Peak Oil Panic And The Shift To Sustainable Energy

Plus: More Peril for The Paramount Deal for Warner Bros.

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Cheddar's Big Business This Week
August 13, 2026

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Is this the top for oil? Prices may rise and fall as president Donald Trump spars with Iran’s leadership over the Strait of Hormuz, but around the world, governments, companies and consumers are getting the message: Oil is too volatile an energy resource to depend on. China leads the pack here, having stocked up oil reserves when Trump first suggested he might attack Iran again, but countries across the globe are cutting their dependence on oil.

The International Energy Agency says it expects global oil demand to fall by 420,000 barrels a day this year, and OPEC’s crude production dropped by 1.73 million barrels a day to 18.98 million in April, the latest data available. 

“We’ve hit the demand peak,” says Carolyn Kissane, associate professor and founder of the Global Energy, Climate and Sustainability Lab at New York University. The Iran War, says Kissane, has impressed on many countries just how vulnerable they are to oil shocks. “The countries that have been very dependent on oil [know] that as they reduce that dependency over time, they will be better off because they will be less vulnerable to the next oil crisis.”

And that means big changes for the world’s oil producers. “Do we need to have a market that's producing 106 million barrels a day? I would say we do not,” says Kissane. The head of Saudi Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, said this week that the world has lost 2.6 billion barrels of production, or 25 days worth of oil, since the war began. 

“Oil has made such a mess out of itself because of the Strait of Hormuz that the top 60 oil ministries around the world who are in charge of importing oil for their countries are saying, ‘you know, we want to get off this oil thing because it's not reliable,’” said Jigar Shah, an energy strategist and host of the podcast Energy Empire. “Before that it was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and before that it was something else.” 

But it’s not that global energy demand is falling, quite the opposite. Global energy demand grew 1.3% in 2025, with electricity growing at more than 2.5%, according to the IEA. “We're not hitting peak oil because we're using less energy, we're hitting peak oil because people finally say, ‘enough, I don't want to keep investing in that supply chain when they keep letting me down,’” said Shah.

That’s pushed a permanent shift in energy sourcing, notes Shah. 

“What's happened since 2021 is that solar has gone from 5% to 13% of the U.S. grid, and it’s even gone from zero, basically, to 25% of Pakistan's grid,” he said. “A lot of these solutions have now gotten to the point where they're quite successful. And so we're at a point now where, with the Strait of Hormuz, people took the very uncomfortable, very unpopular decision to really figure out how to greatly expand electric vehicles, greatly expand all these other things, because they had no choice.”

In fact, the war has been great news for electric vehicle makers, especially in China. After oversaturating their home market, fleets of BYD EV ‘s were lining China’s docks, slowly aging in the sun. Now, China’s EV makers are exporting their way out of the crisis. China’s EV exports rose 120% in the first half of 2026 from last year, and  EV sales have doubled in Brazil, Australia, Korea and Vietnam since the war began. EV sales in Colombia have quadrupled, based on IEA data.

President Donald Trump may have resisted the shift to clean energy in the U.S. but ironically, perhaps, his foreign policy in Iran may have accelerated it both there and around the world.

—Peter S. Green

Big Businesses mentioned this week

This week, big business!

The Usual Suspects

  • Paramount’s Possible Pullout? Sometimes when you’re walking a tightrope, the best thing to do is move the rope, because getting off can be costly. Just ask David Ellison, whose Paramount Skydance $PSKY ( ▲ 5.21% ) (market cap $10.6 billion this week, $8.7 billion two weeks ago) is trying to close its deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery $WBD ( ▲ 0.36% ) for $111 billion, including debt (about $87 billion in cash and stock). Now, to prolong the metaphor, there’s a stiff wind blowing that could knock Ellison off the highwire: A lawsuit by 12 state attorneys general seeking to block or restructure the deal to protect Hollywood, and keep Ellison from adding WBD’s CNN news division to Paramount's right-shifted CBS News. A trial is set for March, but the delays are costly. For each quarter the deal is delayed past its original September closing date, Ellison has to pay WBD shareholders about $650 million. And if he can’t close the deal by June, he has to pay WBD a $7 billion breakup fee. That’s on top of the $2.8 billion Ellison already paid Netflix to walk away from its plan to buy Warner. Ellison and his father, Oracle $ORCL ( ▲ 1.92% ) founder Larry, are close friends with President Trump, and federal regulators approved the deal within weeks. But they didn’t count on the state AGs. “It doesn’t do you any good to say you cozied up with the Trump administration and it’s going to be fine,” attorney Peter Brann told Variety. “Someone miscalculated about this pretty seriously.” Now, Ellison’s told Paramount’s top dogs that if he can’t reach a settlement with the AGs by October he’ll move out of reach, to Georgia, Tennessee or Texas, which have all offered tax incentives. California AG Rob Bonta called that “blackmail.”

