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Big Oil giant TotalEnergies will eliminate nearly $1 billion in offshore wind projects planned along the U.S. East Coast under the threat of cancelation from the Trump administration in exchange for redirecting the reimbursed funds to U.S. natural gas projects, primarily in Texas.

In the so-called “landmark agreement” announced March 23 between TotalEnergies and the U.S. Interior Department, the federal government will reimburse the French energy giant about $928 million for its investments in the Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay projects offshore of New York and North Carolina, respectively, which were put on hold by the company after President Donald Trump was elected.

Speaking at the CERAWeek by S&P Global event in Houston, TotalEnergies chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said he is opting “not to litigate, but to make pragmatic solutions.”

While TotalEnergies will continue to pursue onshore wind, solar, and battery storage projects in the U.S., he said, the company will abandon offshore wind that is now deemed too big and expensive without federal subsidies in the U.S.

“It’s good to be innovative from time to time and pragmatic,” Pouyanné said. “We can recycle this money … into smarter investments.”

President Trump has pushed back against the expansion of both wind and solar energy in the U.S.—in favor of fossil fuels instead—but he has particular disdain for the massive offshore wind turbines that he deems unsightly.

TotalEnergies also is a major player in natural gas in the U.S., especially in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. The agreement with the Interior Department, while scant on details, specifically cites the companies increased investments in Houston-based NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG project in southern Texas, as well as in natural gas production investments in the Gulf of Mexico and in U.S. shale drilling.

TotalEnergies is both a 17% shareholder of NextDecade and a major customer of the gas exports from the Rio Grande LNG project. TotalEnergies also is an owner of Sempra Energy’s Cameron LNG in Louisiana and an investor in Glenfarne’s planned Alaska LNG.

Speaking alongside Pouyanné, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said TotalEnergies will investment in more reliable natural gas projects and not “intermittent” wind farms. “We are not driven by a climate fantasy,” Burgum said.

“They (TotalEnergies) thought there were going to be a bunch of subsidies,” Burgum said, citing the ending of subsidies for wind and solar projects in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” approved last year.

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When Brian Niccol took over as CEO of Starbucks 18 months ago with the intention to return the company to its glory days of the 1990s and early aughts, he was surprised to see the coffee chain felt more like a factory floor than a warm hangout spot.

In an recent episode of Semafor’s “The CEO Signal” podcast, Niccol said when he first took the helm of the company in late 2024, he visited several stores and noticed the coffee chain had put so much emphasis on fulfilling large volumes of orders it had strayed from its reputation as a cozy coffee house. Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan introduced in his first days as CEO was meant to restore Starbucks to its roots as a “third place” for customers to linger in.

“We got really focused on trying to be efficient and run it like a manufacturing facility, as opposed to recognizing, no, this is actually a customer service experience, where we do great craft and create great drinks for people on time,” Niccol said.

Although Starbucks stock is virtually unchanged since Niccol took over a year-and-a-half ago, the former Chipotle CEO has been working hard to restore that certain charm that once belonged to “the third space.” He found that Starbucks had too much of a good thing.

A to-go culture gone too far

Niccol came into a company that was in some ways battered by the success of its popular online ordering, still responsible for most of the chain’s orders, including 40% drive-thru and 30% mobile. In early 2024, then-CEO Laxman Narasimhan said customers were abandoning their online orders after placing them online, having to wait in long lines for their orders to be fulfilled during busy commuting hours. The Starbucks menu was large, and patrons’ ability to customize their orders overwhelmed baristas and slowed down order fulfillment.

Early in his tenure, Niccol spoke with customers who lamented the lack of comfortable seating Starbucks locations once had, as well as baristas recognizing and chatting with them. Baristas told Niccol Starbucks should bring back condiment bars to let customers add their own cream and sugar, relieving pressure from workers fulfilling more complicated orders.

“The feedback I heard was, we’ve made the job more complicated than necessary,” Niccol said. “It was one of those things where it’s like, we got to get back to focusing decisions that actually show up in the store, and then you got to understand how those decisions actually are executed in the store.”

The company took those suggestions, among others, returning seats to thousands of store locations and returning condiment bars after their pandemic-era discontinuation. 

So far, the “Back to Starbucks” plan appears to be working. The company reported a 4% increase in year-over-year same-store sales, and a 5% uptick in revenue for the quarter. Profits took a hit as the company navigated tariffs and brought on more workers to staff its stores.

