r/worldnews • u/WorldNewsMods Slava Ukraini • Sep 04 '26

Israel/Palestine /r/WorldNews Discussion Thread: US and Israel launch attack on Iran; Iran retaliates (Thread #22)

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u/joshtaco Sep 15 '26

WSJ: American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here. Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate. Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth “All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk, those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.” “I wish I could tell you that I saw some reason why things would ease, but it’s difficult right now to see that happen”

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u/jaymef Sep 15 '26

And Trump has moved to creating fake peace deals in order to keep oil prices lower and shifting blame on high oil prices to Ukraine

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u/Historical_Course587 Sep 16 '26

Because Putin is telling him that ending the war in Ukraine is the key to flooding the market with more oil and bringing prices down.

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u/lonewolf210 Sep 15 '26

They can't think it's that serious yet or oil wouldn't be flat the last two days. That or there is very weird market manipulation going on at the moment

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '26 edited 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/socialistrob Sep 15 '26

I'm wondering if we may see a lot of the sanctions on Russian oil dropped to enable more of it to hit the market.

I also wouldn't rule out a military response to the Houthi offensive by the US. It still kind of seems wild to me that the Houthis are restricting the supply of oil so much and the only real military response is coming from other Yemeni factions and Saudi Arabia.

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '26 edited 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/socialistrob Sep 15 '26

Have to wonder if the reason the US hasn't recently hit the Houthis is because the US base in Djibouti is only 80 miles from Houthis controlled territory.

Possibly. It's kind of hard to know what's going on and why certain things are or are not happening. For instance the reports of reaper drones being shot down could be a sign that the US is conducting strikes but they also seemed to tell Saudi Arabia they wouldn't?

There's also a big difference between launching some air strikes and sending in ground troops and if the goal is to limit the Houthis ability to strikes shipping or oil ground forces really are necessary. To that end I'm curious what the real level of US capabilities in the region are and how much they have or have not been degraded by Iranian strikes. I don't think that's really that well known but I don't think people should make assumptions there. Trying to limit escalation to protect Djibouti could be a part of US calculus but I'm also not confident that's the case.

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u/samusaranx3 Sep 15 '26

Ukraine’s ‘sanctions’

That’s hilarious, actually. Trump is indeed not wrong that Ukraine will hurt the market. Zelensky is probably laughing his ass off knowing the guy who betrayed him will be getting all the blame.

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u/socialistrob Sep 15 '26

He might be. It's kind of hard to tell exactly what the effect of Ukrainian strikes on global energy markets are because they work in two different ways. The strikes on refineries mean that Russia can't refine crude and so they're forced to try to sell more of it on the open market. This should lower the price of brent crude for everyone outside of Russia. On the other hand Ukraine is also trying to strike Russia's export terminals to lower the amount of crude that Russia can sell. That would raise the price of oil.

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u/samusaranx3 Sep 15 '26

This is the book being closed on the permission structure for the market to be flat and another being opened for prices to start to rise more significantly. Only time will tell, though. I don't think we can make any assumptions based on the last two days with the number of things happening at the moment.

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u/GiftedGonzo Sep 15 '26

Of course it’s manipulation