RABOBANK’S NEW BASE CASE ISN’T PEACE IT’S PROLONGED STALEMATE That matters because the energy shock has spread beyond Hormuz. The East-West pipeline can be repaired. But Bab el-Mandeb is now a war zone, tanker insurance is rising, Fujairah is exposed, and even “safe” Gulf transits are becoming less certain. Repairing a pipeline is not the same as restoring reliable export capacity. That’s why Rabobank now sees Brent around $105–107 in Q4 and still near $100 in Q1 2027. The market is no longer pricing one damaged route. It is pricing an increasingly unreliable Middle East export system. 👇 Rabobank has moved decisively away from the idea that the Middle East energy shock will simply unwind once one piece of infrastructure is repaired. Its base case is now a prolonged stalemate: no decisive military outcome, continued threats to oil, products and LNG, and a persistent geopolitical premium. The East-West pipeline attack and the Houthi move into Bab el-Mandeb have turned what was largely a Hormuz problem into a multi-chokepoint export-system problem. That distinction matters. Even if Saudi Arabia repairs the East-West pipeline within a month or two, Rabobank says the Red Sea is now a hot war zone and those flows can no longer be treated as reliably available. Insurance rises, voyages lengthen, demand shifts toward non-Middle Eastern crude, and physical barrels command a premium to futures. Fujairah’s 1.8 mb/d of bypass capacity and even the CENTCOM-coordinated “dark transit” system must now be viewed as exposed rather than secure. So this is no longer mainly about repairing damaged infrastructure. It is about whether the routes themselves remain commercially and militarily usable. That is why Rabobank can have a “stalemate” as its base case and still raise oil materially. A stalemate does not mean normalization. It means persistent friction, unreliable capacity and recurring disruption—the sort of environment in which the physical market stays tighter than headline production capacity suggests. And their risk is still asymmetric. Rabobank explicitly says its forecasts assume a relatively contained escalation; further damage to energy infrastructure could push prices substantially above the base case. #Oil# #Brent# #Hormuz# #BabElMandeb# #SaudiArabia# #Iran# #Houthis# #Energy# #MiddleEast# #Geopolitics# @TheMichaelEvery @pumpingoilniron

Middle East oil flows may be up ~5 mb/d from the May low, but that does not mean the system is healed @TankerTrackers Where are the returning tankers—and where is the ~7 mb/d of shut-in production needed to refill them? Without that, higher exports are just drawing down a new stock: stranded tankers. #Oil# #Hormuz# #Tankers# #MiddleEast# #Energy# #Geopolitics#

Bessent can twist the yield curve. He cannot turn crude into diesel, writes @TheMichaelEvery Treasury’s bond intervention signals that Washington will not let rising long-term yields derail its geopolitical strategy. But financial repression cannot manufacture the physical capacity the war is consuming. 👇 #Bonds# #Treasury# #Bessent# #IranWar# #Oil# #Diesel# #Energy# #Geopolitics# #FiscalDominance#

Qatar says even a fully reopened Hormuz could take 2–3 months to normalize LNG & energy flows The bottleneck is shipping, congestion, insurance, & logistics “Open” does not mean functional #LNG# #Oil# #Hormuz# #Shipping# #EnergyCrisis# #NaturalGas# @RKelanic