“We’re pleased with our progress, and we believe we remain ahead of schedule, and we’re confident on our path forward,” Niccol told investors in January. “But we also recognize that we’re still in our turnaround.”

The road back to Starbucks

At the core of the raft of changes to the Starbucks experience was making the chain as much about customer service as about coffee, Niccol noted.

“f you aren’t working on initiatives that ultimately make the store experience better for our customer and our partner, probably working on the wrong things,” he said.

Niccol rolled out the “Back to Starbucks” plan through a series of immediate shifts followed by more structural changes. Locations activated more wall outlets and began giving ceramic cups to customers who wanted to sit in the store for a while. Baristas were told to write personalized messages on paper to-go cups. Workers were also required to begin wearing black shirts under green aprons as part of a brand refresh.

Behind the counter, Starbucks slashed menu items by 30% to lighten the load of baristas. It rolled out an AI-powered assistant designed to troubleshoot equipment issues, teach baristas how to make drinks, and prioritize orders to increase efficiency.

To be sure, not all baristas are on board with the changes. More than 1,000 union baristas went on strike in November 2025, demanding Starbucks increase staffing to improve long customer wait time, as well as let existing baristas work more hours to meet the threshold for benefits. Last May, more than 2,000 baristas protested the company’s dress code and argued workers should have a say in what they wear.

Starbucks did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Niccol said the “Back to Starbucks changes have already shifted the company’s reputation. In an interview at the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute in December 2025, Niccol said he was reading through a Reddit thread of Starbucks job candidates interviewing at the company, with some users asking what interview questions they should prepare to be asked. Other users, presumably Starbucks employees, said candidates should be prepared to talk about customer service.

“If you don’t like customer service, you’re probably not going to like working at Starbucks. We’re in that transition of getting people to understand that,” Niccol said. “When I saw that in the Reddit thread, I was like, ‘OK, we’re making progress on what the standard of services that we want [are].’”

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The war in Iran is spiking global oil prices, and Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t be happier.

The war has bottled up one-fifth of the world’s oil, putting a premium on the remaining supply, including Russian barrels.

Earlier this month, the U.S. issued a 30-day waiver that allows countries to buy Russian oil already at sea without the fear of sanctions, which the U.S. has steadily imposed on the country and those that buy oil from its largest producers since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the “deliberately short-term measure will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government.” But after years of big discounts and covert tactics to sell their oil abroad, the easing of Russian sanctions has already given Putin and other Russian officials new confidence, as well as hope that this U.S. leniency will last longer than its April 11 expiration date.

Prior to the Iran conflict, the Urals oil benchmark, on which most Russian crude is priced, stood at about $57 a barrel, a significant discount to Brent crude at $71 prior to the conflict. By Monday, Urals was trading at near parity to Brent at around $100, despite retreating by midday.  

To be sure, Brent crude fell sharply on Monday, after President Donald Trump said he would postpone attacks on energy infrastructure  as his officials negotiate with Iran on a way to end the war. Tehran denied it was in talks.

Still, Russia has earned an estimated $7 billion in the first two weeks of March from selling fossil fuels since the start of the war, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). 

The increase in oil has made Russia “the single biggest winners in the near term” from the Iran conflict, Wichita State University international business professor Usha Haley told Fortune. 

Despite Bessent saying the 30-day waiver is “narrowly tailored” to oil already at sea, she said this caveat is hard to enforce in reality, especially given the large demand at the moment.

“It has actually rescued Russia’s oil revenues from decline and a decline over a very long period,” Haley said. 

Four years after Russia invaded Ukraine, its fossil fuel exports, including coal, crude oil, liquified natural gas, pipeline gas, and oil products are 27% below pre-invasion levels, according to the CREA. As of February, the country’s fossil fuel exports had fallen 19% year on year, although the recent increase in demand due to the Iran war is likely to change that calculus, said Haley.  

Putin intends to take advantage of the sudden opportunity while he can. The Russian president said during a Kremlin meeting with policymakers and Russian business leaders earlier this month it’s “important for Russian energy companies to make use of the current moment.” 

He also appeared to troll his adversaries, saying Russia was ready to work with European countries as long as they are committed to “long-term cooperation” and are willing to drop “political overtones.” 

