Business 12 September 2026

Nigeria sent half the LNG that landed at Sines last year

Portugal's energy regulator counted 46 tanker unloadings at the Sines LNG terminal in 2025, the entry point for 95% of the country's gas. The United States accounted for 43% of cargoes and Russia for 7%.

Portugal has an energy bottleneck and it sits in Sines. Around 95% of the gas that entered the country in 2025 arrived through the liquefied natural gas terminal there, according to the annual report from the energy regulator ERSE. The other 5% came by pipeline, over the Spanish interconnections at Campo Maior and Valença do Minho.

The terminal closed the year on 46 tanker unloadings, seven fewer than in 2024, and filled 7,546 road tankers, 214 more than the year before.

Where the gas comes from

Nigeria accounted for half of all unloading operations. The United States took 43% and Russia the remaining 7%.

That 7% is three ships — the same number as in 2024 — and the Russian-origin energy landed did not move either, holding at 3.3 terawatt-hours. Portugal intends to end Russian LNG imports by the start of 2027, under the EU rules phasing out gas purchases from Russia. As environment and energy minister Maria da Graça Carvalho explained back in February, only one company holds a long-term contract to bring Russian gas in through Sines: the Spanish utility Naturgy.

The network held up

The least-reported section of the report is the one that matters if you have a meter at home. ERSE found an overall improvement in the transmission and distribution networks, with fewer interruptions and shorter ones.

Supply interruptions touched 0.7% of customer installations — 10,861 out of 1,567,872 connected customers. On the transmission network there was not a single interruption at exit points, for the sixth consecutive year.

Every distribution operator met the standard for average interruption duration. The exception was Lisboagás, which missed the standard for the average number of interruptions, blamed on planned works, leak surveys and network conversion.

Electricity, meanwhile, went in a rather different direction this year: in July solar became Portugal’s largest single source of electricity. The report and the regulator’s other publications are on the ERSE website.

By Beatriz Mota

Image: Vanbasten 23 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Business 18 September 2026

Berkshire Hathaway makes Howard Buffett chairman as his father steps back

Warren Buffett, 96, becomes chairman emeritus with immediate effect and stays on the board. His eldest son, a director since 1993, takes the chair, while Greg Abel continues to run the company.

Warren Buffett stepped down on Friday as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the failing textile mill he bought in 1965 and turned into a trillion-dollar conglomerate. He is 96. The change took effect immediately. The board elected his eldest son, Howard G. Buffett, a director since 1993, as chairman, and named the father chairman emeritus. Warren Buffett remains a member of the board. In a letter to shareholders he wrote that Father Time always wins.

Business 18 September 2026

A Portuguese name from 1824 has just left the Lisbon stock exchange

Portugal's securities regulator cleared VAA — Vista Alegre Atlantis to leave Euronext Lisbon on Thursday, with immediate effect. Visabeira Indústria must now buy the shares of holders who did not vote for the delisting, at €1.07 each, within three months.

Vista Alegre shares can no longer be bought or sold on the Lisbon exchange. The CMVM, Portugal's securities regulator, approved the delisting request from VAA — Vista Alegre Atlantis, SGPS on Thursday, and the decision took effect immediately under article 251-F of the securities code. Nobody should be startled by it. The route was opened at the annual meeting on 29 May, where shareholders backed the exit at the request of Visabeira and a block of holders…

Business 17 September 2026

Abanca will take the boat as collateral, and front the subsidies that arrive late

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A bank announcing that it lends to businesses is not news. A bank building a team that looks only at people who make their living from the sea says something about where it thinks the money is. Abanca launched Abanca Mar in Portugal on Thursday, a segment aimed at companies and sole traders in what gets called the blue economy. The definition is deliberately wide. It takes in fishing, aquaculture, seafood processing and trade, shipbuilding and the yards…

Ursula von der Leyen at the European Parliament podium beside an EU flag, delivering the 2026 State of the Union address

Business 16 September 2026

Europe insures a quarter of its disaster losses. Von der Leyen wants an alliance to change that

In her State of the Union address, the Commission president announced a European alliance for climate risk insurance. Around 25% of catastrophe losses in the EU are covered by private insurance, and the rest lands on national budgets.

One line in Wednesday's State of the Union address will get less coverage than the headline items, and it is probably the one that touches household finances in Portugal most directly. Only about a quarter of losses from catastrophes in Europe are covered by private insurance. The rest ends up where it always ends up, on the national budget.

