Oil is flowing again. Jamie Dimon is right: do not harm India over Russian crude.

The market got a supply headline it has been waiting for. Saudi Arabia has restarted the East-West Pipeline and could resume loadings from Yanbu on the Red Sea as soon as Tuesday, according to sources briefed on the matter. The line is still pumping at a low rate after drone strikes forced a shutdown around September 13, but Aramco is trying to push volumes back toward roughly 4 million barrels a day. One cargo was already lined up for China, and traders were positioning tankers toward Port Said and Sidi Kerir for onward Mediterranean movements.

That is good news. It is not a full reset.

At the same time, Saudi barrels are moving the hard way: out of Ras Tanura and Juaymah, through the Strait of Hormuz, and into ship-to-ship transfers off Oman. Windward’s September 20 snapshot showed six VLCCs loading at Juaymah and another at Ras Tanura. Separate tracking showed about 14 million barrels loaded onto seven VLCCs inside the Gulf over the weekend. Trade sources have also described a roughly 60-million-barrel Ras Tanura program for September–October loading via STS off Sohar. Hormuz flows have recovered from August’s collapse, but they remain a shuttle-and-transfer system, not the old export machine.

Oil is moving. The system is still brittle.

The screen is easing. The delivered barrel is not

Futures spent the morning pricing in the Yanbu restart and the weekend Gulf loadings. WTI is trading in the low-to-mid $90s after settling near $95.78 on Monday, with some early-session prints closer to the high $90s before the supply headlines accelerated the drop. Brent is hovering near $100 after falling more than $2 on the pipeline news. That is a long way from the $104–$106 prints seen last week, but it is not a return to a comfortable market.

The paper price is the wrong number to use if you care about what refiners actually pay.VLCC earnings on the Middle East–China route have been quoted around $1 million to $1.25 million a day. Freight from the Gulf to China has been estimated above $30 a barrel — close to 30 percent of the crude price — versus 2–3 percent before the war. STS off Oman, waiting time, and war-risk insurance sit on top of that. A recent Energy News Beat breakdown put Hormuz-route delivered barrels in a $125–$150+ range even when the screen was in the low $100s. Mid-September physical prints had Dated Brent near $122, Oman near $121, and Murban near $131. Those are the numbers that matter for diesel, gasoline, and jet.

A $93 WTI print does not mean a $93 world. It means the futures market is hoping the chokepoints hold together.

Dimon said the quiet part out loudJPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, speaking around the bank’s India investor conference, told CNBC-TV18 that Washington should not punish India — or the global oil market — while it tries to pressure Russia.“I think hopefully America will sit down and understand all those issues and, you know, not end up punishing India and the world oil markets while doing what we need to do to combat Russia,” Dimon said. He added he was “not sure” the United States should put “any kind of tariffs on the oil.” He also made the refining point that policymakers keep skipping: some of that crude is processed for specific units. If India cannot buy those grades, it has to buy something else, and the substitute may not run.

That is not special pleading. It is market structure.

Congress has already given President Trump authority, through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on major buyers of Russian energy. India is squarely in that frame. Russia’s share of Indian crude imports hit record territory this summer — more than 50 percent in July by some official and trade tallies — because Gulf barrels were the ones that disappeared first when Hormuz and the Red Sea seized up.

India is not just a buyer. It is a diesel valve

This is the part that gets lost when the debate is reduced to “who is funding Putin.”India is one of the world’s largest product exporters. When Russian refineries were hit, and Moscow restricted diesel shipments, Indian barrels filled part of the hole. Vortexa data showed India supplying about 60 percent of the diesel moving through Bab el-Mandeb toward Europe in August. Reliance has shipped large diesel cargoes to Europe and Brazil. India also sent gasoline back into Russia that can no longer refine enough of its own crude. That loop is politically ugly. It is also how the physical market has kept trucks, ships, and generators running.

Sanction the feedstock now, and you do not just squeeze Moscow. You squeeze the refineries that have been converting discounted, available crude into the diesel the rest of the world is short.

Dimon is right. Trump should treat that as a supply fact, not a talking point.

Rebalancing is not the same as safety

Analysts are already talking about “rebalancing.” They always do once a few tankers clear Hormuz.

The IEA’s September outlook still has 2026 looking tight: world demand down about 2.5 million barrels a day, supply down about 5.7 million barrels a day to 100.7 million, with a real Gulf recovery deferred into 2027. Inventories have been doing the balancing work that production has not. Kpler has raised its 12-month North Sea Dated forecast to $81 after flipping the second half of 2026 from surplus to a nearly 2 million barrel-a-day deficit under a prolonged conflict assumption. JPMorgan’s own oil desk has said the endgame is getting harder to model, not easier. Other houses still talk about a 2027 surplus if Gulf output normalizes. That is a 2027 story. This is September 22.

Saudi August output reported to OPEC was 6.238 million barrels a day, the lowest since 1990. Hormuz is working as a protected, expensive corridor. Yanbu is coming back at a crawl. Product markets, especially diesel, remain the binding constraint. A market that needs shuttle VLCCs, STS off Oman, and Indian export diesel to stay upright has no spare shock absorber.

Enforcement against Russian barrels can be a future tool. It is a bad tool this week.

The argument is not that Russia should get a permanent pass. The argument is sequencing. First restore Gulf logistics. First let Yanbu prove it can run. First let freight rates come off $1 million a day. Then decide how hard to squeeze the remaining Russian stream. Do it in the opposite order and the next “bump” shows up at the pump, in diesel cracks, and in every country that already spent six months paying war-risk freight for barrels that used to cost $2 to move.

Oil is flowing again. That is the start of the repair, not the end of it. Dimon’s warning is the right one for this tape: do not punish India, and do not kick the one part of the supply chain that is still delivering diesel into a market with no room left for error.

Stu Turley will be covering this on the next Energy News Beat Stand Up.

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Appendix: Sources and links