Moscow’s special economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, went even further in a Telegram message earlier this month, saying “The U.S. has practically admitted the obvious,” with its 30-day waiver, the Washington Post reported. “The global energy market cannot remain stable without Russian oil.”

In more recent days, Dmitriev has continued to gloat on social media, lambasting the EU for distancing itself from Russia since its 2022 Ukraine invasion and predicting more pain for Western countries as a result of increased oil prices.

“Europe can finally enjoy the success of both its Green and Russophobic agendas—no oil, no gas,” he wrote in a post on X Sunday.

The Iran conflict, which is now in its fourth week, has led to a destabilization in the global oil supply due to Iran’s attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil flows. As a result, the U.S. has taken steps to backstop supply including releasing 172 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve—the second largest drawdown ever. 

The U.S. last week also issued a 30-day waiver running through April 19 that would allow countries to purchase Iranian oil already loaded onto vessels. Bessent said in a post on X the move would bring 140 million barrels of oil to global markets. 

However, the U.S’s easing of sanctions to try to bring stability to oil markets has been criticized by some as being ineffective for solving the global oil crisis.

Analysts at financial services firm Siebert Williams Shank, wrote in a report earlier this month that easing sanctions would not increase the supply of oil worldwide because much of this sanctioned supply already finds its way to the market by clandestine means. 

“Sanctions have not materially impacted Russian production, only the price and markets they sell to, so they possess little incremental supply,” wrote the analysts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country has been locked in a full-scale war with Russia since 2022, has also said the move will embolden Putin.

“It spends the money from energy sales on weapons, and all of this is then used against us,” he said in a news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month. 

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Bitcoin rose alongside equities while oil prices fell after U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. had begun talks with Iran, raising hopes for a deal to ease the conflict.

The original cryptocurrency advanced more than 5% to trade as high as $71,794 in New York before paring some of the gain. Smaller tokens including Ether and Solana also rose. 

Bitcoin had earlier on Monday been fluctuating around a two-week low, sliding as far as $67,371 — its lowest level since March 9. The token has been volatile since the conflict in Iran began in late February, at one point jumping to a high of nearly $76,000 before tumbling once more as tensions in the region escalated.

“Currently, the situation in the crypto market does not appear as severe as it did at the end of February, when sentiment was at the same level,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro. 

Bitcoin initially climbed after the U.S. president said he would delay strikes on Iranian energy facilities and infrastructure for five days. Risk assets rallied more broadly, with the S&P 500 gaining 1.5%, while Treasury yields and the dollar declined as traders pared back some of their more hawkish Federal Reserve bets.

Flows that have been supporting Bitcoin’s price over the last fortnight had weakened going into Monday, with inflows into U.S. exchange-traded funds tied to the cryptocurrency turning negative. 

“A potential catalyst to stabilize the markets for now would be some sort of de‑escalation in the Middle East, or at minimum a resumption of normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,” analysts on Laser Digital’s derivatives trading desk wrote in a note on Monday.

“This could set off a chain of oil price stabilization, followed by rates consolidation and improved risk sentiment,” they added. “Minus this, crypto markets are likely to stay heavy.”

Trump on Monday said representatives from Iran reached out to start talks with the U.S. because they were eager to make a deal after his threat to strike energy facilities. But Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Monday said in a social media post that the US president’s claims were fake news “used to manipulate the financial and oil markets.”

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Iran’s economy was already crashing before the U.S. and Israel launched a war against the Islamic republic three weeks ago, and the relentless bombing since then has wreaked even more havoc.

In fact, high inflation triggered mass protests in December and January, prompting the regime to massacre tens of thousands of its own citizens. President Donald Trump warned Tehran against further violence and began a military build-up that led to the current conflict.

Inflation has worsened and apparently is so bad now the government issued its largest-ever currency denomination: the 10 million rial note (equivalent to about $7).

The new currency went into circulation last week, according to the Financial Times, and comes just a month after the prior record holder, the 5 million rial, came out.

As prices continue to spiral higher while the war boosts demand for cash, long lines formed to withdraw the fresh banknotes, and supplies quickly ran out.

Iran’s central bank said electronic payments are still the main methods for transactions, though the 10 million rial bill will “ensure public access to cash,” the FT reported.

