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AIPROPX ReportFortune · 2h ago
Mideast oil may soon have no way out amid ‘everything everywhere all at once’ wars, but the crisis in refined products is even…
Fighting across the oil-producing world is catching up with energy markets, which could soon be choked off by multiple chokepoints and shortages.
Over the weekend, the U.S. and Iran have paused their attacks on each other in the Persian Gulf while they engage in diplomacy. Iran and Oman are also in separate talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
But the U.S. and Iran’s neighbors are unlikely to accept any deal that recognizes Tehran’s control over the narrow waterway. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi rebels are threatening ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which Saudi Arabia has relied on to export its oil and bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
Ships can get around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait by using the Suez Canal to enter or exit the Red Sea , but it can’t accommodate the largest oil tankers. There’s also a risk that Iran could try to strike the Suez Canal too.
“So we are starting to talk about the kind of no way out scenarios because of this new Red Sea unrest,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNBC on Thursday.
Elsewhere, Ukraine has been attacking Russia’s oil infrastructure nationwide as well as tankers carrying its oil and refined products in the Black Sea.
Russia is one of the world’s top diesel producers, but damage to its refineries has slashed supplies, forcing Moscow to ban exports to preserve barrels for domestic consumers.
“So it’s really tightening the products market as well as the crude market,” Croft added. “And again, this administration now in Washington—they’re facing an everything everywhere all at one situation.”
Indeed, adding to the fighting in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Black Sea is a recent Ukrainian attack on an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea suspected to ferrying military supplies between Iran and Russia.
Susan Bell, senior vice president of downstream research at Rystad Energy, warned that the situation with refined fuels is worse than what’s happening with crude oil supplies.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, she pointed out that when the Iran war started, there were 4.4 billion barrels in commercial and strategic crude oil stockpiles, but inventories of products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel only totaled about 1.4 billion barrels.
Both have since been drawn down by 200 million barrels each, leaving much less margin for refined products. As a result, the so-called crack spreads between oil prices and fuel prices have exploded.
For instance, at the start of the war, the gasoline crack spread in the U.S. was about $8 a barrel, but it’s now $40-$50, according to Bell.
“Products just had a lot less to start, with so the crisis is intensifying on product stocks,” she explained.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is essentially out of levers to pull during this second phase of the Iran war as oil prices again flirt with the $100 per barrel.
The U.S. and the rest of the world have depleted most of its emergency reserves; a gas tax holiday is unlikely because it requires approval from a splintered Congress; U.S. oil producers and refiners already are churning out products near all-time highs; and the administration has already waived the Jones Act— allowing allow more ships to move fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast to the more barren West and East coasts.
If both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz are nearly shuttered, oil prices could easily rise in August back near the late-April high of $124 per barrel, Dan Pickering, founder of the Pickering Energy Partners consulting and research firm, told Fortune’s Jordan Blum.
“If we wind up with a de-facto closure of the strait and this Houthi threat shuts down the Red Sea, then I think it gets bad pretty fast during August,” he added. “We don’t have multiple months because we’re already starting from a tougher spot. It’s going to be on us pretty quickly.”
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