Zero Hedge

India's Fuel Exports Set To Soar In July As Refining Margins Jump

India's Fuel Exports Set To Soar In July As Refining Margins Jump

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

India is on track to export the highest volume of refined petroleum products in months as refining margins have jumped with the re-escalation of the Middle East conflict.

India is estimated to ship as many as 1.55 million barrels per day (bpd) of light and middle distillates in July, per data by commodity analysts Kpler cited by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell.

The July volumes would be nearly double the fuel export volumes of just 866,000 bpd in May, when the Strait of Hormuz crisis hit crude supplies to India and the rest of Asia. In May, India saw its lowest fuel exports in four years.

The tightening fuel markets in Asia and the rest of the world added to a renewed rally in refining margins after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire collapsed two weeks ago. This has encouraged Indian refiners to ramp up refined petroleum exports.

The expected volumes in July would be the second-highest level in Kpler’s data series dating back to 2017.

Earlier this month, Kpler estimated that India’s refined petroleum exports would hit in July the highest level since September 2025 as refiners race to capture soaring margins amid tight Asian fuel markets.

India’s high export levels in July could ease some of the pressure on the Asian fuel market, but not all of it, as crude supplies from the Middle East are once again at high risk of delay.

Asian refiners that had bet on a flood of crude supply from the Middle East in August are now faced with potential delays in deliveries amid the re-escalation of hostilities, which could thwart their plans to ramp up crude processing rates in the coming weeks.

Refiners in the U.S. and Europe are operating at near capacity, but those in Asia may not see the expected increase in throughput now that the July and August loadings and delivery schedules have been upended by the re-escalation of the Middle East conflict.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 06:30

Deaths Now Outnumber Births In 17 US States

Deaths Now Outnumber Births In 17 US States

Natural population growth is slowing across much of America.

According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates, 17 states recorded more deaths than births between July 2024 and July 2025, up from only four states during much of the 2010s.

Using U.S. Census Bureau data, Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld created this map showing natural population change in every state.

Because the measure excludes domestic and international migration, it highlights where population growth increasingly depends on people moving in.

Natural Population Change by State

The table below ranks every state by natural population change between July 2024 and July 2025, highlighting where births continued to outpace deaths—and where they no longer did.

State Natural Population Change
Jul 2024–Jul 2025 Pennsylvania -10,708 West Virginia -7,887 Maine -5,019 Michigan -4,998 Oregon -3,764 Mississippi -2,607 Alabama -2,188 New Hampshire -2,167 New Mexico -1,885 Vermont -1,769 Florida -1,333 Arkansas -1,224 Ohio -729 Delaware -554 Rhode Island -304 Montana -90 Kentucky -83 Missouri 177 Wyoming 295 South Carolina 564 Wisconsin 1,161 Hawaii 2,024 Connecticut 2,283 District of Columbia 2,516 Oklahoma 2,559 South Dakota 2,605 North Dakota 2,630 Louisiana 2,774 Iowa 2,949 Nevada 3,051 Alaska 3,308 Tennessee 3,597 Kansas 4,951 Nebraska 6,136 Idaho 6,900 Massachusetts 8,419 Indiana 8,561 Illinois 10,903 Maryland 11,444 Minnesota 12,071 Virginia 13,817 North Carolina 15,129 Washington 17,230 Colorado 20,608 Utah 24,961 New Jersey 26,023 Georgia 28,631 Arizona 20,914 New York 42,815 California 109,715 Texas 157,711

Pennsylvania recorded the nation’s largest natural decline (-10.7K), followed by West Virginia, Maine, and Michigan. Most states with natural decreases were concentrated in the Northeast and Appalachia, regions that include several states with some of the country’s oldest populations.

Florida also recorded more deaths than births, yet remained one of America’s fastest-growing states because of migration.

The South remained the engine of natural population growth. Texas (+158K), Georgia (+29K), and North Carolina (+15K) posted strong gains. California (+110K) and New York (+43K) also recorded far more births than deaths despite slower overall population growth.

America’s Population Is Increasingly Shaped by Migration

Natural population change tells only part of the story.

Several states with more deaths than births, including Florida, Maine, and Pennsylvania, can still grow overall when migration offsets their natural decline. Others continue losing population even after attracting newcomers.

Meanwhile, states such as Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona benefit from both natural population growth and migration, helping drive some of the country’s fastest population gains.

As America’s population ages and birth rates remain historically low, natural population growth is becoming less common. For a growing number of states, migration—not births—is now the primary driver of population growth, making migration trends increasingly important to their long-term demographic outlook.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on immigration’s role in U.S. population growth by state.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 05:45

The Multipolaristas' Are China-Maxxing

The Multipolaristas' Are China-Maxxing

Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

Let’s consider the arguments of those who advocate global governance, the people whom Hrvoje Morić identifies as the Multipolaristas. They are often engaged in China-maxxing and are, whether they know it or not, essentially serving as propagandists for the global oligarchy.

Research conducted by analysts working for the South China Morning Post (SCMP)—an English-speaking, Western-aligned Chinese news outlet—suggests that, between 2015 and 2025, a notable shift occurred in the way China and its government were portrayed by the leading Western media organisations.

Chief analyst Jianlu Bi, who is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Policy Studies and a research fellow at the Charhar Institute in Beijing, wrote:

[N]early 70 per cent of stories covering China’s economy, technology or environment in 2019 had a negative tone [but] by 2025, the share of negative stories dropped to around 40 per cent, along with an increase in neutral coverage across all categories and positive coverage of the [Chinese] economy.

