📝 🇮🇷 🛢 Sal Mercogliano on X: Kpler has been continually updating its data as ships appear outside the Strait. This had not been a secret to those who understand what data was available and how they were generating their data. The US shuttle operation via the Oman channel creates difficulty since ships are conducting ship to ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman.

The chart provided needs the following context.

Pre-war flow out of the Persian Gulf was 20 Mbpd and 3 Mbpd by the Fujariah/Yanbu pipelines.

We can see from the chart that on or about 6 July, oil exceeded the pre-war levels.

However, during the period of the chart, the 7-day average fluctuates between 10 and 15 Mbpd versus 23.

The chart does not include Yanbu and it does not break up Iranian oil from the rest of the Gulf states.

This reduction in Persian Gulf flow coincided with a significant reduction in consumption.

The issue will be as consumption rises again, will the reduction in global stocks, due to the loss of oil during the first months of the conflict, have an impact on prices.

📎 Sal Mercogliano

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 Franco-Saxon on X: “Venezuela only has heavy crude” is what illiterate people say who think the whole country is the Orinoco Belt. Santa Barbara is 39° API light crude. Blend it with heavier Maracaibo barrels and you can make SPR-compatible medium crude. Venezuela has massive, diverse reserves. Maracaibo has multiple 27°+ streams that can be blended into SPR gravity and with sulfur ranges.

📝 Unofficial sources have published the 17 oilfields in question, with nine being extra-heavy crude projects, eight of them in the Orinoco Oil Belt. The remaining eight are reportedly mature light and medium crude fields in Western Venezuela.

The inefficient and underdeveloped state of Venezuela’s oil sector offends me. We can have that place humming. In 5-10 years, half to two-thirds of Saudi daily output could be within spitting distance of the US. The Arab route is way too vulnerable. We need built-in redundancy.

📎 Franco-Saxon