Tugadaily bar chart comparing, in euros per kWh, the 2026 deviation of 0.0176, the 0.0100 trigger and the 0.0050 increase actually applied

Business 16 September 2026

Portugal's regulated electricity tariff goes up on 1 October. For most homes that is under a euro a month

ERSE is raising the energy tariff by €0.005 per kWh, about 2.7% on the average monthly bill. A couple with no children pay 95 cents more; a couple with two children pay €2.70 more. It covers 779,000 customers, and the regulator is passing on less than a third of the gap it found.

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Business 15 September 2026

62 consultation responses have pushed Portugal's 1,050 MVA storage auction back by a month

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Monday was meant to be the day applications opened for 1,050 megavolt-amperes of electricity grid connection capacity, reserved for projects that include storage. They did not open. Maria da Graça Carvalho, the minister for environment and energy, explained the hold-up during a visit to the Tagusvalley science and technology park in Abrantes, and put it at three or four weeks. The reason is mundane, and in its way encouraging. Sixty-two submissions came…

Business 14 September 2026

From today the Portuguese state hands back 9.8 cents on every litre of diesel

Friday's order sets the extraordinary ISP rebate at 97.58 euros per thousand litres of diesel and 65.92 for petrol, in force from Monday. It is not a tax cut — it is the extra VAT the state collects when prices rise, given back.

Fill up this week and you are paying less tax than you were last week, by a wider margin than the headlines suggest. The order signed on Friday by the environment and energy minister and the secretary of state for tax affairs fixes the extraordinary fuel-duty rebate at 97.58 euros per thousand litres of road diesel and 65.92 euros per thousand litres of unleaded petrol. In the unit that shows up on the pump display: 9.8 cents off diesel, 6.6 off petrol.

Bar chart of where Portugal's gold is held: England 48.7%, Portugal 45.1%, BIS 5.2% and France 1.0%

Business 14 September 2026

Nearly half of Portugal's gold sits in London, and none of it is in New York

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Business 13 September 2026

Douro growers will be paid for the grapes they don't pick (and the fruit has to stay on the vine)

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Business 12 September 2026

Cape Verde to Ponta Delgada costs €218. Lisbon to Ponta Delgada, half the flight time, tops €500

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Tugadaily bar chart of containers returned to Portugal's Volta scheme: 10 million at two months, 100 million at three months and 305 million at five months

Business 11 September 2026

Portugal's deposit-return scheme has taken back 305 million containers in five months

Volta launched on 10 April and has tripled in the last two months: 100 million at the three-month mark, 305 million at five. The system now averages about five million returns a day.

Portugal's deposit-return system for drinks containers went live on 10 April and, five months on, has taken back more than 305 million single-use bottles and cans. The curve says more than the total. Two months in, more than 10 million containers had come back. At three months, 100 million. At five, 305 million. The number tripled over the last two months, which is exactly how a scheme behaves when the habit takes a while to form and then forms all at…

Business 11 September 2026

Your Portuguese mortgage does not move the day the ECB does

The deposit facility rate goes to 2.5% on 16 September, the second increase this year. What reaches your monthly payment is Euribor, and Euribor only reaches you on your contract's reset date.

The ECB Governing Council raised its three key rates by 25 basis points on Thursday, taking the deposit facility rate to 2.5% with effect from 16 September. It is the second rise this year, and energy is the reason. Inflation is still running above target, and the bank's own staff projections put it at an average of 3% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027 and 2.1% only in 2028. Growth is projected at 0.9% this year, 1.4% next year and 1.5% in 2028. That is not a stall.…

A combine harvester working through a wheat field in a cloud of dust in late afternoon light

Business 10 September 2026

Portugal's 10-cent farm diesel rebate runs again until December (and it only pays in the weeks prices climb)

The Council of Ministers, meeting in Bragança, extended the coloured-diesel support for farming, forestry, fishing and aquaculture to 31 December at an estimated cost above 15 million euros. The March decree being amended sets out the catch: the money is due only in weeks when the price beats a benchmark fixed in the first week of March.

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Business 9 September 2026

Portugal's trade gap shrank by €393m in July. Take one line out and it grew

Statistics Portugal published July's goods trade figures on Wednesday. The deficit came in at €3,052m, €393m better than a year earlier. Strip out goods that cross the border for processing without ever changing owner and it was €3,065m, or €65m worse.

July produced two trade deficits, and they point in opposite directions. The first one is the figure that will travel. Goods exports rose 6.5% on the year and imports rose just 0.6%. Because sales grew far faster than purchases, the goods trade deficit closed the month at €3,052m, an improvement of €393m on July last year, according to the release Statistics Portugal put out on Wednesday.