BUSINESS

Amgen’s (AMGN) closely watched cardiovascular drug candidate lost a major rival on Sept. 4, when Novartis (NVS) announced that its pelacarsen trial failed to reduce heart attacks and strokes in high-risk patients.

The surprising part is that the news triggered a sell-off among AMGN shareholders instead of a rally. 

The stock dropped 9.1% on Sept. 8 as Wall Street began questioning whether the whole class of Lp(a)-lowering drugs would actually work.

Morgan Stanley now says the reaction may have been too harsh. The bank’s biopharma team met privately with Amgen’s management at its 2026 Global Healthcare Conference on Sept. 15, and the discussion gave the team a clearer view on the setback.

According to a Morgan Stanley research note shared with me, Amgen’s own drug, olpasiran, has a very different profile from Novartis’s pelacarsen, and its Phase 3 trial targets a higher-risk patient group. That changes what a positive result would require and how large the eventual market could be.

The meeting also touched on MariTide, dazodalibep, and the risks tied to Amgen’s aging legacy drugs. 

What sets Amgen’s olpasiran apart from Novartis’ failed drug

Lipoprotein(a), often called Lp(a), is a form of cholesterol that increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes. About one in five people worldwide have high Lp(a) levels, and unlike regular cholesterol, it does not respond to diet or exercise.

No approved therapy currently targets Lp(a) directly, which is why the class attracted heavy investment from Novartis, Amgen, and Eli Lilly (LLY).

Novartis’ pelacarsen lowered Lp(a) by roughly 70% to 80% in its Phase 3 Lp(a)HORIZON trial, but that reduction was not enough to reduce cardiovascular events compared with placebo.

Amgen’s olpasiran cuts Lp(a) by 95% to 99% in earlier studies, according to Morgan Stanley’s meeting notes, a much deeper reduction that Amgen’s R&D chief Jay Bradner argues could translate into real cardiovascular benefits.

The trial design is also different. Amgen’s Phase 3 OCEAN(a) study only enrolls patients with Lp(a) levels of at least 200 nmol/L, versus 150 for the Novartis trial. Its main measure of success is by how well it prevents heart attack, cardiovascular death, and urgent revascularization.

It also excludes stroke because Amgen’s own epidemiology work found stroke was not strongly linked to Lp(a) risk.

Amgen’s Phase 3 pipeline for olpasiran, MariTide, and dazodalibep sits at the center of the company’s near-term growth question.JHVEPhoto / Getty Images

How Amgen actually makes money right now

Amgen is one of the world’s largest biotech companies, with a market value of roughly $208 billion. It develops and manufactures prescription drugs for cardiovascular disease, cancer, inflammation, obesity, and other rare diseases.

Its top-selling products include Repatha for high cholesterol, Prolia for osteoporosis, Enbrel for rheumatoid arthritis, and Tepezza for thyroid eye disease. The company sells its medicines through pharmaceutical wholesalers, hospitals, and specialty distributors.

In the second quarter of 2026, Amgen posted $10.05 billion in revenue, up 9.5% year over year, and adjusted earnings per share of $6.29 that beat expectations by about 12%. Repatha alone generated $953 million in that quarter and grew 37% from a year earlier, becoming the biggest driver of the beat in expectations. 

Related: Jim Cramer sends strong 5-word message on surging biotech stock

On CNBC, Jim Cramer described Repatha on Aug. 31 as “a shot that you take every other week, and what it does is reduce the risk of death by 20% in people who have high risk for a heart attack or stroke.”

That clinical trial data helped push AMGN shares up about 34.84% over the past 12 months.

MariTide and the other readouts still on the calendar

The next big test for Amgen is MariTide, its obesity drug candidate. MariTide is designed to compete with Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) Wegovy by offering monthly dosing instead of weekly injections, Zacks reported.

Amgen has about 12 Phase 3 trials running, including one for obstructive sleep apnea that finished enrolling patients at the end of August. Initial results will not arrive until 2027.

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Before then, Amgen expects results from its Phase 3 studies of dazodalibep, a drug for Sjögren’s disease, in the second half of 2026. The company designed the trials with larger patient groups, clearer participant screening, and longer duration to counter the false improvements seen in untreated patients, which has historically challenged Sjögren’s studies.

Thomas Dittrich, who returned to Amgen as chief financial officer on July 1 after previously holding senior finance roles at the company, told Morgan Stanley that he plans to keep the same guidance approach the market is used to. 

