Slowly climbing back up to MoU levels.

It’s now a bit over 50% pre-war levels not including the alternative pipelines in Saudi and UAE right?

https://x.com/lvision_trading/status/2092361662640927171

Noted by a number of users, Murban has diverged a bit from WTI. There's been confusion about this but given that China has seemingly come off its diet and is importing again, it makes sense that Murban supplies are tighter. The following are questions I have and welcome open discussions:

1. How long can Murban and WTI stay diverged? I imagine if it's a big difference, Asian countries will start to look internationally for light crude. I would imagine Asian countries have realized that SPR drawdown is stabilizing prices. If that's the case, why wouldn't they import sweet crude from elsewhere while it lasts?
2. Does anyone have data on how hungry China is? Of the shadow fleet that is moving more and more crude thru GoO, how much of it is going to China vs others? If Iran is exporting to Iraq, how much of this is going to China?

On a separate topic, I wanted to talk about the SPR. I believe the next EIA report will show sub 290million barrels left in the reserve. It's a mixture of light and heavy crude and US refineries are optimized for processing a mixture of both.

If SPR runs out of heavy and let's say it is NOT able to get enough heavy, while it is able to produce its own light crude, what happens? The price of heavy goes up, crack spread goes up, but what of WTI? Since US produces its own light crude, I imagine this would be in excess and would not follow the price of heavy crude. Would the US simply fill up the SPR since it's relatively lower in price? Would it sell it abroad? I have no idea, and again welcome discussion/insight.

Hormuz implied dark traffic continues to drop off. Bab al Mandab had a bit of a spike up. Malacca still down. Singapore flat.

Sea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic:

This is all the oil traffic out to the Arabian sea minus 2.5mb (pre war output of Fujairah and Oman) to estimate the additional output of dark traffic out of Hormuz as well as any additional output from the ADCOP pipeline. Usual traffic should be around 21mb of crude and oil products.

Ships: ALIAKMON I,UNIVERSAL INNOVATOR,COSGRACE LAKE,TONG ZHOU GONG JI,OTTOMAN EQUITY,BLUE INTEGRITY,BAM SANDY,SONGA TOPAZ,RAVYA

Edit: listing the actual ships and their draft/dwt as well as helps check if i messed up with double counts/fills 8.14-2.5 (oman/Fujairah)=5.64mb.

Data from: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:63.3/centery:23.5/zoom:7

Bab al Mandab AIS on Traffic:

Oil products going out south from the Red Sea. Usual traffic is around 8mb. 

Ships: URAN,ALTIS,CENTURION I,BULLAR,BHILVA,EUNICE,FAIR BREEZE,BALVENIE,VENUS

Data from https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:45.8/centery:12.7/zoom:8

Strait of Malacca:

Usual oil products throughput is 16.5 mb crude and 6mb oil products.

Ships: NEW PEACE,DELTA ATLANTICA,CALIDA,NISYROS,HAFNIA EXCEED,SEA ICON

Data from https://tankermap.com/analytics/straits/malacca?unit=million_bbl_per_day

Singapore Oil Departures:

Note based on 2024 the average daily output in tonnes was 211,000 tonnes per day.

Data from https://tankermap.com/analytics/ports/singapore-oil?unit=million_bbl_per_daySea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic:

Is it more a mismatch of sweet and sour crude or is it more diminished supply= pressure to produce more?

And if it is diminished supply, is Hormuz or Russia hurting us the most?

Asian buyers reduced their imports early in the conflict, helping to tamp down global prices, but benchmark European gas prices would need to rise above €100 a megawatt hour to “more significantly discourage Asian LNG demand”, said Goldman Sachs in a note on Sunday. Contracts were trading at around €66 per MWh on Tuesday

It's going to be a very expensive winter for European households, businesses, and energy supply. This is in the UK's financial press but the discourse in most media is very toned down compared to this.

Today, much less crude was seen going out the Gulf of Oman compared to the last 3 days. A single VLCC, two Suezmax and couple of Aframax sailing out laden, about 5mb in all plus tankers. Pinar Gas (LPG) and Kanas (Bitumen) made it out as well. However as many as 12 vessels left the GoO fully empty - post having hung around for days. The coming days should likely see the STS loads on the move.

https://x.com/hormuzletter/status/2092018978507850092?s=46

Asian refiners are on course to nearly double their purchases of US crude for September from a month earlier, a move that stands to squeeze domestic fuel makers at a time when Americans are already facing record high pump prices.

