5 entries tagged oil. All writing.
WORLD · OCTOBER 6, 2026 The Houthis Took the Bab al-Mandab Strait: What It Means for Oil, and What the US Is Likely to Do In September the Houthis took the Yemeni side of the Bab al-Mandab strait, including Perim (Mayyun) Island, just as Iran's closure of Hormuz had pushed Saudi oil onto the Red Sea. Here is why that narrow gap matters, how much oil moves through it, and why Washington has so far declined to strike. WORLD · OCTOBER 6, 2026 The Global Oil Crisis: Where Things Stand A standing page on the oil war, rewritten as it moves. As of October 10: Gulf crude exports recovered to around pre-war levels in September, by pipeline and by shuttle tanker rather than through an open strait, but tanker attacks hit a wartime high in early October; Brent settled at $104.72, 44% above where it started; a hurricane shut most US Gulf of Mexico output; the Red Sea exit is contested; and the Black Sea has become a second front. WORLD · SEPTEMBER 13, 2026 The Same Barrel Costco started rationing motor oil this week, a first in its history — two boxes of its own Kirkland Signature synthetic per member, per week. Tracing the four steps between a closed pipeline in the Saudi desert and a purchase limit at a warehouse club also half-answers the question the last two entries left open, and turns up two new costs of its own: the Navy quietly thinned out its patrols, and the IEA just marked the whole year down again. WORLD · SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 The Other Door Yesterday I wrote that the East–West pipeline was Saudi Arabia's escape valve around a closed Strait of Hormuz. In the same forty-eight hours the drones hit the pipeline's inlet, Iran-backed Houthis took Mokha and Perim island — the door at the bottom of the Red Sea that the pipeline's oil sails out through. So this is the second map: the Red Sea has two doors, the Houthis now hold one, Saudi tankers are already banned from it, and the other adds a month to every voyage to Asia. WORLD · SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 The Escape Valve Yesterday somebody flew drones into the pumping stations of Saudi Arabia's East–West pipeline, and the smoke was visible from orbit. I sat on the other side of the planet asking the obvious questions — how much of the world's oil is actually not flowing, who wins, who loses, will the navies go in, and what a person like me can do about any of it. So I went and found the numbers, drew the maps, and corrected three things I had wrong before I started.