The risks AMGN investors should keep watching next

For anyone thinking about buying or holding Amgen, there are a couple of things to watch.

The dazodalibep trial results later in 2026 comes first, and a positive result would give Amgen a new autoimmune franchise. Full pelacarsen data from Novartis is expected at upcoming cardiology meetings, and that data will help investors judge whether Amgen’s deeper Lp(a) reduction can succeed where Novartis did not.

Generic competition is reducing Prolia and Enbrel sales, and Medicare drug-pricing negotiations add more pressure.

If MariTide underperforms in 2027 or continues to lose market share to substitutes, the current 23.95 price-to-earnings multiple would be expensive. Amgen’s 2.61% dividend offers some income cushion while investors wait for the pipeline to pay off.

Morgan Stanley continues to rate Amgen Equal-weight, a stance analyst Terence Flynn has held since October 2023. That rating means the bank sees equal chances for the stock to rise or fall from here.

Related: Key HIV stat over 70% leaves BofA siding with Gilead

Karol G’s Tropitour delivers a spectacular experience with fireworks, a giant macaw, and high-energy performances, but its core message lies in the intentional partnerships across the event.

Sandisk (SNDK) has become one of the more unusual beneficiaries of the artificial-intelligence boom.

The company is not making the processors that power AI models. Instead, it is supplying something those systems increasingly need: storage.

This differentiation has grown more significant as AI data centers increase and workloads move to inference, agentic AI, and other applications that demand fast storage and access to massive volumes of data.

Sandisk’s recent figures indicate exactly how fast the industry has transformed. The business said sales in the fiscal fourth quarter were $8.97 billion, above the $8.39 billion expected, according to Reuters. Data-center revenue more than quadrupled from the preceding quarter to $2.98 billion.

Sandisk also said it currently has eight long-term contracts for $93.9 billion or more with six clients, Reuters also reported. The average contract period is four years, and the company anticipates that half of the company’s output will be under such contracts in fiscal 2027 and two-thirds in fiscal 2028.

That change is built into the stock. Sandisk finished at $1,791.82 on Sept. 18, up 11% that day and 6.2% the previous session.

But there’s a catch: The same AI boom driving Sandisk’s growth is tightening NAND supplies, attracting new competitors and forcing memory companies to make difficult decisions about where to allocate capacity.

Sandisk’s AI opportunity is becoming a storage story

Sandisk’s fiscal 2026 results show why investors are paying attention.

Data center storage has become a major growth pillar, the firm said, and its larger business includes corporate solid-state drives, client storage, and consumer goods.

Q4 FY2026 revenue: $8.97 billion

Q4 data-center revenue: $2.98 billion

Long-term agreements: 8

Customers covered: 6

Contract value: At least $93.9 billion

New buyback authorization: $14 billion

Q1 FY2027 revenue outlook: $10.3 billion to $10.8 billion

The fourth-quarter revenue from data centers of $2.98 billion is particularly important because it demonstrates the speed with which the mix is changing.

Related: Micron, SanDisk get new aggressive price targets from top analyst

Data centers need more storage and processing capacity, which is creating demand for Sandisk’s enterprise solid-state drives and flash memory chips, Reuters noted.

The projection for the upcoming quarter also suggests ongoing progress for the firm.

Sandisk expects fiscal first-quarter 2027 revenue of $10.3 billion to $10.8 billion, with non-GAAP diluted earnings of $44 to $46 per share.

The NAND market is giving Sandisk more pricing power

Sandisk is experiencing a very timely growth period in the NAND cycle.

North American cloud-service providers had lately revised upward their predictions for business SSD demand. The research group anticipates that enterprise SSD orders will surpass already-high third-quarter levels in the fourth quarter.

Increased demand is also giving NAND suppliers more influence over capacity allocation and pricing, which supports future hikes in enterprise SSD costs, as TrendForce reported.

The enterprise/consumer storage split is now seeping into the wider market.

TrendForce’s latest NAND research says AI adoption and cloud investment are driving enterprise SSD demand higher, while consumer electronics demand remains sluggish.

Its prediction for 2027 in September lays out the division even more clearly: Business SSD demand is likely to grow on AI workloads, while consumer NAND is likely to see further cost pressure and increasing Chinese competition.

This creates an appealing product combination for Sandisk.

