BNSF Railway said the city council of Barstow, Calif., approved its $4 billion, 4,500-acre integrated rail facility designed to more efficiently move freight from international containers into domestic boxes for eastward shipment.

The Berkshire Hathaway-owned railroad said in a news release that the Barstow International Gateway will include a railyard, intermodal facility and warehouses. Containers arriving by sea at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will be moved from ships onto trains to Barstow, where they will be processed and put on eastbound trains on BNSF’s network. Westbound freight heading to the ports and other California terminals will also be consolidated at the site.

By moving the sorting and processing of containers from congested areas near the ports, the project will allow more cargo to be shifted to rail from trucks, BNSF said. The project would eliminate about 205 million truck miles traveled in 2028, the company estimates.

Note to Readers: The WSJ Logistics Report won't be published Friday in observance of Juneteenth in the U.S. We will be back Monday.

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz would ease an energy crisis that has sapped economic growth and fueled inflation worldwide. Still, one surprise of the monthslong closure of the critical energy conduit was that the global economy didn’t suffer a more severe shock.

The WSJ’s Jason Douglas and Chelsey Dulaney lay out five reasons why:

• The world had plenty of oil. That gave many big economies a cushion to ride out the shock with only limited disruption, though poorer countries were forced to curb demand with fuel rationing.
• Mideast energy producers found ways around the closure of the strait faster than many energy experts predicted, while other producers—including the U.S.—stepped up production and exports to plug some of the gap.
• Chinese imports of oil fell, yet there was little visible disruption in the world’s No. 2 economy. Beijing drew from its vast strategic reserves and reoriented its economy to use less imported oil, turning more to coal and renewables for power generation.
• Improvements in energy efficiency helped mitigate the shock. Advanced economies have shifted to less energy-intensive services such as finance and healthcare from manufacturing. Renewables and more efficient appliances and industrial processes also played a role.
• The AI boom served as a major counterweight to the energy crisis, with the rapid build-out of data centers in the U.S. and the excitement around the technology’s potential lifting trade, investment and stock prices.

Artificial-intelligence servers are gobbling up such a rapidly rising volume of memory and storage chips that even a company as rich and powerful as Apple is struggling to secure supplies. The shortage is so acute that the iPhone maker is raising prices on its products to offset the surging costs, the WSJ’s Rolfe Winkler writes.

Memory, also called DRAM, is used to run apps currently in use, while storage, called NAND, is for filing away photos and videos, for example. 

CEO Tim Cook tells the WSJ exclusively that prices for both are issues for Apple, though he focused on the DRAM market in particular, calling out the increased allocations going to so-called high-bandwidth memory that is used for AI servers.

Cook said Apple stands ready to use its cash reserves to boost memory supply, but it wouldn’t use its money and silicon expertise to build its own memory and storage factories.

• Sales growth rose more than forecast for U.S. retailers in May, as consumers continued to make purchases even as gasoline prices remained elevated. (WSJ)
• U.S. crude oil inventories fell more than expected last week as net imports decreased and refineries ran near full capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. (WSJ)
• The National Association of Realtors’ pending-home sales index rose 3.8% on month to 76.8, well ahead of economists’ forecasts. (WSJ)
• Diana Shipping raised its bid for rival dry-bulk carrier Genco Shipping & Trading again after the latter company's board unanimously rejected Diana's latest offer earlier this month. (Dow Jones Newswires)
• Invenergy will relinquish four offshore wind leases and get $765 million to spend on gas-fired projects, in a settlement with the Interior Department. (WSJ)
• KKR plans to commit $1.4 billion to a new round of aircraft leasing through its partnership with Altavair. (WSJ)
• A group of tech companies, including Stripe and Google, committed $915 million to buy carbon-removal credits, adding to a prior $1 billion pledge. (WSJ)
• DP World said in a news release that it entered into exclusive talks to lease, develop and operate a container terminal at Texas’ Port of Corpus Christi.
• DSV's Global Transport and Logistics broke ground on a new, 750,000-square-foot regional warehouse hub in Oregon. (KGW8)

Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at mark.long@wsj.com. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long, Liz Young and Paul Berger.