Saudi Arabia has told OPEC that its crude production collapsed again in August 2026, falling 1.9 million barrels per day to 6.238 million b/d—the lowest level the kingdom has reported since 1990, at the outset of the Gulf War. Riyadh attributed the drop to renewed U.S.–Iran hostilities that squeezed its export routes. That official communication, […]
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Brent settled above $101 on Wednesday, September 9, and WTI followed through the $100 level on Thursday morning in a sharp rally. Physical benchmarks had already been there. Dated Brent has held above $100 since September 3. Murban, DME Oman, the OPEC basket, and the Indian basket were already trading over that threshold. Futures are […]
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Chinese refiners are stepping back into the crude market while flooding product markets with extra gasoline and diesel, just as the rest of the world is running short of both barrels and refining capacity. August data show crude imports rising 6.2% from July to 8.93 million barrels per day, while refined product exports jumped 29% […]
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The war that began on February 28, 2026, with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iran’s subsequent campaign against tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, has forced the largest rewrite of global oil trade routes in decades. Pre-war, roughly 20 million barrels per day of crude and products moved through Hormuz. Flows have […]
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Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi forces claimed a ballistic missile strike on the Saudi-flagged VLCC Amzan (IMO 9693745, Bahri-owned, approximately 320,926 deadweight tons, built 2014) in the northern Red Sea off Yanbu on August 24, 2026. The attack formed part of the group’s ongoing “siege for siege” campaign enforcing a maritime ban on Saudi-linked shipping, which began […]
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Iraq is pushing aggressively to more than double its oil production capacity, targeting 8–10 million barrels per day (bpd) within six years—up from roughly 4 million bpd before the recent Iran-related regional conflict disrupted Strait of Hormuz shipping. On August 21, 2026, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi announced the goal at the Baghdad Dialog conference and […]
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Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement claimed on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, that its forces targeted Saudi Aramco’s Jazan (also spelled Jizan) oil refinery on the Red Sea coast in southwest Saudi Arabia with “a number of drones.” A Houthi military source told the group’s Saba news agency the strike was “precise” and conducted in response to […]
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Saudi Arabia is offering to sell crude oil cargoes on a ship-to-ship basis from locations off the coast of Oman, including near Sohar in the Gulf of Oman. This move signals that the kingdom may be ramping up the practice of shuttling barrels through the Strait of Hormuz—often with transponders switched off—mirroring tactics already used […]
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As the Iran-U.S. conflict grinds toward the six-month mark in mid-August 2026, Tehran continues to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz—the critical chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG once flowed—while the United States maintains a naval blockade on Iranian ports and escalates economic pressure. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signaled […]
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Saudi Aramco has put a stark number on the energy fallout from the ongoing US-Iran conflict: more than 2.6 billion barrels of oil supply lost since fighting erupted in February 2026. That figure, first highlighted by Aramco CEO Amin Nasser in early August and amplified in a recent Reuters report widely shared on X by […]
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