Good morning. As oil prices surge, petroleum companies in Texas are putting in a renewed effort to tackle the theft of billions of dollars of crude annually by organized crime groups.

But in that battle, reports Risk Journal’s Max Fillion, they face an uphill fight.

• The scheme: The theft schemes primarily rely on fake waste disposal companies ostensibly set up to store the billions of gallons of water used to pump oil out of the ground, according to legislative analysis produced by the Texas Senate last year. Although many so-called saltwater disposal companies are legitimate, some also serve as vehicles for getting stolen oil into the market, according to law enforcement.
   
• Legal remedies? The next few months will test new state laws aimed at making oil theft easier to prosecute and a new task force that connects ConocoPhillips and other oil majors with federal, state and local police. “I, myself, up until a year ago was not really aware of the magnitude of what’s been going on lately,” said Jim Wright, chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s top oil regulator.
   
• New task force: Wright launched the task force in October. The new laws create a state police unit dedicated to oil theft, impose harsher punishments and lower the level of evidence prosecutors need to bring charges against truck drivers moving stolen oil.
   
• The challenges: But despite the surge in interest, the task force confronts several challenges, including outdated record-keeping, under-resourced law enforcement and a sprawling industry that tends to underreport theft across the far-flung well sites that dot rural Texas.

U.S. imposes new ‘economic fury’ sanctions targeting Iran.

The U.S. blacklisted a Chinese refinery it says processed billions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum as part of a new package of sanctions aiming to further pressure Tehran, Risk Journal reports (free link). 

Who got hit? The Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against Hengli Petrochemical Refinery, a so-called teapot refinery it said is one of the largest customers for Iran’s oil. Treasury also announced sanctions against about 40 shipping firms and vessels allegedly connected to Iran’s shadow fleet moving Iranian petroleum in defiance of U.S. sanctions.

U.S. regulator sues New York state for prediction markets crackdown.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued New York state in connection with its efforts to crack down on prediction markets.

The federal regulator is seeking a declaratory judgment that it has exclusive authority to regulate the prediction markets, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The CFTC’s move follows a lawsuit by James’s office against cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini earlier this week, accusing their prediction market platforms of violating state gambling laws.

• Arrest of U.S. Soldier Signals Polymarket’s Wild-West Days Are Ending
• The Soldier Accused of Maduro Bets: ‘Army People Don’t Get the Business Stuff’

• China has ordered that Meta Platforms’ $2.5 billion acquisition of artificial-intelligence startup Manus be unwound. China’s National Development and Reform Commission said Monday it has banned the acquisition and ordered it to be rescinded on national security grounds.
   
• The Trump administration announced criminal charges, sanctions and multimillion-dollar rewards aimed at combating online scams coming out of Southeast Asia and targeting Americans.
   
• President Trump extended a waiver that loosens restrictions on shipments along America’s coastline, part of an attempt to ease energy-market disruptions caused by war in the Middle East.
   
• The Trump administration has lobbied against legislation that would regulate artificial intelligence in at least six Republican-led states, deepening a division within the party over the White House’s industry-friendly AI agenda.
   
• Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said Sunday he would support Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as Federal Reserve chair, clearing the last significant obstacle to installing President Trump’s pick to succeed Jerome Powell.
   
• Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill Friday that would have made Maine the first U.S. state to temporarily ban data-center construction.
   
• The Supreme Court will weigh a Virginia robbery case to decide if geofence warrants are an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
   
• Poland’s National Tax Administration announced it imposed a fine of 20 million zloty, about $5.5 million, on a Belarusian company that smuggled more than 100 luxury vehicles to Russia in deliberate violation of European Union sanctions, Risk Journal reports (free link).
   
• The United Kingdom introduced a new license requirement giving the government power to stop exports of goods at risk of being diverted to sanctioned destinations (free link).
   
• European regulators have questions about the secret credit ratings favored by private-equity owned life insurers and—unlike some state regulators in the U.S.—they aren’t shutting up.
   
• A Taiwanese court on Monday sentenced a former employee of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to 10 years in prison for stealing trade secrets.

The Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit London on May 7 will convene senior business professionals for discussions on a range of corporate risks including supply chains, artificial intelligence, geopolitics and financial crime. Speakers include: Kathy Wengel, EVP, Chief Technical Operations and Risk Officer, Johnson & Johnson; Nish Imthiyaz, Global Privacy and Responsible AI Counsel, Vodafone; and Will Mayes, Chief Executive, Cyber Monitoring Centre.

Request a complimentary invitation here using the code COMPLIMENTARY. Attendance is limited, and all requests are subject to approval.

The simple security flaws that exposed Trump to another gunman.

At the same hotel where then-President Ronald Reagan was shot 45 years ago, it was remarkably easy for a shooter to charge toward a ballroom where President Trump—along with his cabinet members and the reporters who cover his administration—were dining Saturday night.

The sprawling Washington Hilton for decades has been home to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner because of its capacity to host a large crowd and the Secret Service’s familiarity with securing it. More than 2,500 people attended the event, including five of the top six officials in the presidential line of succession.

Despite a visible security perimeter and warnings of tight security, guests said they could enter the hotel through checkpoints on the surrounding streets by simply showing a dinner ticket or a copy of an invite to one of several predinner receptions. The tickets were reviewed by staff but weren’t scanned and there were no identification checks, attendees said.

• Caltech Grad, ‘Teacher of the Month’ Named as Washington Shooting Suspect
• Inside the Washington Hilton: How the Shooting Unfolded

Aborted Pakistan trip leaves Trump with tough choices on Iran talks.

President Trump scrapped a trip by U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for talks with Iran, leaving himself tough choices over how to force Iran to make concessions the White House wants to strike a deal.

Trump said Iran can reach out to the U.S. if it ‌wants ⁠to negotiate an end to the conflict. “They can call us,” he told Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing,” adding any talks would be conducted by phone.

• Persian Gulf Oil Damage Will Ripple Long Past the End of the War
• Iran’s Leadership Divisions Frustrate Efforts to Make Progress in Talks
• U.S. Energy Exports Hit Records as World Adjusts to a Closed Persian Gulf

• The fight against Russia in Ukraine is now firmly Europe’s war.
   
• King Charles III will begin a four-day diplomatic visit to Washington to mend the fraying U.S.-U.K. relationship.
   
• Anxiety about the war in Iran has left Americans in the grimmest economic mood on record, according to a long-running survey.
   
• Meta Platforms just offered a glimpse at what it thinks the future of work looks like: training and supervising artificial-intelligence systems to do what used to be your job. And that’s if you still have a job at all.
   
• Bombings allegedly perpetrated by a drug-trafficking group in southern Colombia killed at least 20 people, authorities here said Sunday, marking the deadliest wave of attacks on civilians in years.
   
• OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman apologized to the Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge for not alerting police sooner to the activity of Jesse Van Rootselaar, the suspect in a February mass shooting that killed eight people.
   
• Ford Motor and Chinese automaker Geely held talks as recently as this year exploring whether the European tie-up they are negotiating could extend into the U.S. Domestic carmakers view Chinese brands as an existential threat and are asking the Trump administration and Congress to keep them out.
   
• The European Union and U.S. launched a partnership on critical minerals, the European Commission said Friday as the bloc’s top trade negotiator visits Washington, D.C. to meet his U.S. counterparts.