The oil market is no longer one price. It is a map. Javier Blas put the new arithmetic on the table in Bloomberg Opinion on September 21: hiring a Very Large Crude Carrier from the Persian Gulf to Asia has jumped twelvefold in a few months to a record $1.1 million a day. Translate that […]
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Saudi Arabia’s capital came under direct threat early Saturday as air-raid alerts sounded over Riyadh and explosions were heard, followed by a large plume of black smoke rising from a fuel storage depot at King Khalid International Airport. The incident marks the first time Houthi attacks have visibly affected the Saudi capital since fighting with […]
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Aramco’s East-West pipeline outage leaves European term buyers with a zero allocation for October. Crude is being rerouted to Asia. Products, not barrels, remain the tighter market. Saudi Aramco has told European term customers they will receive no crude in October under long-term contracts, according to people familiar with the decision cited by Bloomberg and […]
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Moscow is keeping diesel at home through the end of October. That decision lands on a European market that has already lost its old Russian supply line, is watching Saudi crude and product routes seize up, and is about to hear from the Bank of England on interest rates. The combination is not a single […]
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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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American oil executives have spent months warning that a prolonged disruption of the Strait of Hormuz would eventually produce a fuel crisis rather than a simple crude shortage. They now say that moment has arrived. Commercial inventories of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel have been drawn down for more than six months. Strategic crude reserves […]
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NASA fire-detection satellites and open-source thermal data captured two intense fires at the Aramco complex in Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, each radiating roughly 40 megawatts of heat—far above the 5–10 megawatts typical of a routine flare. The detections, highlighted in reporting shared by Chris Martenson quoting Mario Nawfal, come as Yanbu has […]
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Oil prices jumped more than 3% in early Asian trading Monday as weekend attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis and strikes in the Strait of Hormuz compounded an already fragile supply picture. By mid-session, Brent was trading near $107–$109 a barrel and WTI around $102–$104, levels last seen in the spring. The immediate catalyst was a […]
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The Federal Reserve can raise rates. The Treasury can issue bills. Neither institution can weld a crude distillation unit back together after a drone strike, add inches to a California products pipeline, or refill Gatun Lake. That is the story of September 2026: crude is still findable; diesel is not. The constraint has moved downstream, […]
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Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth delivered a blunt message in Austin on Friday: the shock absorbers that kept oil from exploding earlier in the Iran war are finished. Strategic stockpile releases and the U.S. decision to loosen rules on sanctioned crude sitting in floating storage have been “played out.” From here, he said, it […]
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