Aramco CEO: Energy Market May Not Normalize Until 2027 Amid Billion-Barrel Supply Shock

 From the Trump administration's recent Project Freedom push to mounting warnings from Wall Street analysts, security experts, energy strategists, and major oil company executives, there is a growing sense that the global energy market is quickly approaching a breaking point due to the heavily disrupted Strait of Hormuz.

There was good news over the weekend, as a Qatari LNG tanker transited the Hormuz chokepoint. However, a second tanker from the energy-rich Gulf country abruptly made a U-turn in the Strait early Monday, dashing hopes for any near-term normalization, especially since the U.S. and Iran have yet to reach a peace deal.

The countdown to global energy chaos is increasingly viewed in weeks, not months. If the maritime chokepoint remains impaired for the next several weeks, according to Frederic Lasserre, head of research at Gunvor, one of the world's largest oil traders, then the "tipping point to something has to give is June."

Warnings of incoming energy market turmoil continued on Monday, with the CEO of Aramco, formerly known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Company. Amin Nasser warned that the market could lose around 100 million barrels of oil each week if Hormuz remains closed.

Nasser told investors on an earnings call earlier today that if the Hormuz chokepoint is disrupted for another couple of weeks, then it would take the global energy market until 2027 to normalize. 

Here are the most important comments from Nasser's call with the analyst:

• Energy Supply Shock Is Largest Ever Experienced

• It'll Take Months for Oil Market to Rebalance Even If Hormuz Reopens Today

• Market to Normalize in 2027 if Hormuz Opening Is Delayed by Few More Weeks

• Market Has Seen Supply Loss of About 1 Billion Barrel of Oil

• Alternative Flows Bypassing Hormuz, Strategic Reserve Releases Partially offset that

• Market Could Lose Around 100 Mln Barrels of Oil For Every Week

• Demand Rationing to Continue As Long As Supply Remains Disrupted

• Return to Demand Growth Expected to Be Robust If Trade Resumes

• Demand Growth to Be Driven by Urgency to Ensure Security of Supply

• Supply Chains Will Need Several Months to Return to Normal

Building on the countdown-to-energy-chaos theme, Morgan Stanley analyst Martijn Rats warned clients that the oil market is in a "race against time" as the maritime chokepoint remains heavily disrupted. He noted that global supply buffers, which have kept crude prices contained during the ten-week Iran war, are starting to come under pressure.

Rats said that nearly 1 billion barrels have already been lost, yet Brent crude  futures have not exceeded 2022 levels because the market entered the crisis with spare supply buffers and because traders kept assuming Hormuz would reopen.

"The ability of the US to continue this elevated level of exports is hard to gauge but appears under more pressure," the analyst noted, adding, "The United States' 3.8m b/d increase in exports and China's 5.5m b/d cut in imports have shielded the rest of the world from 9.3m b/d of tightness." 

Rats warned, "Even if the Strait reopened tomorrow, the time required to restart fields, repair refineries, and reposition tanker tonnage means the market is on track to lose another billion barrels over the balance of 2026."

In a separate note, JPMorgan's resident commodity expert, Natasha Kaneva, explained where the next phase of the global energy shock could unfold.

Kaneva's chart on global oil inventories is truly shocking.

Read Kaneva's full note here.

Overall, the warnings are piling up. If the maritime chokepoint remains shuttered through this month, real panic may begin then.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/aramco-ceo-says-energy-market-may-not-normalize-until-2027-amid-billion-barrel-loss-oil

Apyx expanded FDA 510(k) clearance adding power liposuction to AYON Body Contouring System.

 Apyx Medical announces it has received expanded FDA 510(k) clearance adding power liposuction capability to its AYON Body Contouring System.

https://finviz.com/quote?t=APYX&p=d

Agenus: SEC closes probe with no enforcement recommendation

 

Agenus posts Q1 2026 results with $33.7M revenue, $39.2M net income as SEC closes probe with no enforcement recommendation

• Related securities class action was dismissed, as disclosed alongside Q1 2026 results and SEC investigation update.
• Company highlighted BOT+BAL execution in its Q1 2026 results announcement.
• Agenus highlighted benefits from its collaboration with Zydus in its Q1 2026 earnings disclosure.

https://finviz.com/quote?t=AGEN&p=d

Upwardly revised 2026 revenue guidance and Amicus acquisition drive BMRN

 

