Oil Market Tightens as Tanker Attacks and Inventory Draws Mount

Brent crude is once again over $106, Iran is intensifying attacks on tankers in Hormuz, and global inventories are draining, while OPEC just forecast stronger demand for next year. Six months ago, one well-timed TruthSocial post by President Trump would have calmed traders down. Now, this no longer works as fundamentals trump talk.Earlier in the war between the United States and Israel, and Iran, U.S. top officials could push prices lower with a statement about peace talks. There was even a brief ceasefire in June that pressured prices for weeks, as exports of crude from the Middle East picked up, driving hopes of a swift end to the hostilities. Then the ceasefire ended and the mutual strikes restarted.That should have been enough to convince optimists that ending the war would require more than social media posts, but it did not, mostly because Gulf states rushed to find workarounds for their oil—and find them they did, switching to pipelines and ship-to-ship transfers. That was when the Yemeni Houthis joined the fray, attacking Saudi energy infrastructure.Even with that escalation and widening of the hostilities, optimism remained dominant on the oil market, on the assumption that things simply would not be allowed to come to a disaster because no one has any interest in that disaster, namely a deep global energy crisis that would plunge economies into recession. In hindsight, this was the wrong assumption. Despite reports about Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf producers not only restoring their oil flows to pre-war levels but in some cases even exceeding them, prices have climbed higher relentlessly, and now every dip is from a higher point and more modest than they were three months ago. The war has put a solid floor under oil benchmarks, and that floor is moving higher, too. All this is because the physical realities of the crisis are now making themselves known—and they are impossible to talk away.For starters, there are doubts about the return to pre-war flows. Most tanker-tracking outlets, such as Kpler, Vortexa, and TankerTrackers have all reported tanker movement numbers close to pre-war rates, mostly thanks to ship-to-ship transfers off the coast of Oman. Some, such as Windward, report much lower numbers, with the latest update, for October 12, seeing only two tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz, both in dark mode to avoid detection.Meanwhile, the ship-to-ship transfers have squeezed tanker supply, and the huge risk that shippers are taking to move oil out of the Persian Gulf has pushed freight rates to all-time highs, with these rates now accounting for close to a third of the cargo’s price, up from less than 5% before the war began.Complicating matters further, Iran has in the past couple of weeks stepped up its attacks on vessels in the strait, most of the targets being tankers. Windward earlier this week reported at least six tankers getting hit on just October 11. Last week, UKMTO reported nine attacks in and around the Strait of Hormuz in just the first seven days of October, half the number of all attacks reported in the entire previous month. Reuters separately reported, citing maritime analysts, at least a dozen tanker attacks in the week to October 5. The Strait of Hormuz is getting more dangerous, instead of safer, despite the presence of the U.S. Navy that set up an alternative corridor for vessels leaving the Persian Gulf.While tanker attacks intensify, energy industry executives have stepped up their warnings about the world’s thinning cushion of emergency oil supply. Aramco’s chief executive said as much last week, noting the loss of 3 billion barrels since the start of the war, and the release of around 1 billion barrels, leaving global commercial stocks near the minimum operational level. This means that further releases are inadvisable to protect the storage system.Chevron’s chief executive put things in perspective, saying that “As we go through these cycles each time the floor sets a little bit higher and the system remains a little more sensitive. The underlying fundamentals are becoming tighter and tighter.”This is only the state of the crude oil market. In fuels, the situation is worse, especially in diesel. With refinery capacity sharply down in the Middle East and Russia because of war-related damage, fuel flows have shrunk so much that they have pushed prices at the pump to all-time highs.In the latest piece of evidence that talk no longer works—even when backed by action—President Trump’s announcement of a diesel deal with Russia failed to bring U.S. diesel prices down below $6 per gallon. The reason: the agreed volumes will cover only a fraction of consumption for a very short while. Said volumes, at 3 million tons, are equal to about 15 million barrels, which Reuters’ Ron Bousso noted this week were enough to cover just half of global diesel fuel consumption, and that’s daily consumption. The oil market is now at the mercy of fundamentals.By Irina Slav for Oilprice.comMore Top Reads From Oilprice.comRussian Strikes Cut Power to 600,000 Ukrainians Days After U.S. Diesel DealIndia’s Gas Demand Drops as Iran War Hikes LNG Spot PricesChina's Coal Imports Fall 6% as Prices Hit Nearly 3-Year High