  • If at first you don’t succeed, buy the Lakers. Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, is back with another multi-billion-dollar sports deal. This time he’s partnering with ex-Disney $DIS ( ▲ 1.6% ) CEO Bob Iger in a deal to take over the Los Angeles Lakers, less than two weeks after his failed bid to buy a chunk of the revenue from soccer governing body FIFA, which was torpedoed by FIFA members who complained the deal was a secret stitchup aimed at enriching FIFA chair Gianni Infantino and investors, including Kushner. Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter is selling control of the Lakers just a year after he bought it for about $10 billion from the Buss family, which had owned the Lakers since 1979. The Kushner-Iger deal values the Lakers at $12.5 billion, and still needs NBA approval. Walter is facing a federal investigation of private credit deals tied to his financial empire. He also owns the L.A. Dodgers and has a stake in English Premier League soccer team Chelsea. Chelsea rival Liverpool may also have a new owner: Amazon $AMZN ( ▼ 0.71% ) chief Jeff Bezos is part of a consortium looking to buy a piece of the team from Boston Red Sox owner John Henry’s Fenway Sports Group. All that cash makes the New York Yankees’ new deal with PE firm Apollo’s sports unit seem like small change. The $2.6 billion financing agreement combines credit and equity, refinancing some of the Bronx Bombers’ debt and giving it more capital to grow. Yankees parent company Yankee Global Enterprises, which also owns stakes in soccer teams NYC FC and Italy’s AC Milan, stays in the hands of the Steinbrenner family. 

  • Boeing bits and pieces: After losing $428 million in the second quarter (down from $612 million the year before), Boeing $BA ( ▼ 0.38% ) is stepping up its house-cleaing operations to focus on building some of the hundreds of airliners it has on backorder. Archer Aviaiton $ACHR ( ▲ 9.62% ) will acquire Boeing’s self-flying air taxi project, Wisk, into which Boeing has already sunk at least $450 million, along with air-traffic software provider SkyGrid and drone maker Insitu. Boeing will get a 16.5% stake in Archer and access to Wisk’s tech stack. Shares in Boeing are up more than 7% in the past month, but they are nearly flat over the past 5 years. 

  • Bezos v. Mamdani: New York City’s Democratic Socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani may have taken a temporary legal hit on his plans to tax absentee homeowners, but he’s taking on arch-capitalist Jeff Bezos at the very core of Amazon’s $AMZN ( ▼ 0.71% ) success. A proposed law backed by Mamdani would force big delivery operators like Amazon and Fedex $FDX ( ▲ 4.06% ) to employ their delivery people directly, rather than relying on subcontractors who often pay less than a living wage. But the gig economy, where most workers get few benefits, is the model that built Amazon, and the company is threatening to move its distribution centers outside the city. “Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting,” Mamdani said in a pointed statement.

  • Where’s the Beef? Pretty soon it will be in the pocket of investor Nelson Peltz and his Trian Fund Management, if Peltz wins his bid to take the pig-tailed burger chain Wendy's $WEN ( ▲ 0.35% ) private. Peltz says Wendy’s is undervalued, and wants to use his 16% stake to buy out the 7,000-store burger chain, in league with Abu Dhabi-based BlueFive Capital and Wendy’s franchisee Flynn Group. With an enterprise value of $3.9 billion and a market cap of just $1.6 billion, Peltz has a point. Wendy’s shares are down about 20% in the past 12 months, as the cost of beef and labor hit sales and margins. But shares gazoomed 16% on Wednesday, after the Financial Times first reported the planned buyout. 

  • Just keep peddling: After seven years, Peloton $PTON ( ▲ 2.21% ) has finally made an annual profit, earning $63.2 million on  revenue of $608 million. A year ago, the peddle-to-stay-slim company lost $118.9 million on $607 million in revenue. But the price hikes that helped it make a profit have damped long-term sales expectations, as the company reported it lost 247,000 subscribers to its connected fitness app in the past year,  down to 5.5 million users. Shares tumbled 13% on the news. They’re down 37% for the past 12 months, and 95% from a pandemic-era high. 