Enterprise clients purchasing storage for AI infrastructure may support higher-value goods and longer-term contracts. PCs and cellphones are consumer products; therefore, they confront a distinct demand environment.

That’s one reason Sandisk has been moving capacity into business storage.

Sandisk is spending billions to stay ahead

Sandisk is not using the present NAND scarcity as an excuse to sit back.

At its August investor day, the business shared a long-term development plan focused on its NAND technological roadmap, customer alliances, and capital allocation.

Sandisk aims to return 100% of surplus cash to shareholders after investing in the company. It has also been investing with Kioxia in innovative memory technologies.

In August, the businesses announced a high-performance 2-terabit QLC 3D flash technology for AI and data-intensive applications.

According to Sandisk tests, Sandisk’s next-generation BiCS10 technology is intended to boost memory density by 60%, improve read and write bandwidth by 100%, and increase interface performance by 33% compared to BiCS8.

The company has also authorized a $14 billion share-repurchase program, taking its total remaining authorization to $15.5 billion.

That combination of capacity and technology investment with aggressive shareholder returns lies at the heart of the Sandisk story.

Sandisk has $93.9 billion of visibility. What comes next?NurPhoto / Getty Images

Sandisk’s $93.9 billion of commitments creates a new challenge

Long-term contracts might have given Sandisk more insight on future income.

They also generate a delivery obligation.

In fact, NAND supply has become a key concern for the whole semiconductor industry.

Chinese memory startup CXMT is aiming to join NAND flash, possibly adding another rival to a market currently dominated by Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron Technology (MU), and China’s YMTC, Reuters reported Sept. 18.

Reuters also reported that SK Hynix’s Solidigm unit is considering a U.S. NAND manufacturing facility, although no final decision has been made.

Those developments illustrate how valuable NAND capacity has become.

Sandisk is responding through its partnership with Kioxia. The two companies confirmed plans in August to invest more than $31 billion in Japan through 2032, including a new memory-production facility at Kioxia’s Kitakami plant.

Those developments illustrate how valuable NAND capacity has become.

Sandisk is reacting via a cooperation with Kioxia, Reuters noted. In August, the two firms said they will spend more than $31 billion in Japan until 2032, including a new memory manufacturing facility at Kioxia’s Kitakami factory.

The stock has already priced in a lot of the AI boom

There’s one more thing investors can’t ignore: valuation.

Sandisk was split from Western Digital in February 2025 and began trading independently under the symbol SNDK.

The stock has surged in an amazing fashion. In August, Reuters reported that Sandisk shares had surged about 470% from the same time in 2026.

Historical market statistics show the stock rose to $1,791.82 on Sept. 18.

That means the question has changed.

Investors are no longer simply asking whether AI will increase demand for NAND storage.

They are asking whether Sandisk can convert that demand into durable revenue, margins, and cash flow quickly enough to justify the expectations already embedded in the stock.

Sandisk’s next chapter is about execution

Sandisk has several things working for it. Fast-expanding data center revenue. Long-term customer commitments. Better enterprise SSD demand. New NAND technology. And a big approved repurchase.

But the market is changing, too.

Capacity will increase with time. Chinese competitors are becoming bigger. Other memory vendors are boosting their exposure to corporate SSDs. And Sandisk needs to keep spending while honoring the promises it has already made to its clients.

Sandisk is a vertically integrated NAND flash corporation with chip design, intellectual property, manufacturing, and systems engineering skills, according to the company’s own filings.

So far, the figures tell us that AI is generating a powerful new demand driver for storage.

The difficult issue is how long the present scarcity of supply will endure and how much of that economics Sandisk can hold on to.

Sandisk has visibility to long-term deals totaling $93.9 billion. The next task is to translate that visibility into sustainable revenues while not losing its advantage as the NAND market becomes tougher.

Related: SanDisk CEO reveals what’s next after explosive 3,150% stock rally

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GE Vernova launched as a stand-alone company in late 2021 with a $6 billion backlog. Four-and-a half-years later, that number is $176 billion and climbing. 

GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik told a Morgan Stanley conference on Sept. 16, 2026, that it will hit $200 billion very early in 2027.

I have been watching GE Vernova’s story with genuine interest because it sits at the center of the two biggest infrastructure themes of this decade. 

First, we have AI power demand, and second, the global electrification buildout. When both of those tailwinds converge on the same order book, the numbers get interesting fast.

GEV is up 44.14% year to date and approximately 54% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance, despite a 6% pullback over the past month driven by broader concerns about the AI trade. 

