“Irans regime has lost control of the Strait of Hormuz,” Swiss energy analyst and investor Alexander Stahel declared in his Monday morning investment letter The Commodity Compass.
Stahel followed up his assertion with a 1,200 word description (excluding maps and charts) of how the operation that he describes as “the Hormuz shuttle” got stood up and is now running massive quantities of oil out of the Arabian/Persian Gulf to an oil-thirsty world.
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Find and read Stahels detailed analysis. He has an “X” account where he posts under his own name and links to his newsletter. He is persuasive.
First, the United Arab Emirates and then its neighbors developed an enormous system to shuttle oil out of the Gulf via a new shipping channel which hugs the Omani coast and which is patrolled and protected by the United States military. Central Command isnt replicating the destroyer-heavy escort system of decades past when Iran threatened the Strait, but its new tactics are effective and the September decline in the price of oil demonstrated that, as Octobers anticipated decline will as well.
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Stahel writes: “The key development over the past month was the UAE’s refusal to become hostage to Iran’s regime. Instead, it established what I describe as the Hormuz Shuttle.”
It started early. Already back in May, it placed eleven hulls â mostly VLCCs [very large crude carriers], owned, leased & operated by ADNOC [Abu Dhabi National Oil Company] â to get the risky job done of shuttling crude out of the Persian trap via the Oman Lane into the Gulf of Oman, unloading it via Ship-to-Ship (STS) transfer and then re-entering the Persian trap to repeat the trade.”
The detailed assessment focuses on the key exporters: “ADNOC has become very good at the Hormuz Shuttle, Aramco [Saudi Arabias state-owned energy giant] and Kuwait have learned from the UAE and copied the model. By now, we have some 116 hulls active in the Shuttle trade around the Strait of Hormuz, most of them using the Oman Lane.” The assessment is that Qatar and Iraq are also now using the “Hormuz Shuttle.”
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“Iran has failed to shut the Strait,”Stehal concludes, “the shuttle system is scaling, and time is increasingly working against Tehran.”
At this writing, West Texas crude â critical to the American market â is at $94.50 a barrel and Brent just under $107.00 as the worlds commodity traders worry that President Trump rejected the Iranian overtures to reopen talks.
That bump-up in prices will fade as Iran proves incapable of stoping or even scaring any of the participants in the “Hormuz shuttle.” The price will continue to fall as more and more traders and buyers realize that Iran is out of cards. President Trump has joined Prime Minister Netanyahu in a posture made famous by Clint Eastwood: “Go ahead. Make my day.” Every attempt to bully Trump has brought exponential response from the American military