  • Placating the Beast: America’s top banks are eager to keep Presdient Donald Trump from rolling back his financial deregulation plans, or hitting them with lawsuits. That seems to be why Bank of America $BAC ( ▼ 1.21% ) has annloucned a $250 billion plan to fund U.S. infrastructure growth over the next 12 months, joining JP Morgan Chase $JPM ( ▼ 0.49% ) , which last year annoloucned a 10-year $1.5 trillion plan to invest in strategic sectors, and Morgan Stanley’s $MS ( ▲ 0.39% ) own $1.5 trillion plan, annlocuned this week. BofA may have felt a sudden urgency, after it ocuntered Trump’s claims that it closed his accounts in 2021 because the bank was “woke” and sought to score political points with the Biden Adminsitration. BofA’s response, which may have left the bank feeling politically exposed: The closures came after careful review by the bank’s money-laundering experts. Yikes!

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The Short Stack

  • Entourage on Broadway? Ari Emanuel, the loud-talking Hollywood agent (and brother of Chicago ex-Mayor Rom Emanuel) who inspired Entourage’s Ari Gold (played by Jeremy Piven) is coming to Broadway.  Emanuel’s Mari Group is in “advanced” talks to buy Broadway and London West End theater-owner ATG for $6 billion from Providence Equity Partners. Emanuel last year beat out ATG to buy TodayTix, a show ticketing platform. Emanuel is also chair of talent agency WME, repping Oprah Winfrey, and CEO of TKO Group $TKO ( ▲ 2.27% ) , which owns martial arts companies UFC and WEE. Broadway theaters are seeing a resurgence after Covid shut them for months. It’s being led by imports from London, including ATG’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and new shows with songs by Prince and Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, many of them with budgets hitting $30 million, Broadway Journal reports. ATG owns seven Broadway theaters and 10 in London. 

  • Cluck cluck: A surplus of chicken is driving down prices, as poultry processors stagger under a bad bet that U.S. consumers would swap pricier beef steak for cheaper chicken. Instead, consumer habits, and the lack of a flock-killing epidemic this year, means the chicken market is oversupplied, and prices are falling. Wholesale prices for chicken breasts are down 37% in a year, FactSet reported, and those weaker prices have weighed on profit margins, the Wall Street Journal reports. Second-quarter profit for Pilgrim’s Pride $PPC ( ▲ 2.76% ) fell 96% to $13.4 million. Its shares are down 45% in the past year. Tyson $TSN ( ▲ 1.04% ) shares are down 18% since a May peak, and 2.5% in the past 12 months. 

  • Private equity doldrums: Never mind the megadeals and IPOs, from Paramount $PSKY ( ▲ 5.21% ) ’s $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. $WBD ( ▲ 0.36% ) , or SpaceX’s $87 billion IPO $SPCX ( ▼ 3.33% ) , private equity firms, which make most of their money buying and selling smaller companies, are sitting on an unprecedented pile of firms they’d like to sell, with some 33,575 companies in their portfolios, the New York Times reports. That’s bad news for their investors, including pension funds that got used to above-market PE returns. But in the past four years, PE firms have generated annual returns of 6.4%, well below the S&P 500’s 15.2%. The problem: potential overreach by PE investors who’ve failed to make their investments profitable. “Private equity is stuck because those companies have failed to fulfill their value promise,” Andrew Milgram, CIO at Marblegate Asset Management, told the Times. On the other hand, as the Wall Street Journal reports, “this summer’s hottest arm candy is a private equity boyfriend.”

  • Prediction market pushback: The New York City Council is investigating prediction markets Kalshi $KALSZZX ( ▼ 0.04% ) , Polymarket $PLYRZZX ( ▲ 0.26% ) , Coinbase $COIN ( ▲ 3.26% ) and Gemini Titan for allegedly using deceptive advertising and targeting minors. It’s the latest salvo in efforts from local and state authorities to rein in the betting platforms. One example cited by the Council was a set of Polymarket ads posting fake trades that appeared to promote insider trading and target minors. A week ago, New York state Attorney general Letitia James sued Kalshi for illegally operating a “gambling app.” This week, flight-tracking platform Flight-Aware sued Kalshi for allegedly using its data without permission or payment, and warned gamblers could try to manipulate air traffic for profit, citing suspected tampering with a weather station at a Paris airport. In Washington, nine Democratic senators wrote to CFTC chair Micahel Selig, warning that bets on wildfires now raging in California and Oregon could incentivize people to set fires. It cited over $1 million in fire-related bets during last year’s California wildfires. 

