Oil and liquefied natural gas moving through the Strait of Hormuz over the past two weeks reached a six-month high, U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper said Saturday, crediting mine clearance, naval escorts, and coordination with Gulf producers, insurers, and shipowners. The same briefing drew a sharp contrast: Gulf partners have moved more than […]
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Energy News Beat | September 19, 2026 The world’s long-haul crude system is running out of the ships that make it work. Bloomberg reported today that soaring freight costs are already making some distant crude trades uneconomic, with barely any Very Large Crude Carriers left for hire in parts of the market. That shortage is […]
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The U.S. Coast Guard and FBI boarded a Liberian-flagged very large crude carrier bound for Galveston, Texas, and a second energy tanker headed for another Texas port in the Gulf of Mexico after investigators found indications that foreign cyber actors had compromised their networks. Iranian state media claimed hackers seized control of propulsion, navigation, cargo, […]
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Diesel prices in the United States have smashed through records, topping $6.31 a gallon nationally as of September 16, 2026. Truckers, farmers, and households feel it immediately. Heating oil, chemically similar to diesel, is following the same path. With midterms weeks away, the political pressure is intense. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is […]
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The question in Washington is whether President Trump will treat that extra Russian oil as a problem to sanction—or as barrels he can use to keep gasoline and diesel from becoming a midterm disaster. That is the market story of September 15, 2026. It is also a political story. Prices jumped because Saudi’s safety valve […]
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What does this mean for the U.S. Diesel and Oil Markets? That is no longer a theoretical risk. With the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed to most traffic by the U.S.-Iran war and Houthi forces tightening their grip on Bab el-Mandeb, the kingdom’s last high-volume workaround—the East-West pipeline to Yanbu—is under fire. The combination […]
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Open-source satellite imagery and fire-detection data circulating Friday morning have raised the possibility that Yemen’s Houthis struck a pumping station on Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude pipeline, the kingdom’s main overland route around the Strait of Hormuz. The claim is serious. It is also, as of this writing, unconfirmed by Saudi Aramco and the Saudi government. […]
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Saudi Arabia has told OPEC that its crude production collapsed again in August 2026, falling 1.9 million barrels per day to 6.238 million b/d—the lowest level the kingdom has reported since 1990, at the outset of the Gulf War. Riyadh attributed the drop to renewed U.S.–Iran hostilities that squeezed its export routes. That official communication, […]
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Brent settled above $101 on Wednesday, September 9, and WTI followed through the $100 level on Thursday morning in a sharp rally. Physical benchmarks had already been there. Dated Brent has held above $100 since September 3. Murban, DME Oman, the OPEC basket, and the Indian basket were already trading over that threshold. Futures are […]
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The war that began on February 28, 2026, with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iran’s subsequent campaign against tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, has forced the largest rewrite of global oil trade routes in decades. Pre-war, roughly 20 million barrels per day of crude and products moved through Hormuz. Flows have […]
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