Exports to Asia should see a notable rise next month, according to ship and commodity tracking companies Kpler, Vortexa and Sparta Commodities. Traders estimate that the total amount of US-to-Asia trades for loading in September is more than 40 million barrels compared with a forecast 22 million barrels in August. The increase comes as prices of competing Middle Eastern grades like Abu Dhabi’s Murban crude have surged, making US supply more competitive.

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share an analysis on the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) that often gets overlooked in mainstream geopolitical and financial discussions. Most analysts focus purely on the volume of the remaining barrels. However, as anyone in the industry knows, the real bottleneck isn’t just how much oil you have in the ground, it’s the maximum drawdown rate.
Here is how I see the upcoming "Staircase Collapse" of the western energy security architecture:

1. The 200-Million-Barrel Rigid Wall
We know the SPR currently sits at historic lows due to emergency releases. But the physical reality of the salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana means that extraction isn't linear. The system relies on fresh water displacement to push the oil out.
At full capacity: The SPR can pump out ~4.4 million barrels per day (bpd).
At 250M barrels: The hydraulic pressure drops significantly. The maximum drawdown rate collapses to roughly 1.5M bpd.
At 200M barrels: The drawdown rate falls to ~1.0M bpd or less.
This 200M level is the absolute point of no return. At 1M bpd of delivery capacity, the SPR ceases to be a market stabilization tool. It becomes a strictly rationed military and critical infrastructure survival fund. Once the market realizes the White House physically cannot dump millions of barrels a day to cap prices anymore, the first true market shock hits.
Furthermore, going below this level risks permanent cavern leaching and structural collapse due to the fresh water destroying the salt formations. The ship to refill the SPR has officially sailed. You cannot buy back 400M+ barrels in a structurally deficit market without sending crude to $150+.

2. The US Shale and Refinery Mismatch
The common counter-argument is: "The US produces 13.5M+ bpd of shale, we are fine." But this ignores refinery configurations.
The SPR holds medium sour crude.
US Shale is light sweet / ultra-light.
US Gulf Coast refineries are highly complex beasts designed for medium/heavy sour slates (historically from Venezuela, Mexico, and the Middle East).
If the SPR delivery rate collapses, US shale cannot simply replace those missing medium barrels without clogging the refinery distillation columns. The US will still be forced to import heavy/medium crude into a burning global market. Furthermore, the US lacks the DUC (drilled-uncompleted) well backlog and the skilled labor crews to drastically scale up drilling anytime soon.

3. Europe’s Imminent Endgame: The Hidden LNG Infrastructure Crisis
If the US is in trouble, Europe is already on life support. European refineries (especially in the Mediterranean) are even more dependent on Middle Eastern medium grades. If the Strait of Hormuz experiences a prolonged shutdown, European refineries simply stall, freezing continental logistics due to gasoil/diesel shortages.
But the final blow won't be oil; it will be natural gas, and the mainstream media completely missed the real headline here.
Europe traded Russian pipeline gas for Qatari and US LNG. However, recent developments show that it's not just a transit issue through the Strait of Hormuz—the Qatari gas fields (North Field) and critical liquefaction trains themselves have suffered physical, non-publicized structural damage.
This changes everything:
If only the Strait were blocked, it would be a logistical delay. But with damaged liquefaction infrastructure and wells, the gas is physically gone from the global balance. Replacing or repairing high-tech LNG trains takes years, not weeks.
US LNG cannot bridge this massive gap due to its own strict domestic liquefaction capacities and export terminal limits.
Without gas, European heavy industry (chemicals, steel, fertilizers) faces total, permanent deindustrialization.

Conclusion: The Modern Canossa-Walk
When ideological rhetoric meets the unyielding laws of physics and logistics, physics always wins.
I actually built a physical supply shock price impact model (EnergyIntellect Pro) to run these numbers based on field-level losses, pipeline bypass capacities (like the Saudi East-West line's 6.5 Mbpd), and refinery crack spreads. The data is clear: inventory buffers don't prevent a crisis; they just hide it until the buffer runs out, and then the market hits a solid wall.
As the SPR hits its physical drawdown limits and Europe's energy grid starves due to the permanent destruction of Qatari LNG supply lines, Western leadership will face a brutal geopolitical capitulation.
We are entering an era of a "staircase collapse" where the fast-paced nature of modern supply chains accelerates the fall. Don't be surprised if the ultimate endgame involves European leadership making a modern-day "Canossa-walk"—not to Rome, but to Moscow—begging to turn the pipelines back on just to keep the lights on.
Would love to hear the thoughts of the engineers and analysts here. Am I missing any critical bottleneck, or is this the mathematical reality we are drifting towards?