  • The Circularity Chronicles: Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 0.54% ) s laying off its bets onto Wall Street, with an agreement with major banks and investment groups to fund $500 billion worth of AI buildout, a.k.a. a ton of Nvidia chips. Up to now, Nvidia has been supplying the chips to many of its data center customers for a stake in the customer or a promise of future revenue. Now that circular financing is taking another massive step, adding more debt to the market, and shifting systemic risk from Nvidia to Wall Street. Hyperscalers are expected invest $3.5 trillion into AI by the end of 2028, and Wall Street wants in on it. “We need to raise this money as fast as possible,” Larry Fink, the C.E.O. of BlackRock $BLK ( ▲ 2.18% ) , which along with Apollo $APO ( ▲ 3.64% ) , Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 0.5% ) and KKR $KKR ( ▲ 3.87% ) are backing the deal. Nvidia’s poor cousin, chipmaker Intel $INTL ( ▲ 0.23% ) , says it’s only looking to raise $20 billion in a stick offering this week. That’s up from the $15 billion it earlier announced.

Trumplandia

  • Truth hurts. For all the money Donald Trump has made as president (he has reported about $2 billion since taking office), one venture has been a consistent money-loser: Trump Media and Technology Group $DJT ( ▲ 0.36% ) , the parent of Truth Social, Trump's personal social media platform. TMTG lost $238 million in the second quarter alone, more than 10 times its $20 million loss a year ago. Sure there are a few high-frequency trading firms (more than 10, now the company says) paying $60,000 to $100,000 a month for the firehose from Truth Social, hoping milliseconds of advance access can help them make millions, in a move whose legality is being questioned in Congress. But the biggest problem is having to reprice a lot of its digital assets, including many that were pledged as collateral for loans down to their real market value. The company only had revenue of $1.7 million, although that was up 89% from last year. But the biggest problem is that fewer people are following Trump’s posts: Daily active users dropped to 261,000 in July from 436,000 a year earlier. TMTG says it plans to merge with TAE Technologies, $TAETZZX ( ▼ 0.18% ) which says it will have a nuclear fusion plant running by 2031. Meanwhile, shares in TMTG are down 54% in the past year.

(Google)

Elon’s World

  • Rockets go up. And up? Isaac Newton would have been flummoxed. How do SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 3.33% ) shares defy the laws of gravity? The consensus view was that with massive amounts of shares hitting the market as lockups ended and early investors would cash out, the stock was set to fall even further. Yet, on Thursday morning they were trading at $142, up 30% since last Wedensday’s all-time low closing at 108.27. That’s a remarkable recovery for shares sold at $135 in the IPO and near $160 on their first day of trading. Sure it’s far off the $220 peak they hit within five days of opening, but what’s going on? SpaceX’s unremarkable AI offering, its dream of putting a million earthlings on Mars, and plans for hundreds of thousands of low-orbit satellites creating a giant AI and mobile phone service all still seem like pipe dreams. It would take 15,000 launches a year (up from 325 last year) to get all those satellites into orbit, at which point low-Earth orbit may be too crowded, and rocket fuel could massively compound global warming gases, reports Space.com. But for now, more investors still want a piece of the Musk dream. On Wedensday, Musk told SpaceX employees: “We must win in AI because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots.” And for Elon himself, that dream is getting bigger. As the Wall Street Journal reports, under a little-noticed provision in Musk's contract, the trillion-dollar payday offered by Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 3.8% ) might be in sight if the company is sold…to Space X. And any decision to buy Tesla would be made by Musk. “This $1 trillion—that was supposed to be a stretch,” Mary Ellen Carter, who studies executive pay at Boston College, told the Journal. “It turns out it isn’t really that hard. All you have to do is be bought.” By your other company. It’s almost as if he’d planned this all along. Musk also promised any SpaceX employee who wants to go to the moon that they would be able to go to the moon in an all-hands meeting recently. “You have my word,” he said, to huge applause.

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Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story. Email him here.