Nicole Jao
Nicole Jao covers U.S. energy markets for Reuters, with a focus on how oil, gasoline and diesel prices move in response to geopolitical shocks, refinery operations and market data. Her reporting distinguishes itself by treating fuel prices as a financial and industrial story as much as a consumer one, linking daily price moves to supply disruptions, corporate decisions and forecasts from major energy bodies. She writes in a straight, numbers‑driven style that keeps benchmark prices, barrels‑per‑day figures and inventory data at the center of the narrative.
Oil prices and geopolitical risk
Jao’s core line of work is daily coverage of global oil benchmarks, where she explains price moves through the lens of conflict, diplomacy and shipping disruptions. Her stories track Brent and U.S. crude as they jump above or fall back from key levels around $100 a barrel, tying those swings to developments such as intensified attacks on tankers, missile strikes and evolving ceasefire talks.
She regularly reports on how fighting involving Iran and its allies affects traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, spelling out the consequences for traders worried about tight supplies and delayed cargoes.
Diplomatic events like United Nations meetings or progress in U.S.–Iran negotiations appear in her coverage as inflection points, easing or heightening supply concerns and cooling or accelerating rallies in crude. Her pieces make frequent use of comments from analysts and bank strategists, along with revised demand and supply projections from organizations such as OPEC and the International Energy Agency, to frame how durable any price trend might be.
Gasoline, diesel and U.S. fuel costs
Alongside crude, Jao follows U.S. gasoline and diesel prices closely, writing about both sharp increases and extended declines at the pump. In coverage of record‑high gasoline prices around major travel weekends, she connects national average price levels to ongoing Middle East conflict, explaining how higher energy costs filter through to households and political debates. Her reporting on diesel emphasizes its role in freight and industry, noting when the U.S. average price crosses milestones such as $6 a gallon and detailing the supply squeezes behind those moves. In pieces on tumbling gasoline prices after weeks of declines, she tracks how easing crude markets, improving refinery output and changes in regional inventories translate into relief for drivers.
Price‑tracking services and government data feature heavily in these stories, with Jao using their figures to quantify how far fuel costs have moved from prior records and what that means for consumer budgets.
Refineries, corporate performance and labor
Jao devotes significant attention to the refining sector, covering everything from day‑to‑day outages to longer‑running labor disputes. She reports on incidents such as floodwaters overwhelming pumps at major U.S. refineries or power outages that force large facilities offline, describing the scale of the operations involved in barrels per day and assessing the potential impact on regional fuel supplies.
Her corporate earnings coverage for refiners like Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy and HF Sinclair digs into refining margins, turnaround costs and renewable diesel performance, linking financial results to shifts in crude markets and regulatory developments. In longer enterprise pieces on issues such as a BP refinery lockout, she explores how management strategies and union negotiations affect both plant operations and the broader corporate approach to labor, highlighting changes in how “Big Oil” handles workforce conflicts.
Across these stories, she treats refiners as key intermediaries between global crude dynamics and retail fuel prices, showing how decisions inside specific plants can ripple outward to markets and consumers.
Data‑led reporting and business background
Jao’s articles consistently foreground hard data - settlement prices, percentage gains and losses, weekly inventory changes, and revised demand and supply forecasts - to anchor her narratives. She draws on figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, price trackers such as GasBuddy, and datasets compiled by financial information providers to quantify trends rather than describe them generically. Her use of survey data and analyst estimates, including earnings expectations and forecast revisions, reflects a comfort with financial markets and corporate metrics. Before moving into energy markets at Reuters, Jao reported on the technology sector in China and Southeast Asia and on the U.S. asset‑management industry, experience that shows in her focus on business models, investor implications and how companies adapt to major structural shifts such as climate and sustainability pressures. That combination of market fluency, operational detail and geopolitical context gives her energy coverage a distinctive profile within the broader finance beat.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.