BioMarin reported Q1 2026 results on May 4, with total revenues of $766 million (up YoY and beating some estimates, aided by VOXZOGO patient growth and enzyme therapies). While non-GAAP EPS of $0.76 missed expectations amid higher costs (including a $31 million manufacturing charge and acquisition-related expenses), the company sharply raised full-year 2026 total revenue guidance to $3.825–$3.925 billion (from $3.325–$3.425 billion). This reflects an accelerated ~20% YoY growth rate at the midpoint, primarily from the April 27 closing of the Amicus Therapeutics acquisition, which adds marketed products GALAFOLD and POMBILITI + OPFOLDA to the rare-disease portfolio. The outlook improvement and acquisition synergies have been highlighted positively by analysts (with several Buy/Outperform reaffirmations and select price target increases, such as Evercore ISI to $120), outweighing the near-term EPS shortfall and margin pressures. After an initial post-earnings dip on May 5, the stock rose ~2.55% on May 6; the additional ~4.4% premarket gain on May 7 appears to reflect continued digestion of this bullish longer-term outlook rather than a single new announcement. 

https://finviz.com/quote?t=BMRN&p=d

Novo salvages happy ending for scrapped Parkinson’s cell therapy via deal with AI biotech

 Seven months after Novo Nordisk abandoned its push into cell therapy, the pharma’s Parkinson’s disease program looks like it’s secured a happy ending via a deal with Cellular Intelligence.

The AI biotech has licensed the clinical-stage Parkinson’s cell therapy, as well as locking in an equity investment from Novo. The May 11 press release made no mention of Cellular Intelligence handing over any money upfront, although Novo will be eligible for milestone payments as well as royalties if the therapy ever makes it to market. 

Cellular Intelligence will now lead development of STEM-PD, a cell therapy where donor stem cells are transformed into new neurons and transplanted into patients’ brains. The candidate is currently in a first-in-human trial, and the biotech plans to launch a phase 2 study by the end of the year, Nuno Mendonça, M.D., Cellular Intelligence’s newly appointed chief medical officer, told Fierce.

The biotech has some competition in the Parkinson’s cell therapy space. Aspen Neuroscience, for example, is plotting a phase 3 trial of its own candidate, which is derived from the patients themselves rather than donors, after a promising phase 1/2  data readout.

Cellular Intelligence hopes to set STEM-PD apart from the crowd in its upcoming phase 2 trial, said Mendonça, thanks to the company's AI-powered platform.

“Based on the data that we've seen so far, I think we're all positioned,” Mendonça said. 

The manufacturing advantage comes from the company’s ability to make “minor tweaks” to the stem cells, Cellular Intelligence co-founder and CEO Micha Breakstone, Ph.D., told Fierce, which can have “outsized effects” on factors like viability.

“Cell replacement therapies have been plagued by scalability, producibility, costs, etc.,” Breakstone explained. “Those are exactly the areas that we believe we can improve on.”

Novo decided to end its cell therapy work and fire nearly all of its 250 employees working in this space last October, as part of a broader restructuring. The Big Pharma has been seeking landing spots for select assets ever since. Aspect Biosystems took on the pharma’s diabetes cell therapies in January, with Novo also investing in the biotech.

Now, Boston-based Cellular Intelligence is the latest beneficiary of Novo’s strategic withdrawal, which was enacted by CEO Mike Doustdar at the beginning of his tenure.

“Finding the right steward for the program was critical, and we are convinced that Cellular Intelligence has the capabilities needed to advance it further,” Jacob Petersen, Novo’s senior vice president of global research, said in today's release. “The convergence of developmental biology and genomics, and the possibility of combining this with AI on a single platform, provide an exciting opportunity in medicine in general, and for the cell therapy field in particular.”

With STEM-PD rehomed and a collaboration with Heartseed scrapped, all of Novo’s former cell therapies that were in clinical or late-preclinical stages have met their ultimate fate, Novo communications lead Martin Havtorn Petersen told Fierce.

“Everything else we were doing in the unit was really early stuff,” Petersen said. “You should not expect any more deals for specific cell therapy programs.”