This notable Western media narrative shift is part of a wider trend that can be described as “China-maxxing.” With outlets like The Economist, the Financial Times, and The New York Times—all previously known for their staunch anti-China propagandanow quite regularly extolling the virtues of China and, most notably, its economy, “China-maxxing” is an identifiable phenomenon.

The Western mainstream media is gradually shifting to sell the Chinese government to us as the “good guys.”

Recently, Elon Musk has engaged in some China-maxxing of his own. Musk is part of the gaggle of oligarchs eager to roll out AI data centers wherever they can. Musk was keen to point out that the only national government that has, in his view, adopted the right approach is China’s:

The availability of energy is the issue. If you look at electrical output outside of China, it’s more or less flat. Very slight increase, but pretty much flat. [. . .] If you’re putting data centers anywhere except China, where are you going to get your electricity? Especially as you scale, how are you going to turn the chips on? Magical power sources? Magical electricity fairies?

The previous blanket Western media vilification of China was always absurd state propaganda. China has been framed as the comic-book villain to encourage Western populations to accept further suppressions of their rights by their own governments and to claim justification for increased public spending on the Western military-intelligence complex.

Meanwhile, the multinational corporations that benefit from the government contracts, supposedly awarded to protect Western populations from the fabricated Chinese threat, such as Musk’s SpaceX, are led by oligarchs who genuinely pose a threat to everyone.

Though he didn’t use the term himself, in trying to explain China-maxxing, Mr. Jianlu offered a list of potential reasons for it. These included the Western media’s recognition of China’s technological and economic progress, the Chinese government’s apparent commitment to tackling climate change, its drive for efficiency, and so on. Jianlu argued that all of this has combined to force Western media outlets to reevaluate how they cover China and China-related matters.

Nation-states and national governments are set to be replaced by a global Technocracy. At some point, therefore, the conversation about moving away from the extant governance system to which people are accustomed to the new one has to commence.

Returning to Jianlu’s analysis, he is a leading Western policy think tank representative, and the media outlets he discussed primarily serve as propagandists for Western policy. Buried in the analysis, there is a brief statement that indicates what the real purpose of China-maxxing is:

Unlike the US, where policy shifts can abruptly occur due to political changes and short-term economic pressures, [. . .] China’s long-term strategic planning and consistent policy implementation have yielded results.

Dark Enlightenment-enthused oligarchs like Peter Thiel want to “escape from politics in all its forms,” and beyond dictatorship, there is no political mechanism of any kind in the Technocracy advocated by oligarchs like Elon Musk.

The oligarchy intends to make itself the feudal lords (founders) of private smart city-states similar to those currently being developed in China. The UN desires the same transformation. China-maxxing suits their shared agenda perfectly.

China-maxxing is yet more Western media propaganda, this time intended to convince Westerners that the model of government they are accustomed to no longer works. The Chinese development of Technocracy is better because it “yields[s] results.” Irrespective of the fact that no Westphalian-model Western government has ever operated as a democracy, China-maxxing has arrived to persuade Westerners that the so-called “representative democracies” that they have been misled to believe are democracies are now surplus to requirements.

Multipolaristas, specifically those working in the independent media, perhaps unwittingly argue that the dictatorial state control of human beings’ access to resources is acceptable because the accompanying surveillance state seemingly “yields[s] results.” Some say it reduces crime or that the gleaming towers of the new city-states are so beautifully clean and convenient. Others that China’s infrastructure investment strategy shows the world a clear alternative to austerity.

China is nation-building while Western nations decline and collapse. Chinese Technocracy “yields[s] results” that failing Western nations cannot match. Unless, logically, they too adopt Technocracy.

To an extent, the Multipolaristas make reasonable points. Who wouldn’t want to live in safe, clean cities? Who wants austerity when the state could invest in much-needed infrastructure instead? Who wouldn’t want the employment opportunities and the economic benefits that result? But all of the Multipolarista’s ostensibly reasonable observations and commentaries are based upon fatal omissions that result in them essentially spreading Western propaganda, intentionally or otherwise.

No state needs to impose a centralised technological population surveillance system in order to improve public safety, clean the environment or the streets, or invest in public infrastructure and its own economy. By effectively promoting global governance and Technocracy, the Multipolaristas’ foolhardy suggestion is that functional oligarchies are benevolent and that we should trust them.

Oligarchs are constructing their digital kill chains, and oligarchs like Musk are also promoters of China’s blossoming Technate. This is not a coincidence.

There are no historical examples of a state ever successfully imposing the full gamut of despotic behavioural control systems on a large population. But with its Greater Bay Area initiative, linking China’s numerous smart city projects together, China is reaching that point. Now Western mainstream and independent media outlets are showcasing China’s development to sell all the alleged benefits of Technocracy to Western populations.

Neither fascism nor communism even comes close to the behavioural dictatorship Technocracy is designed to inflict. Ignoring this aspect of China’s undoubtedly impressive modernisation is an epistemological error so profound it renders the rest of the Multipolaristas’ arguments practically irrelevant.

If the objective was not to enslave us, no state and no oligarch would construct Technates. The sole purpose of Technocracy is systematic human bondage.

From humanity’s perspective, there is nothing good about living in a Technocracy. No matter what incentives we are given, irrespective of the claimed benefits offered to entice us, giving our consent to those who wish to foist Technocracy upon us is an act of generational suicide.

There is, of course, no reason why we should agree to any of it.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 02:00

Pages