely to linger for quite a while longer, perhaps well into next year and beyond.

Amid one of the fiercest lobbying wars on any foreign issue in memory, analysts and bettors say the odds are strong that the Iran nuclear deal will survive its vote in Congress.

Moscow has escalated its brinksmanship with the West, reopening a monumental 1990s clash over an oil pipeline that it fought and lost with the United States.

It can be startling when iconic brands go on the sale block—all the more so when the buyer is from another country, and still more when the price tag seems pegged to factors divorced from financial reality. With yesterday’s $1.3 billion sale of the venerable Financial Times to Japanese media firm Nikkei, we get the full dose of disorientation—but also a surprisingly encouraging outcome.

Most analysts expect Iran to be able to step up its oil production only next year in the wake of its nuclear agreement with world powers. By that reckoning, any big new plunge in oil prices may also wait until at least the first few months of 2016.

In his latest product announcement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke with typical verbal extravagance—fresh upgrades, he said in the July 17 media call, would propel the already-sleek Tesla S electric even further and do so at a “ludicrous” speed.

The accord reached this morning between world powers and Iran had to happen.

A nuclear deal would lift a debilitating weight on Iran’s economy and—if Tehran so chose—improve relations with the rest of the world. It would have a dramatic impact in the US, too, allowing Americans—if they so chose—to begin the process of moving on from a 36-year-old confrontation with Tehran.

We have two firm rules at home: 1) Have fun; and 2) Don’t get killed while doing so. They’ve worked well enough: Our two girls have had their share of chosen amusements, and survived with only the odd broken bone.

This story has been updated with reports that diplomats have reached provisional agreement and will announce a deal Monday (July 13), and with oil prices consequently dropping in early Asian trading. 

In what many observers believe are the closing hours of the two-year-long talks, one of Iran’s final demands is the lifting of a UN embargo on the sale of conventional weaponry, along with sanctions on Tehran’s development of ballistic missiles. If this is the endgame, then start counting Russian president Vladimir Putin among the winners.

Critics say Iran has out-maneuvered the outside world for almost two years, winning concession after concession in nuclear talks while itself giving away little. If so, the US appears to have turned the tables at a key juncture in the final negotiating round.

Talks to end Iran’s long global ostracism were prolonged past an unofficial deadline today, but the word was conveyed by a new diplomatic method: a hotel memo extending room reservations.

This story has been updated to show that the talks have been extended past the July 9 deadline.

The US Supreme Court today backed away from delivering president Barack Obama another big triumph, ruling against one of his primary tools to combat climate change.

Businesses around the world are preparing for the largest geopolitically triggered financial bonanza since the 1991 Soviet breakup: Iran’s reopening for business.