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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.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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].’”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com