After the CEO’s appearance at the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference, Bernstein reaffirmed a Buy rating and $1,298 price target on GE Vernova Inc., Investing.com reported.

Also Read: GE Vernova Latest News and Stories 

What GE Vernova’s $176 billion in backlog actually means

Strazik described demand as “strong and durable” in the Morgan Stanley 14th Annual Laguna Conference, and the backlog composition is a huge backup.

In the first half of 2026, new contract commitments totaled 40 gigawatts. The second half is on pace toward approximately 20 gigawatts, a figure Strazik described as potentially conservative. 

But we also aren’t going to be at a 40-gigawatt run rate every six months.

Customers are putting cash commitments down on delivery slots through 2032, with pricing remaining strong for 2030 and 2031 slots that have not yet been filled.

The backlog is not just large. Why? It extends into years that most companies cannot see clearly at all.

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The services revenue story layered on top is the other part I find most attractive. Strazik said every gigawatt of heavy-duty HA gas turbine capacity generates approximately $500 million in high-margin services revenue over the first 20 years of operation. 

GE Vernova has installed more than 350 new machines in gas factories over the past 18 months. Power Services revenue is projected to rise from $12 billion in 2025 to $22 billion in 2035. In fact, Strazik described even that estimate as conservative.

GE Vernova’s data center demand keeps doubling

Electrification was a central theme at Laguna, and of course, the data center numbers are must-dig variables.

GE Vernova booked more than $5 billion in data center orders in the first half of 2026 alone, compared to approximately $2 billion for all of 2025. So, we’re seeing real traction there.

All that said, data centers represented about 40% of electrification orders in H1 2026. As other parts of the business catch up in the second half, that concentration drops to approximately 20%. That’s because the rest of the grid business is accelerating alongside it.

Related: Morgan Stanley strongly resets GE Vernova stock target

Separately, GE Vernova-backed nuclear startup Blue Energy submitted the first part of its application to build a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Port of Victoria, Texas. 

The project would combine GE Vernova 7HA.02 gas turbines with GE Vernova-Hitachi small modular reactors (SMRs) to create a 2.5-gigawatt power plant by the early 2030s. This is early-stage, yes, but it signals that GE Vernova’s power portfolio extends well beyond the current gas and wind footprint.

GE Vernova has installed more than 350 new machines in gas factories over the past 18 months.Shutterstock

The GE Vernova factory expansion is doing something unusual

GE Vernova’s momentum is building, with the company now expecting at least 125 GW of gas equipment under contract by year-end 2026. 

To meet that demand, it plans to deliver 20 GW of annual gas turbine output by the third quarter of 2026, ramping to 24 GW in 2028 and targeting 30 GW by 2030, according to GE Vernova’s Q2 fiscal 2026. 

Related: GE Vernova’s AI power trade has one weak link

To make this happen, cash generation remains strong, with GE Vernova ending Q2 2026 with $13.1 billion in cash, while backlog and margins both continued to grow.

The Prolec GE transformer acquisition, closed in February 2026, is running ahead of plan, with 2028 financial performance expected to be materially better than the original October 2025 announcement suggested.

What comes next for GE Vernova

Strazik already mapped out the calendar: Q3 earnings that are expected to confirm continued growth, a January 2027 full-year 2026 results presentation with a 2027 outlook, and a Capital Markets Day in spring 2027 covering the 2030 opportunity and the decade beyond.

“The next decade,” Strazik said, is shaping up to be even better than the current one. And based on what the CEO laid out at the conference, there’s plenty of evidence behind that optimism.

Related: BofA cuts to the chase on AI data center demand

Data breaches are simply a way of life in the digital age, so much so that you probably didn’t even hear about the theft and sale of more than 150 million driver’s licenses earlier this month.

That breach was so widespread that a digital scan of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s license was included, according to Krebs on Security.

While many Americans have signed up for identity theft protection and some are notified when their information is up for sale on the dark web, the same reality has been proven over and over again: our data is not safe.

So the fact that the prediction market company Polymarket allowed fraudsters to access user accounts through personal information that they’d stolen should raise some red flags.

Yet the company’s response to the breach, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation, is not what you’d expect.