But doubts about the viability of electronic payments have grown during the war as the U.S. and Israel target the regime’s levers of control.

In addition to bombing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij paramilitary forces, a data center for Bank Sepah was also hit on March 11. Sepah is the country’s largest bank and is responsible for paying salaries to the military and IRGC.

“Iran is already in the middle of a severe cash liquidity crisis,” Miad Maleki, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Treasury Department official, said on X earlier this month. “As of Jan 2026, banks were running out of physical banknotes daily, with informal withdrawal caps of just $18–$30/day. Cash in circulation surged 49% YoY due to panic hoarding. The regime simply cannot pivot to cash payments, there isn’t enough physical currency in the system.”

Meanwhile, a currency collapse that began after last year’s U.S.-Israeli bombardment has fueled crippling inflation. The rial lost 60% of its value in the months after the 12-day war, and food inflation soared to 64% by October. It accelerated further to 105% by February, vaulting overall inflation to 47.5%.

The exchange rate fell as low as 1.66 million rials per $1 last month, though it strengthened to about 1.5 million rials as the U.S. temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil.

Heightened demand for cash further stresses a financial system that was considered dubious even before the current war started three weeks ago.

The failure of Ayandeh Bank late last year forced the regime to fold it into a state-run lender, underscoring how fragile the sector was as bad loans piled up to politically connected cronies.

“This was largely theater. In reality, Iran’s entire banking system is insolvent, its balance sheets sustained by fiction rather than assets,” Siamak Namazi, who was a U.S. hostage in Iran from 2015 to 2023, wrote in a report for the Middle East Institute in January.

During his captivity, he learned from imprisoned former officials and business elites that politically connected borrowers bribed assessors to inflate the value of properties, which were used to obtain massive loans.

Instead of repaying the loans, borrowers just gave their properties to the bank, which sold them to other banks at a paper profit, according to Namazi. Those banks knew the properties were overvalued “garbage,” but played along in the scheme by dumping their own toxic assets in exchange and booking fictitious gains.

“The result is a closed-loop Ponzi scheme, sustained by mutual deception and regulatory complicity,” he added. “This practice has metastasized over the past 15 years and is far more extensive than this simplified description suggests. And this is only the banking system. Much of the rest of Iran’s economy is afflicted by similarly entrenched corruption and mismanagement.”

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Panic buying is back in Japan. 

As the U.S.-Israeli-Iran conflict rattles oil markets, Japanese consumers are stockpiling toilet paper—a product with no connection to the disruptions whatsoever, but that has caused enough problems for the country that the Japanese government has urged citizens to stop buying ahead of time. Still, social media posts depicting empty toilet paper abound.

But why would people panic buy goods unrelated to or not affected by the conflict? Panic buying behaves much like a bank run. Nobody knows exactly where it starts—some single, bleating data point that says this store is going to run out of toilet paper, or this bank is going to run out of money. 

Back in the olden days that data point, a verifiable person, would run and holler at their neighbors; “Hey Johnny, take your money outta the bank! They’re about to run out!” and Johnny would go a-running. Now someone posts on social media that COVID-19, tariffs, or the war with Iran is going to nuke toilet paper stock, and strangers across the country start loading up their carts. 

Pandemic-era panic buying is making a comeback

This was the situation with the great panic of COVID-19. On March 12, 2020, toilet paper sales surged 734% compared to the same day the year before, making it the top-selling grocery item in the world that day. By the time the Great Toilet Paper panic of 2020 was over, 70% of the world’s grocery stores would have run out at some point—a record.

The shortage was so severe it caused a measurable shift in American bathroom habits: Bidet sales spiked and, for many households, stuck. But researchers who studied the episode afterward found no actual supply chain disruption for toilet paper. Production was steady and distribution was intact. Rather, the shortage was almost entirely a creation of panic and hype.

Now the panic buying is back—this time in Japan—and in some ways it makes even less sense. During COVID, supply chains across every sector were under strain, so the instinct to stockpile had, at least, a logical ambiance. Today, the disruptions are due to tightening in oil markets tied to the conflict in Iran, and little to do with consumer packaged goods. But Japan has its own deep history with toilet paper panic, and that history has its own logic.

