Chris Helman

2 weeks ago | forbes.com | Christopher Helman |Chris Helman

An iconic "nodding donkey" pumps in the Permian Basin. Getty ImagesIt’s a tough time to be in the oil business. Prices are down 15% in the past year to $67/bbl as OPEC decided to abandon supply cuts and allow member countries to boost output. Forget drill, baby, drill; at current prices America’s drillers have been mothballing rigs at a rapid clip to preserve capital. Among the 93 oil and gas companies in the Forbes Global 2000, more than half dropped in the rankings this year.

2 weeks ago | forbes.com | Christopher Helman |Chris Helman

What began as a $1.1 billion acquisition by Hyundai of Boston Dynamics has grown into a national robotics ambition. In 2021 Hyundai Motor Company paid $1.1 billion to acquire 80% of robotics pioneer Boston Dynamics, famous for videos of its dog-shaped bot named Spot and its running and jumping humanoid Atlas. The deal initially seemed more of a headline grab for Hyundai rather than part of a fully baked strategy. That’s no longer the case. Four years later, Hyundai ($130 billion 2024 sales, no.

4 weeks ago | forbes.com | Christopher Helman |Chris Helman

Michigan is sitting on a motherlode of potash and Ted Pagano is using $1.3 billion in government funds to mine it and grab market share away from Canada and Russia. The eureka moment came in 2012, when professor emeritus William Harrison of the University of Western Michigan invited Ted Pagano, then a 35-year-old freelance geologist, to his 27,000-square-foot geological repository in Kalamazoo.

1 month ago | forbes.com | Christopher Helman |Chris Helman

Goldman Sachs sees gold as a far better hedge against a collapsing dollar than bitcoin. Over the past few decades, when U.S. interest rates rose, investors would tend to sell gold and buy U.S. Treasuries, seeking higher yields. But that long term relationship broke down in February 2022, when western financial authorities moved to freeze Russia's central bank assets upon President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. This was a wake up call, says Lina Thomas, commodity strategist at Goldman Sachs.

1 month ago | forbes.com | Christopher Helman |Chris Helman

Like a 180-degree shift in the winds, the Department of Interior on Monday reversed its order from April for Norwegian energy giant Equinor to halt work on the $5 billion Empire Wind project. The venture – which will feature dozens of turbines dotting 80,000 acres of Atlantic Ocean 15 miles southeast off Long Island, New York – had been in limbo for weeks, and was costing Equinor $50 million a week to keep 10 ships floating on site. Now they can get back to work.