Fraudsters attempt $10 million Polymarket theft using stolen debit cards

In February, payment processor Checkout.com warned Polymarket that online fraudsters were tying stolen debit cards to thousands of new U.S. accounts to fund wagers, the proceeds from which were then pulled onto clean cards and accounts they controlled, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The problem became so widespread that at one point, Checkout.com rejected more than 80% of the deposits it was handling for Polymarket as the scheme racked up at least $10 million in charges.

The fraudsters targeted Polymarket’s U.S. facing platform just months after it began admitting users off its waitlist.

While falling for the scheme was bad enough, Polymarket’s reaction to being told about the security breach was even more egregious.

Online fraudsters tied stolen debit cards to thousands of new U.S. accounts to fund Polymarket wagers.d3sign / Getty Images

Polymarket CEO told staff not to worry about the fraud

According to the Journal, employees notified Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan of the breach, but his response seems a bit unsatisfactory.

Sources at the company told the Journal that Coplan told them to keep growing the platform and that Polymarket would just pay a fine if regulators ever found out about the breach. Meanwhile, fraud rates remained elevated for months after the initial breach, before returning to industry norms of 1% (instead of 80%) by May.

A Polymarket spokesperson told the Journal that its “market integrity framework includes processes to detect and respond to suspicious activity.” Still, the company’s response to the fraud shows just how much it was caught off guard.

Polymarket fires U.S. CEO, executive resigns

Shortly after the breach was discovered, Polymarket Chief Compliance Officer Andrew Clifford resigned after sending an executive a report detailing the fraud issues at the company, the Journal reported.

Later, Polymarket U.S. CEO Justin Hertzberg was fired, and the heads of its U.S. regulation and anti-money-laundering units also left the company.

Polymarket hired the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to investigate the breach, and it determined that Polymarket had acted in compliance with regulations.

Polymarket users had to fight to be made whole

In order to clear the backlog of pending withdrawals due to the increase in fraud, Polymarket executives eliminated the company policy of returning money through the same payment method used for deposits. The company did that despite being warned that doing so would invite money laundering.

One Polymarket user interviewed by the Journal said he joined the market to place bets on the World Cup. In July, he logged into his account to find his positions sold and nearly $5,800 in gains sent to a debit card he did not own.

Related: Kalshi, Polymarket bets are big problem for NFL

Polymarket credited his account $25 while offering no explanation. “Polymarket U.S. was silent for weeks and weeks,” he said, so he filed reports with the local police, FBI, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The company eventually put his account on hold, but only after he submitted verification information twice — the same information the scammers didn’t need when they stole his money in the first place.

Regulators investigate Polymarket

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has opened an investigation into Polymarket, the Journal reported. It has also instructed staff to preserve records tied to the fraud attack and other matters.

Former federal prosecutors told the Journal that weak anti-money laundering safeguards could potentially violate federal statutes regarding money laundering and illicit fund transfers.

Related: Polymarket’s public ledger may be leaking military secrets

Monday’s discussion between the president and mayor marks their third meeting since November 2025.

Since the first DSW opened its doors in 1991, the company has operated around a simple premise: provide shoppers with a wide selection of designer footwear at prices they can feel good about.

Over the past several decades, that formula has allowed it to establish itself as the destination for discounted shoes.

But as off-price retail grows, the retailer has begun experimenting with what comes next.

From a revamped loyalty program to new shop-in-shop concepts, DSW is testing a number of new ways to grab a larger share of that off-price pie.

DSW is changing what it carries in its stores

In September, DSW announced two major changes to its stores. 

The first is a store-in-store concept called The Edit. 

Launching in four DSW locations this fall, CEO Doug Howe described the pilot experiment in a call with investors as “a curated, elevated destination showcasing key affordable luxury and elevated fashion brands in an open, experiential environment.”

While Howe didn’t provide specific details, he implied that these spaces will be stocked with products from DSW’s parent company’s (DBI) other brands, including Vince Camuto, Lucky Brand, and Jessica Simpson.

The “vertically integrated model brings together brand building, product development, and sourcing, and our retail footprint serves as a catalyst to introduce, scale, and expand these brands across our portfolio,” Howe said.

Essentially, the footwear retailer is testing what role its stores can play in the broader Designer Brands ecosystem. It’s hoping that offering its other brands and products in its physical stores will increase foot traffic, and overall sales for both DSW and its partners.

DSW is taking a new approach to loyalty 

The second change DSW confirmed is a fully revamped loyalty program.

The new program offers more value and flexibility to members, removing auto-issued rewards and allowing them to choose how and when they redeem their benefits. It also includes three levels that allow shoppers to upgrade their perks as they spend more.

