US president Donald Trump says Venezuela “will be turning over” 30-50m barrels of oil to the US, which will be worth around $2.8bn (£2.1bn), reports BBC News. In continued developments after the US captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, the broadcaster says this oil will be sold at market price and used to “benefit the people of Venezuela and the US”. Bloomberg says the announcement “came with few details”, but “marked a significant step up for the US government as it seeks to extend its economic influence in Venezuela and beyond”. The Financial Times adds that 50m barrels is “just under 50 days” of Venezuela’s oil production. 

Experts tell the Guardian that Trump’s plans for Venezuelan oil production would be “terrible for the climate”. Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, tells the newspaper that raising production from 1m barrels a day to, for example, 1.5m would “produce around 550m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year when the fuel is burned”. 

Trump is due to meet with US oil executives at the White House on Friday as he “presses the industry to invest in reviving Venezuela’s production”, according to Axios. Bloomberg notes that “some oil companies are wary of pouring tens of billions of dollars into the country over the next decade”. Refiner company Phillips 66 says it could process Venezuelan crude oil at two US refineries if production increased, reports Reuters. The chief executive of Weatherford International Plc, a major oil service provider, says Venezuela is a “massive opportunity” for the sector, according to Bloomberg. 

MORE ON US

• A senior US official tells the Times in a frontpage story that Trump aims to secure control over Greenland in the next three years. The Associated Press, Daily Telegraph and CNN examine some of the reasons for Trump’s interest in Greenland, including its supply of critical minerals used in, among other things, renewable energy technologies.  
• Trump’s moves in Venezuela are “strengthening the political case for a proposed pipeline that would allow Canada to ship more oil to China and other Asian markets”, according to Bloomberg. 
• A Financial Times “big read” examines the “cost of America’s nuclear revival”.
• The Associated Press says the California city of San Jose is “falling behind its ambitious target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030”.

Chinese premier Li Qiang has called for “multilateralism and free trade” in a meeting with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung yesterday in Beijing, reports the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP). It adds that Li also said that the countries should deepen cooperation in fields such as new energy. The Korea Times reports that the countries signed 14 memorandums of understanding on cooperation in fields including the environment. A comment article bylined “GT Voice” and published by the state-supporting Global Times argues that the “deepening of mechanical and electrical cooperation” between China and South Korea has naturally “driven the linkage between the two countries in cutting-edge fields such as the green economy”. Beijing Daily reports that Huang Runqiu, head of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), also met South Korean environment minister Kim Sung-hwan in Beijing, where they agreed to enhance cooperation on addressing climate change.

MORE ON CHINA

• China is considering “tightening export permit reviews for certain rare earth-related items to Japan” in response to Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan, reports China Daily.
• Workers’ Daily reports that China is strengthening intellectual property protections in the solar power industry. PV Tech says the rules are “designed to create a ‘fair and orderly’ market and promote the ‘healthy development’” of the sector.
• China Southern Power Grid, one of the major grid operators in China, says its “west-to-east” power transmission volume reached a record 261,500 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2025, an increase of 31,000GWh from 2020 levels, reports China Daily.

At least 16 people have been killed in flash floods “triggered by torrential rain” in Indonesia, reports the Associated Press. The newswire says that days of monsoon rain burst riverbanks and triggered “fast-moving torrents of water mixed with mud, rocks and debris that swept away people and submerged villages” in the country’s North Sulawesi province. Hundreds of people were placed in temporary accommodation and rescuers are searching for a further three missing people, the outlet adds. 

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER

• The Guardian reports that six people have died amid “snow, ice and freezing temperatures” in parts of Europe. The cold conditions “sent power demand soaring as weak wind and solar generation tightens electricity supply and strains power markets”, reports Bloomberg. 
• Australia is preparing for “extreme bushfire danger” as temperatures soar in many parts of the country, says the Independent. 

Hindustan Times reports that Uttar Pradesh police have arrested veteran climate activist Harjeet Singh for possession of unlicensed liquor. Singh’s NGO and residence were raided on Monday by India’s federal agency to probe financial crimes, citing foreign exchange violations, but “did not say what evidence it found”, it adds. The agency also searched the residence of Sanjay Vasisht, south Asia director of Climate Action Network (CAN), it continues. “We received intelligence around the COP30 that some climate activists were campaigning against fossil fuels at the behest of some foreign organisations,” said an unnamed official from India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), speaking to the newspaper. A statement from the agency cited in the article said that funds from foreign donors were used to “promote the agenda” of the activist-led fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty that “could expose India to legal challenges in international forums like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and severely compromise the nation’s energy security and economic development”. Other climate activists “jeopardising India’s position on issues such as the use of fossil fuels” are also “on the [agency’s] radar”, the statement said. The Indian Express and the Times of India also cover the story. 

