Since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in February 2022, the west has been trying to locate reliable sources of oil and gas to compensate for the missing Russian supplies, while Russia itself tried its most to prevent the west from achieving that. An additional and crucial factor  in this new global system of the oil market, is that Russia and China are seeking to accelerate plans to build a unified energy network in the Arab world, which will give both Chins and Russia very strong upper hands in the region. 

A crucial development has been the announcement of new oil and gas fields discoveries by western companies, including Chevron, which plans to start the first drills in the Red Sea region in the first half of 2024. 

The discovery came after an extensive scan and collection of geophysical data by the company, with support from the US government to maintain Egypt's role as an ally in the new world oil order. 

Egypt is indeed crucial for multiple reasons, and has always played a pioneering nationalist Arabic role in the Arab world, and contributed to a sort of cultural, political, and economic collaboration in the Arab world. 

China is very aware of that, has always sought, through its ally Iran, to attract Egypt to the concept of the unified electricity network, while Egypt has recently announced plans to transport gas inside Jordan with Egyptian expertise, while Iraw announced plans to export some crude as well to refineries in Jordan. 

Even as efforts are ongoing  to coordinate Arab electricity collaboration with Iranian and Chinese support, Chevron remains dominant in Egypt, and recently announced alongside Eni new gas field discoveries in Egypt , which are undergoing current analysis to gauge their output. 

Egypt remains a new crucial ally to the western world, with the UK Shell company also announcing recently the development of the tenth phase in developing and extracting gas from 17 major Egyptian fields, in a yet another sign of strong western influence. 

US stock indices were mixed on Thursday as investors assess latest data while monitoring upcoming corporate quarterly results.

Recent data showed US unemployment claims fell to 228 thousand last week from 237 thousand, while analysts expected an increase to 239 thousand. 

Philly Fed data showed the manufacturing index fell to minus 13.5 in July, missing estimates of minus 10.

Both Tesla and Netflix reported quarterly results yesterday for the second quarter of 2023, and the results were quite positive. 

On trading, Dow Jones rose 0.8%, or 237 points to 35,334, while S&P 500 fell 0.3%, or 13 points to 4,552, as NASDAQ dropped 1.1%, or 160 points to 14,199. 

Oil prices rose in European trade on Thursday on track for the second profit in three days, almost hitting three-month highs on hopes for US demand. 

US commercial crude stocks fell last week during the summer driving reason, with increasing fuel demand and speculation the Federal Reserve will end the cycle of policy tightening soon.

Global Oil Prices

US crude rose 0.6% to $75.71 a barrel, while Brent added 0.75% to $79.88 a barrel, with a session-low at $79.29.

US crude lost 0.6% on Wednesday, while Brent lost 0.3% under pressure from stronger dollar.

US Stocks

The Energy Information Administration reported a decline in US crude stocks by 700 thousand barrels to 457.4 million barrels last week, while analysts expected a drop of two million barrels.

Gasoline stocks fell 1.1 million barrels to 218.4 million barrels, as distillate stocks stabilized at 118.2 million barrels unchanged.

The Fed

The Federal Reserve is on track for a 0.25% interest rate hike next week, expected to be the last this cycle. 

The bank will likely announce a long pause in policy tightening in order to reduce negative pressures on US GDP, which in turn could boost fuel demand. 

Chinese Commitment 

China's government has vowed to expand local spending in the world's second largest economy, in turn boosting fuel demand. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most controversial technologies in the modern era. It represents the peak of human ambition to create intelligent systems capable of innate thinking, learning, and decision making.

AI provides immense opportunities to improve human lives and develop industries and provide services in more effective ways, however it also holds many challenges and concerns about security, privacy, social and economic impact.

In this article, we'll discuss the AI industry and the hopes surrounding it and the challenges facing it. We'll focus on understanding how to use such technologies in areas such as medicine, industry, and education, and we'll explore its potential impact on morality, politics, and the future of humanity.

The Hopes in AI

Medical Advancement: AI could represent a huge upgrade in the medical field, and could improve diagnoses and the discovery of diseases.

Intelligent systems could learn a large amount of medical data, analyze it much more effectively than humans ever could, and save more lives.

Industry Development: AI could cause a revolution in industries, and improve productivity and product quality, by the use of intelligent robots to do repetitive work.

Education: AI could be used to improve educational programs and modify them to suit each student, according to their own individual levels. 

Social Improvement: AI could be used to fix various social issues such as city management, healthcare services, limiting poverty. 

Challenges Facing AI: 

Security and Privacy: The use of AI has already raised concerns about security and privacy, as AI could be used to collect a huge amount of personal data, which could be misused. 

Rapid Technological Development: As AI develops rapidly, it could be very hard to develop skills and knowledge fast enough alongside it, which could lead to divided populations and increase tech separation between social classes. 

Misuse and Control: AI tech raises concerns about control and misuse by governments or major corporations, in turn hurting individual freedoms and democracy.

Marketplace: AI will no doubt cause a huge shift in the marketplace and will replace many traditional jobs, with questions now arising about how to deal with such a jobs crisis and retrain workers.  

Conclusion: AI is a monumental technology that carries so many opportunities and risks, it could transform entire fields, but such transformations must be studied carefully to avoid major risks and pitfalls.