“Over the years, we’ve built a strong loyalty program, but we knew customer expectations were evolving, and we wanted to understand what that meant,” Paige Sheedy, head of Global Marketing, told me. 

“But rather than focusing on changing one specific behavior, we focused on creating a better experience,” she continued. “We designed a program that rewards discovery, purchase frequency, and long-term loyalty because those are the things our customers told us matter to them.”

The revamped loyalty program was especially important because of how integral VIP spend is to DSW’s success. 

“Nearly 90% of [DSW’s] transactions come from our approximately 30 million VIP members,” Howe told investors on a call in September. 

That makes VIP a particularly important piece of DSW’s effort to deepen its relationship with existing customers.

“Our goal is for VIPs to feel like DSW understands them, celebrates their loyalty, and makes it easy to get value from the program whenever and however they choose to shop,” Sheedy told me.

DSW is working to revamp its shopping experience amid a dip in sales.Bloomberg / Getty Images

Why is DSW making these changes?

These changes come at a crucial moment for DSW.

Off-price retailers, including TJ Maxx and Ross, are having a moment with consumers. That trend should theoretically play into DSW’s hands, yet DSW has consistently seen its sales decline.

The retailer has long built its brand around offering name-brand footwear at discounted prices. But its recent results suggest that simply offering value isn’t enough to guarantee growth.

“Over the past several years, the balance of power has shifted decisively toward retailers like off-price chains with the clearest value story,” a recent Placer.ai report said. 

“Pre-COVID, department stores held a slight edge, capturing just over half of visits to the two segments,” the report continued. “But by 2025, that relationship had fully reversed, with off-price claiming a remarkable 62.9% share of visits.”

“As consumers grow more price-sensitive and the retail landscape becomes more bifurcated, traditional department stores have struggled to articulate a clear competitive edge — while off-price continues to benefit from a straightforward, discovery-driven model,” Placer.ai concluded.

Although DSW offers that straightforward value proposition, it hasn’t seen the same growth as some of its competitors in the sector.

At the close of the second quarter of the 2026 fiscal year, DBI reported a 1.2% decrease in net sales year over year and a 2.4% decline in comparable sales. 

The results seem to indicate that value alone won’t be enough to carry DSW through the off-price boom.

So the retailer is looking for other ways to keep shoppers coming back.

The Edit gives the company a way to experiment with a more curated, elevated shopping experience, while the revamped VIP program gives its most frequent customers more reasons to stay engaged.

Neither initiative guarantees that DSW will reverse its recent sales declines. But together, they point to a broader strategy: making DSW more than a place to find discounted shoes.

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Fuel shortages rarely announce themselves. They show up as a line at the pump, then a handwritten sign taped to a nozzle, then a government map of your own country with holes punched in it.

Wealthy countries assume they are insulated from that sequence. They hold strategic reserves, they subsidize when politics demand it, and they carry enough diplomatic weight to keep tankers pointed in their direction.

For most of the past seven months, that assumption held across Western Europe. The Strait of Hormuz closed at the end of February, when the war with Iran began, taking roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil trade with it.

Crude spiked. Governments wrote checks. Nobody in Paris waited two hours for a tank of diesel.

Europe covered the gap two ways. It bought refined fuel from other regions, mostly the U.S. Gulf Coast, and it leaned on a Saudi pipeline built specifically to move crude around Hormuz.

Then one of those workarounds burned.

On Friday, Sept. 18, 11% of French service stations had run out of petrol or diesel, up from 9% two days earlier, according to The Connexion.

President Emmanuel Macron called an emergency meeting at the Élysée Palace that morning with the main 2027 presidential candidates.

Why Europe stopped refining its own diesel

France is not short of fuel because of a strike or a hurricane. It is short because the continent spent 15 years dismantling the machinery that would have protected it.

Roughly 30 refineries closed across the European Union between 2009 and 2024, with another 400,000 barrels per day of capacity slated to shut in 2025 under tightening emissions rules, according to OilPrice.com.

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That left Europe structurally short of diesel, the fuel that moves its freight, its farm equipment and most of its passenger cars. It replaced domestic production with imports, first from Russia, then, after the 2022 embargo, from the Middle East and the United States.

The war closed the Middle Eastern door. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries closed most of the other one, and Moscow has extended its diesel export ban through Oct. 31.

That leaves American barrels, which is where the arithmetic starts to pinch.

