How one massive gas field shapes the global stakes of conflict in the Middle East

By Mark Ireland, Senior Lecturer in Energy Geoscience, Newcastle University

The Middle East plays a central role in global energy and therefore global markets. As tensions escalate and the strait of Hormuz, a key trade route, faces disruption, headlines assessing the wider impact of the Iranian conflict often centre on oil and gas supply.

There’s one underlying reason that so many oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes pass through the strait, and that Middle East conflict shakes global energy markets. That reason is a geological one: an extraordinary concentration…

Read complete article

~	Brazilian jiu-jitsu is having its #MeToo moment

~	Front lines of humor: Dark humor voices Ukrainians’ hopes for victory

~	Far from random, China’s global port network is clustering near the world’s riskiest trade routes

~	AI and 3D printing help researchers create heat- and pressure-resistant materials for aerospace and defense applications

~	With Artemis II facing delays, NASA announces big structural changes to the lunar program

~	I study why zebrafish larva prefer to circle left or right, to understand how and why human brains encode right- and left-handedness

~	When unpaid cooking, cleaning and child care get a dollar value, income inequality in the US shrinks – but the gap has grown since 1965

~	Trauma patients recover faster when medical teams know each other well, new study finds

~	Housing First helps people find permanent homes in Detroit − but HUD plans to divert funds to short-term solutions

~	Congress once fought to limit a president’s war powers − more than 50 years later, its successors are less willing to assert their authority