This statement shows either a misunderstanding or fundamental lack of knowledge about Oil markets.

Venezuela's oil infrastructure is in a state of generational decay. Peak production was 3.5 million bpd in the late 1990s. Current production is approximately 800k-900k bpd and structurally challenged. The pipelines, separation facilities, and upgraders needed to process Venezuela's extra-heavy Orinoco crude are severely deteriorated. Iran was producing 3.2-3.5 million bpd of easier to process crude.

Venezuela's Orinoco crude is so heavy it requires specialized upgraders to make it refinable. Most of those upgraders are offline or operating at fraction of capacity. Building or restoring upgrader capacity alone takes 3-5 years minimum even with unlimited capital. Venezuela replacing Iran in 18 months is fantasy. 5-7 years at minimum for meaningful incremental production at scale.

Your entire argument is doing what most casual energy analysis does, evaluating the oil volume problem in isolation. The 70% that cannot be bypassed doesn't just disappear into a rounding error. That's 14 million bpd of crude and products with nowhere to go. The LNG omission is the most glaring omission of this argument. Qatar's LNG cannot use any bypass route. There is no East-West LNG pipeline. Every molecule of Qatari LNG goes through Hormuz or doesn't go anywhere.

Lol my thoughts exactly. Too many pilots spend too much of their time glued to the ‘news’ or onto their phones throughout the day and don’t get out enough. He needs to get a hobby or something. Get outside and go for a walk, spend time with loved ones, etc. Too many of us get ourselves all riled up unnecessarily. More and more pilots just need to relax. It’d be great for all of us collectively.

https://youtu.be/i2uu6NF2inY?si=vrEtrEl5B9k2hdbN

Its not just the traffic through Hormuz, Iran has the capacity to wreck the entire region.

The Iranians know a couple of things now that they didn't before, they can't trust America to negotiate in good faith and they have to build a nuclear bomb now, America is an existential threat to them.

yep-dude sounds like the rocket surgeon from a few years ago who convinced many that gold was headed to $50K in a few years as a result of his unique and expert analysis that the rest of the market was missing.

If you're attacking me rather than the thesis, than you either realize how dire the situation is or would just prefer to remain ignorant and dream of sugar plums.


Remember I am frequently criticized on here for being too optimistic. I forecasted Delta's WB fleet expansion years ago albeit I was early. I frequently comment on here about how much of the complaining is trivial for the money we are paid for this fantastic job.

Make no mistake, Delta is by far in the best position to handle this crisis, and Delta pilots are affluent enough to financially withstand the storm that could be coming.

As someone who gladly paid $2000 to St Jude for being too early on Delta WB Captain positions expanding, to 2014 hires, I hope that I am wrong again, but I'm afraid I'm not. Energy, from the shirts that we wear to the fuel in our jets, touches every single part of modern life. And the world is about to be reminded of that.

And you think Qatar is going to just sit there and mope?

Like Goggles said, I'm still waiting for the sky to fall from Tarriff's last year. Ever hear of the Black Swan who cried "WOLF!"

That's not to say there won't be pain from the consequences of this action, but much/most of the country just ain't buying the constant doom and gloom. Media who just need to feed the rage bait for clicks. I mean, CNN is nothing but negative, even with one of the most impressive and overwhelmingly one-sided major military actions in modern history. By this point in Desert Storm, the allies had lost over 30 aircraft to enemy fire. Even in snatching Maduro, CNN (and many others) could not bring themselves to say anything meaningfully positive. I just want some media that is fair, and calls honest balls and strikes. But the current media has abandoned the middle ground.

Qatar's has lost 17% of its production due to damage incurred that will take 3-5 years to repair. UAE and Qatar can't do anything but protect themselves as much as they can and hope for a peace deal.

I agree the Western Media is terrible so I pay them very little attention. I just look at the Energy assets affected and the data. The numbers are UGLY.

Alas everyone in the US thinks energy grows on trees and unicorn urine and are unaware of the pain coming

I really don’t think any media outlet is disputing that we have total military dominance of the skies. But it doesn’t matter how many JDAMS fall on increasingly irrelevant targets. We can’t bomb ourselves to a solution here.

Barring a ground invasion Iran has the ability to close the strait and wreak havoc on major energy infrastructure all over the Middle East, and it’s clear that there is nothing we can do about it. Hence the increasingly desperate and disjointed comms from the administration. Every day the regime survives it puts us in a tighter and tighter bind.

What is the futures contracts for oil deliveries in 6 months? Investors that have skin in the game are betting otherwise.

Again, not saying there won't be paid or consequences. Just that the cries of doom, doom, and black swans are grossly premature (at best).

Again, do you thing Qatar, Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain are going to just sit and mope while they lose TRILLIONS of petrodollars? (Meanwhile MBS in Saudi is prodding the President to continue to pound Iran. Admittedly, Saudi has different, though overlapping objectives than the US.

Qatar used to play both sides, and did the banking for proxies, and housed thier leaders living in luxury. Think that will continue? I don't.