“Gulf Coast refiners can’t keep exporting diesel to Northwest Europe indefinitely,” Kpler’s head of clean petroleum products, Zameer Yusof, told Bloomberg, as reported by OilPrice.com.

Macron calls an emergency meeting as French gas pumps run dry.JEAN-FRANCOIS FORT / Getty Images

What empty pumps look like across France

The shortage is not spread evenly. Grand Est reported 16% of its stations dry and Occitanie 14%, while Île-de-France sat at 7%, as of the morning of Friday, Sept. 18, according to the French Economy Ministry.

Those numbers also flatter the situation. A station counts as out of stock only if it has no petrol at all or no diesel at all, so a site that has burned through one grade and still sells another is recorded as fine.

Retail pricing tells the cleaner story. French diesel averaged €2.378 per liter on Sept. 18, within two cents of the record set in April and up nearly 7% in a month.

Related: JPMorgan sends stark warning on $100 oil

I converted that figure at Friday’s euro rate of $1.1486, and it works out to roughly $10.34 a gallon. American drivers cursing $6 diesel are paying about 40% less than a French trucker.

Macron’s government is preparing a new support scheme starting Oct. 1 aimed at “the most vulnerable French workers,” Energy Minister Maud Bregeon said, according to The Connexion.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally wants fuel VAT cut from 20% to 5.5%, a proposal the government rejected at a cost of €15 billion. Drivers can check live shortages on the government’s prix-carburants site.

How a Saudi pipeline attack deepened the crunch

The trigger this week was a drone strike on Sept. 10 that closed Saudi Arabia’s East West pipeline, the line carrying crude from the eastern oil fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea without touching Hormuz.

Aramco has now told European refining customers they will receive no crude at all in October under long-term contracts, reported Bloomberg. The decision applies to every European buyer.

Asia is getting those barrels instead, routed through Hormuz and transferred ship-to-ship off Oman. Europe is the customer left holding the cancellation notice.

Where diesel stands right now

French diesel averaged €2.378 per liter on Sept. 18, roughly two cents below April’s record, according to The Connexion.

The U.S. national average hit a record $6.4776 per gallon on Sept. 18, up 79% this year, according to AAA. 

Global diesel exports averaged 5.85 million barrels per day in August, down 25% from a year earlier, according to S&P Global Energy, as reported by Oil & Gas Journal. 

Brent crude settled near $104 on Sept. 18 after touching $108 on Monday, Sept. 21, according to Trading Economics.

What French diesel prices mean for American wallets

Here is the part that travels. Europe’s shortfall does not stay in Europe, because the barrels that fill it come off the same U.S. Gulf Coast docks that supply Atlanta and Chicago.

U.S. refinery utilization has run near 97% this summer while global diesel exports have fallen 25% year over year, according to Rigzone. “Winter is coming for diesel markets,” S&P Global Energy executive director Karim Fawaz said in that analysis.

Diesel sets the price of every physical thing you buy. It moves the container off the ship, the pallet into the warehouse and the box to your door, and the cost rides along at each step. It is also why $5 gasoline is already reshaping holiday spending plans.

That is why the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate a quarter point to a range of 3.75% to 4% on Sept. 16, its first increase since July 2023, blaming energy-driven inflation. Chair Kevin Warsh said inflation is “too high and has been for too long,” according to Fox Business.

So the French fuel crisis reaches you twice. Once at the pump, where the national average for regular sits near $4.47, and again on your mortgage quote and your credit card statement, because the 10 year Treasury yield has pushed above 5%.

What to watch as winter oil demand arrives

Saudi Arabia expects partial pipeline service within days and full capacity within six weeks. Both estimates come from people who have been wrong about repair timelines since March.

The harder deadline is temperature. Northern Hemisphere heating season starts pulling barrels in October, and European diesel inventories were already sliding toward multi-year lows before Aramco canceled the October program.

When I lined the French shortage map up against the U.S. export numbers, the uncomfortable read was that the two markets are now bidding for the same scarce cargoes. Europe will win most of those auctions, because Europe has no choice.

Watch three things from here. Whether Yanbu resumes loading, whether Washington taps what is left of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and whether TotalEnergies (TTE) and other European majors begin rationing supply to their own branded stations.

France ran out first because it had the thinnest margin. It will not be the only one.

Related: The IRS just rewrote a fuel tax credit as diesel hit $5.94