MORE ON INDIA:

• An IndiaSpend story takes a closer look at why nine Indian cities are turning into heat islands, with climate scientist Anjal Prakash telling the outlet: “If we go on like this, our cities will become unlivable.”
• A Hindu video explainer unpacks what the EU’s carbon border tax means for India and global trade. 
• Business Standard lists “three key trends” that will shape the “development trajectory” of India’s energy sector in 2026. 
• Times of India writes that the country’s battery storage capacity “is set for a massive surge” and could increase “10-fold” from 2025, according to industry body estimates.

Growth in electric vehicle sales around the world is due to slow down this year, according to Bloomberg, as “China winds down some subsidies, Europe wavers on its phase-out of combustion engines and US producers and policymakers make a U-turn from the segment”. BloombergNEF forecasts that drivers will buy around 24m passenger EVs in 2026, a 12% increase on 2025, which is lower than the 23% growth in sales last year. Bloomberg notes that US EV manufacturers in particular face an “EV winter” and could see sales temporarily dip before a “likely revival” in 2027 and 2028. 

MORE ON ELECTRIC VEHICLES 

• EV sales in Germany rose 43% year-on-year in 2025, largely due to a “rebound” after a “muted year” in 2024, reports Reuters. 

An editorial in the Guardian says that the US seizure of Venezuelan president Maduro was “induced by the prize of petroleum”, but was “driven by spectacle, geopolitics and domestic politics”. The article notes: “Venezuelan crude is extra-heavy as well as expensive and slow to bring online; it will not immediately transform US energy systems, nor rescue refineries that have already adapted to years without it. Instead, oil is the “prize” around which other agendas cohere.” These include profits for US firms, cutting off an ally of China and putting “modest downward pressure on oil prices”, the newspaper says. 

Elsewhere, Global Witness chief executive Mike Davis writes in Backchannel that the situation in Venezuela shows “why rapid fossil fuel phase-out is critical for global peace and security”. Commentator Wael Mahdi writes in Semafor that “Washington may be trying to secure additional future supply to cap price spikes, but that won’t be easy and it won’t be quick”. The Lex column in the Financial Times says that investors appear to think the situation “will be exceedingly positive for US stocks”. 

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal focuses on Trump’s interest in Greenland, saying it is “regrettable” that it is “devolving into a self-defeating exercise in US bullying”. A Washington Post editorial notes that “Trump isn’t wrong about Greenland’s strategic importance”, adding: “Arctic waterways are increasingly navigable and the country has massive deposits of rare-earth minerals, alongside other natural resources.” However, it says, the US “already has a military base on Greenland” and “Denmark has expressed a willingness to negotiate deals” for minerals. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor at the Daily Telegraph, writes that “Trump may think he has scored a coup by gaining arms-length control over the world’s largest known oil reserves, but the extra-heavy tar sands of the Orinoco Belt are barely worth anything”. 

MORE COMMENT 

• In the Conversation, environmental activist Jennifer Morgan, a senior fellow at Tufts University, covers what to watch for in 2026 in the “battle over a global energy transition…between petro-states and electro-states”.
• One year on from the LA wildfires, the Los Angeles Times publishes letters from readers reflecting on the incident and its impact. Inside Climate News looks at recovery progress from the fires and the Associated Press covers rebuilding and insurance issues. 
• US energy editor of the Financial Times, Jamie Smyth, asks: “Are exports to blame for surging US gas and electricity prices?” 
• Times columnist Alice Thomson misleadingly says that UK Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has “always opposed the net-zero target by 2050 as impossible”. A Guardian live blog notes that Badenoch “claims (wrongly) she started championing net-zero scepticism before Nigel Farage”.
• Dakota Gruener, CEO of the not-for-profit organisation Reflective, and Dr Daniele Visioni, an assistant professor at Cornell University, write in the Guardian that “we can safely experiment with reflecting sunlight away from Earth”. 

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Orla Dwyer, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Simon Evans. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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