Cellular Intelligence was launched just two and a half years ago, with Breakstone providing the pre-seed funds himself. Originally called Somite Therapeutics, the company’s goal is to build foundation AI models for cell signaling pathways. But even with that tech focus, the goal has always been to develop a pipeline, Breakstone told Fierce. The biotech currently has six preclinical assets to go along with STEM-PD, he said.

"If you don't have your own assets, you'll basically be at the mercy of others,” the CEO said. “The idea was always to have something close to home that we could prove ourselves with.”

With STEM-PD in hand, Cellular Intelligence is now expanding into Copenhagen with a 26-person team that includes some staffers who worked on the Parkinson’s program while it belonged to Novo. There, they’ll join an effort to turn the Danish capital into the “Kendall Square of regenerative medicine,” as Breakstone recalls the CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation once saying was his goal.

“To be able to drive impact on patients,” Breakstone said, while also building a fully integrated, AI-native therapeutics company, is “a really rare opportunity, and one that we're extremely excited about.”

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/novo-finds-new-home-parkinsons-cell-therapy-ai-biotech-cellular-intelligence

GE HealthCare unveils next-generation SIGNA MR and AI-driven MRI tech

 

GE HealthCare unveils next-generation SIGNA MR and AI-driven MRI technologies at ISMRM 2026

• New SIGNA One workflow ecosystem introduced to streamline MRI operations and integrate next-generation SIGNA platforms.
• SIGNA Bolt 3T system launched as part of next-generation MR lineup showcased at ISMRM 2026.
• Helium-free SIGNA Sprint with Freelium introduced as part of GE HealthCare's next-generation SIGNA MR technologies.
• New SIGNA Studio research tools debuted alongside SIGNA One, SIGNA Bolt 3T and helium-free SIGNA Sprint.

https://finviz.com/quote?t=GEHC&p=d

GSK enlists local aid for Chinese rollout of hep B drug

 China will be a big market for GSK's chronic hepatitis B (CHB) treatment bepirovirsen, and the company has enlisted the aid of Sino Biopharm to help it roll out the drug there as quickly as possible if it gets approval.

China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) started a review in March of bepirovirsen, an investigational antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) that GSK has developed in collaboration with Ionis, for the treatment of adults with CHB. An estimated 75 million people are living with CHB in China, accounting for a sizeable part of the global patient population of around 250 million.

The agreement with Sino Bio, via its subsidiary Chia Tai Tianqing Pharma (CTTQ), allies GSK with a company that is one of China's foremost liver disease companies, with a portfolio of medicines and a broad commercial footprint that covers more than 5,000 medical centres across the country.

For an initial period of five and a half years, CTTQ will be responsible for importation, distribution, hospital access, and promotional and non-promotional activities for bepirovirsen in mainland China, while GSK will hold the drug's license and retain responsibility for regulatory, quality, pharmacovigilance, and global medical strategy.

There's another side to the alliance as well, with GSK taking an option on "early-stage pipeline assets" at Sino Biopharm that might have potential for development outside China. The Chinese firm's pipeline listing includes four clinical-stage hepatitis B drugs, including small-molecule agonists targeting TLR-7 and TLR-8, a capsid assembly modulator, and an siRNA candidate.

"By combining GSK's innovation with CTTQ's extensive local scale and execution, we want to reach more patients, deliver greater impact, and directly address one of China's most pressing healthcare priorities," said the president of GSK's international business, Mike Crichton.

Bepirovirsen is being tipped as a first-in-class new treatment for CHB that is able to achieve a significantly higher functional cure rate than placebo when added to standard care. While not a complete cure that eradicates HBV from the body, achieving a functional cure is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of long-term liver complications, including liver cancer, as well as all-cause mortality.

China's current five-year plan for hepatitis B, which started in 2025, has set out functional cure as the treatment goal. The NMPA has awarded both breakthrough designation and priority review to bepirovirsen.

Analysts at William Blair have previously suggested that the market for an HBV cure could be around the same size as for hepatitis C virus (HCV), which peaked at around $10 billion a year, although that proved to be a short-lived bonanza, with sales falling sharply as the pool of eligible chronic hepatitis C patients reduced.

GSK has high hopes for bepirovirsen, modelling peak sales of around £2 billion ($2.75 billion) a year, which would make it a big contributor to the company's target of driving annual revenues above £40 billion by 2031.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/gsk-enlists-local-aid-chinese-rollout-hep-b-drug