Japan’s history with toilet paper panics

The original Japanese toilet paper crisis came in 1973, also triggered by turmoil in the Middle East over oil. It began when Yasuhiro Nakasone, then the minister of international trade and industry, called on the public to conserve paper products. The announcement was meant to signal some austerity. Instead, it sparked rumors that paper supplies were running out—and Japanese consumers, particularly women managing household budgets, began buying enormous quantities of toilet paper. Academics have described the panic as a response to the growing instability of the middle class, a fear their livelihoods were held up by smoke and mirrors.

Since then, Japan has raced for its toilet products every time a crisis rolls around. The devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011 triggered the same kind of hoarding behavior, though apparently there were some actual disruptions in affected regions. Now, the cycle is repeating itself.

What makes toilet paper the perennial target? It’s bulky and distinctly finite—when it’s gone from the shelf, it’s conspicuous. And unlike food, which you consume and replace in a rhythm, toilet paper occupies a kind of psychological category all its own, a symbol of long-term stability and responsibility. 

“The importance of toilet paper…runs deep into the soul of modern culture,” anthropologist Grant Jun Otsuki wrote about the COVID shortage in 2021. “The mere thought of the disappearance of toilet paper from the world spurs some to act so quickly and decisively to secure their own supplies.”

So far, the panic doesn’t appear to have spread far beyond Japan—except, perhaps, to neighboring Australia, where Perth has reported some early signs of stockpiling. As if the hollering from across the water finally reached the next set of ears.

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Oil and natural gas futures prices—despite trading 60% higher since before the Iran war—remain well below the physical supply shortages facing Asia and spreading around the world that will take many months to replenish, the chairman and CEO of Chevron said March 23.

The large CERAWeek by S&P Global conference is attracting many of the world’s energy leaders from around the world in Houston this week and a top theme is the potential disconnect between energy markets and the greatest global energy supply shock ever with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which typically funnels nearly 20% of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas each day.

“There are very real physical manifestations of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that are working their way around the world through the system that I don’t think are fully priced in,” said Chevron CEO Mike Wirth.

Asia already is facing major supply shortages that cannot be undone just by the releases of strategic, emergency supplies. That is why many Asian countries have implemented energy conservation mandates, work-from-home efforts, school closures, and more. Wirth also cited the huge supplies of fertilizer for agriculture and helium for semiconductors that flow through the strait offshore of Iran.

“The fundamentals are very tight out there,” Wirth said. “The markets are trading on scant information.”

“Physical supply changes don’t respond immediately,” he added. “Even when strait reopens at some point, it will take time.”

Oil prices dipped notably March 23 when President Donald Trump said he would delay any attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure by five days to allow for greater negotiations, pushing back his March 23 deadline for Iran to reopen the strait. Iran has in turn said it would attack more energy facilities in neighboring Gulf countries if the U.S. followed through on Trump’s threats, further escalating the war. And, later in the day, Iranian officials said no negotiations have taken place, accusing Trump of pushing “fake news” to lower prices.

Iran accused of ‘economic terrorism’

Iran’s counteroffensive strategy of attacking the oil and gas supplies of its neighbors is a form of unprovoked terrorism that will not be accepted, said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the United Arab Emirates minister of industry and advanced technology, and group CEO of ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

The UAE has cut its oil production by more than 50% this month, while Iraq and Kuwait have made even deeper reductions. Al Jaber canceled his scheduled appearance in Houston because of the war, but he provided a video message. Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser also canceled his trip.

“Weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz is not an act of aggression against one nation. It’s economic terrorism against every nation,” Al Jaber said. “And no country should be allowed to hold Hormuz hostage. Not now, not ever.”

He accused Iran of “choking the throat” of the “global economy.”

Kicking off CERAWeek, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former oil and gas executive, said the Iran war is a “conflict that we simply couldn’t kick down the road one more administration.”

Wright called the war “short-term disruption now, but to end a multi-decadal problem.”

The International Energy Agency agreed this month to release 400 million barrels of oil from emergency storage, including 172 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Wright said the U.S. began withdrawing oil from the SPR on March 20 and that the U.S. will release at least 1 million barrels each day from the SPR for the next few months. The total global release would equate to nearly 3 million barrels daily, he said.

Still, that does not offset more than 11 million barrels of oil that remains offline, even with Saudi Arabia and the UAE redirecting as many barrels as they can through the Red Sea and other outlets.

“Oil remains the most important energy source in the world,” Wright said. “No oil, no modern world.”

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