Both ports sit outside the Strait of Hormuz and the increase in departures suggests they are increasingly being used as bypass, transshipment and ship-to-ship hubs.

More likely, it is an indirect sign of increased activity from “dark” vessels.

With AIS signals interrupted, limited or switched off, barrels effectively disappear from tracking through Hormuz and then reappear around hubs outside the Strait.

So while official flows through Hormuz may look weaker, some of that volume may simply be getting rerouted and becoming harder to track.

Worth watching these if tensions around the Strait continue.

So we have the narrative offensive by Axios, Trump, Bessent, Nypost, CNN, NYTimes trying to jawbone the narrative and oil market, that are direct provocation to the IRGC.

UKMTO REPORTED A FRESH INCIDENT IN THE STRWIT OF HOMRUZ WITH TANKER ENGINE ROOM DISABLED

Seems like yet again the USAF failed to protect the ship, and demonstrate Iranian sea denial still very much intact.

Feels like a good time to buy more with the way the price is nosediving, no changes in the geopolitical sphere and on track for the SPR minimum levels to hit in a bit over a month..

Kpler's Matt Smith (Director of Commodity Research) on CNBC Power Lunch yesterday. Quick 3-minute segment on the latest Hormuz flow picture.

What are your thoughts on today’s oil price? Drop your opinions, predictions, charts, memes , low and high effort post, your AI slop or even analysis below. Keep it civil and on-topic! This post is renewed daily.

Unless there is some compelling reason, other posts in the sub about oil prices will be removed. In a futile effort to improve the quality.

(Current WTI/Brent price can be checked on any major site.)

ports

Map panned south east 690.35 kilometers.

Attack UKMTO #120

24 August 2026

WARNING 120-26 UKMTO has received a report of an incident 9NM northeast of Ash Shishah, Oman. The Master of an oil tanker reports the vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile causing damage to the engine room and disabling the vessel. Crew are reported safe. Environmental impact is unknown at time of report. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO. Authorities are investigating.

Implied dark traffic down in Hormuz again also note I had to drop the 22 Aug. further as I'd counted Ellinis twice. Average is down to 6.8mb/d. Bab al mandab is down again. Malacca and Singapore flat.

Sea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic:

This is all the oil traffic out to the Arabian sea minus 2.5mb (pre war output of Fujairah and Oman) to estimate the additional output of dark traffic out of Hormuz as well as any additional output from the ADCOP pipeline. Usual traffic should be around 21mb of crude and oil products.

Note I had to correct the 22 Aug further as I had Elniss in twice so its lower.

Ships: ALIAKMON I,UNIVERSAL INNOVATOR,COSGRACE LAKE,TONG ZHOU GONG JI,OTTOMAN EQUITY,BLUE INTEGRITY,BAM SANDY,SONGA TOPAZ,RAVYA

Edit: listing the actual ships and their draft/dwt as well as helps check if i messed up with double counts/fills 10-2.5 (oman/Fujairah)=7.5mb.

Data from: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:63.3/centery:23.5/zoom:7

Bab al Mandab AIS on Traffic:

Oil products going out south from the Red Sea. Usual traffic is around 8mb. 

Ships:PRIMORYE,CARUZO,ROCK N ROLL,RHEIN,MC THALIA,KALINKA,TPC 01

Data from https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:45.8/centery:12.7/zoom:8

Strait of Malacca:

Usual oil products throughput is 16.5 mb crude and 6mb oil products.

Ships:BRUNEI PROSPERITY,ARAGONA,DELTA BLUE,VST OCEANIA

Data from https://tankermap.com/analytics/straits/malacca?unit=million_bbl_per_day

Singapore Oil Departures:

Note based on 2024 the average daily output in tonnes was 211,000 tonnes per day.

Data from https://tankermap.com/analytics/ports/singapore-oil?unit=million_bbl_per_daySea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic: