The FOUR players in this OIL GAME I see: Freight on a supertanker from the Gulf to China now runs above ~$30 a barrel, close to a 1/3 of the price of the crude itself. Before the war it was 2%. That number tells us where the Strait of Hormuz standoff is currently and I narrow it down to about FOUR major actors, each holding a position that actually PAYS them to wait, to keep closure, and no path back to “normal” until one of them acts outside the price system. 1. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, and its leverage grows with EVERY day and EVERY dollar the rest of the world pays to move oil around it. A settlement worth less than sanctions relief costs Tehran more than another month of stalemate, so Tehran waits. 2. The Gulf producers move their crude out on state-owned tanker fleets and transfer it ship-to-ship off Oman. They lose at the wellhead and recover part of that loss inside their own shipping companies, so their pain is smaller than the headline suggests and their urgency is also smaller with it rationally. 3. China sits on more than a billion barrels it never reports and has drawn roughly a million barrels a day from tanks rather than bidding in the open market. Each month Beijing declines to buy, prices STAY LOWER for everyone; the day it decides to refill, it sets the price of the recovery. It has Incredible power and leverage and can cause pain if it decides to move again… 4. USA and Trump holds probably about three moves, and each one breaks faith with somebody. A convoy, on the “1987 Operation Earnest Will” model, would crush freight overnight and put carriers inside missile range. A distillate export restriction WOULD ease the diesel record at home and cut off the allies buying American fuel. A deal would hand Iran the relief it is holding the strait to obtain. The reason the market cannot fix this on its own is that the curve can only recruit private shipowners, and private shipowners cannot buy war-risk insurance at any price, never mind the duty of care restrictions and fiduciary responsibility towards its owners and shareholders. The parties able to send tonnage into the Gulf are mostly governments, and governments answer to security “guarantees” and their threshold is very low, the move when they need to and stop when no need. Backwardation has nothing to offer them. So the resolution arrives when the White House chooses which party it is willing to disappoint, and the first market to register that choice will be tanker rates, well before Brent moves. I see this as a situation where the export lever comes first, because it is the cheapest of the three. Let’s see what happens by December 2026. One thing that’s nearly certain, this stalemate and this Existential war will continue until then. Amplify this signal! 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!