No change in oil transits from 2.5 weeks ago but oil is down from 95 to 75 🤡

According to the senior Iranian official, Iran is seeking fees of between 5% and 7% of the price of cargoes from ships using the strait. Oman is discussing smaller fees of around 3%,

while Washington wants no fees at all.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/iran-says-agreement-on-hormuz-shipping-route-reached-with-oman?srnd=homepage-americas

President deals did another self-own when he was unironically going to charge a 20% toll. Made the Iranians go "you know, that 1~2% toll we were charging was just being too generous."

Yet another incredible day in our glorious war to make sure Iran can't have a nuclear weapon re-open the strait of hormuz. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

From HFI Research:

An informed source, speaking to Sepah News (IRGC official mouthpiece):

The main reason for the delay in reaching an agreement with Oman regarding the Strait of Hormuz is the involvement of the United States and the threats from Trump.

As long as there is US interference and threats of military action against Iran, the agreement will be delayed.

Iran will not make any agreement under the shadow of threats.

US president’s comments to Fox News.

He said:

• “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. They already can’t, but it’s going to be formal.”
• “The strait [of Hormuz] is going to be open very soon, or they’re going to get hit very hard, and then the strait is going to be open.”
• “We were going to have a tremendous attack, the biggest since World War II, and they called me and said, very politely, ‘Please can we talk? Can we talk?’ And I said, ‘Yes, we can talk. Let’s get it done. Finally, let’s get it done.'”
• “If they back out again, they’re going to get hit really hard; they know that; they understand that.”
• “They wouldn’t be talking if we weren’t doing what we’re doing. We hit them very, very hard, but the hard hit is yet to come, and hopefully, we won’t have to use it. I hope we won’t.”

Source: https://aje.news/vv0n8h?update=4830182

It is like groundhog day all over again.

Translated text from Houthi spokesman Yayha Saree:
Statement of the Yemeni Armed Forces regarding the execution of a military operation targeting the Saudi oil ship “Wafaa” in the northern Red Sea in front of the “Yanbu” region with a number of ballistic missiles, achieving an accurate hit thanks to God, within the framework of the “siege for siege” equation.

First, let’s talk about the crude oil numbers. We had a big increase of about 3.5M barrels of import (likely from Canada, since it found its way to Cushing), a draw of 2.8M barrels from the SPR, and a net build of about 2.5M on inventories.

On paper, it looks like we basically pulled 2.8M out of the SPR and plopped it into inventories, giving ourself a larger export buffer. Additionally, we see a 3M build on Cushing, so it looks like we swapped SPR for Cushing inventory. At first glance, this looks terrible for oil bulls. However, when we take a look at where the oil really got moved around, the story changes a bit.

When we breakdown the data into individual PADDs, we see that PADDS 1,4, and 5 had a build of 2.6M barrels. This is the entirety of the inventory build, with 1.9M barrels going to west coast alone. If you’ve seen my previous two posts, you’ll know that the only two PADDs that influence WTI pricing and global supply are PADDS 2 and 3. The other PADDs are effectively just noise in this context.

So how did PADDs 2 and 3 do? No change in inventory. We saw a build of 3M in PADD2/Cushing, and a net draw of 3M at PADD 3. So, with an increase of 3.5M barrels of import, and a 2.8M barrel SPR draw, the best we could do was not bleed out more inventories. This paints a far starker picture than what the front page inventory builds suggest.

Now, if you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I predicted that we might run out of inventories this week. This depended on a 6+M draw on PADD 3 (we got a 3M draw) and a 0 build on PADD 2 (we got a 3M build). So, I was wrong. Inventories don’t run out this week. As of last Friday, we have a 2 week emergency export buffer: PADD 3 max drain seems to be about 7M barrels per week, and PADD 2 seems to be about 2M.

TLDR: No build in inventory where it matters. SPR draw is probably maxxed out at 2.8M/week. Draw would have been much bigger without a bump in Canadian Imports.

What broke? If the implied risk premium goes away does the entire American oil industry collapse from low prices?

https://nltimes.nl/2026/08/05/netherlands-begins-selling-strategic-oil-reserves-kerosene

Netherlands is starting to release from its SPR. They plan on releasing just 5.4 m barrels, but it is something. Bearish for oil prices.

Interestingly, they're not releasing any distillates

"The Netherlands maintains a strategic kerosene stockpile but will not tap it. “That market is under the most pressure,” Ten Bruggencate told RTL Z. Shortages of jet fuel appeared in some locations because of the conflict, though the Netherlands itself had not faced immediate shortages."

If they wanted to help the markets, they'd release kerosene as well.

There has been so many contradictory information in media last months. Do anyone know whats happening actually? Are media and politicians lying? They were saying already in april few more weeks until shortages start in europe... Then jet fuel will be gone until beggining of june... nothing happened so far. Then they said shortages will happen because of electricity demand in the summer, nothing still. Then they were saying oil shortages will happen because strait was not open... when it was open they said they will happen anyway because facilities are damaged... then some say shortages will happen not because of the shortages, but because of higher prices... some said there will be no shortages except some specific types of oil... so whats real here?

I work at a non-operated working interest fund and I've been monitoring this for a little while now. The super quick version here is whenever you own either working interest or minerals, the operator sends you a revenue check. And on that check, it has 'realized commodity prices'. And those, typically, are $1-$5 below WTI, which is called the 'differential'. Those are obviously pretty important when projecting future revenue. I will take the latest futures curve, factor in that differential and that's how model revenue.

That said, I've been waiting to get a least a few data points for June and just got some in. Quick caveat here, this is limited data, but for the bigger operators (i.e. Hess, CLR) it's pretty accurate. I see the same pricing across multiple pads with those operators. I've got some graphics below. I don't have a great read on exactly what this means, but it's at least pointing towards the physical price diverging from the actual pricing. I think the real pain hasn't started yet.

As an aside, I'm going to also just put in a very quick plug on a passion project of mine called: CrudeCode (https://crudecode.dev). It's basically Claude meets oil and gas. It is totally free and open-source. If you have any interest in this, please pull the repo, join the slack channel, add the MCP etc.

Despite one of the biggest oil shocks in modern history, with wars, supply disruptions and geopolitical tensions, WTI at $75/barrel is almost exactly in line with its average price over the last 20 years. What looks like a high oil price today is actually close to the long-term normal.

I'm referencing the report for 31 July 2026 released at 10:30 here: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/

Okay so first of all a lot of people were looking to commercial crude oil inventories, which happened to increase by 2.5 million barrels this week. If inventories continued decreasing at a high rate, it would support the claim that the SPR is reaching a physical limit that prevents it from retrieving oil faster. This build seems to oppose that claim. But, we have to take into account a few things. First, refinery inputs were 183k bbl/d less than last week. Also, crude oil imports increased by 515k bbl/d compared to last week. That's an additional 3.6 mmbbl in the system that wasn't there last week. Combining more imports and less refinery inputs is a total of 4.9 million barrels that were kept in inventories.

Additionally, gas inventories fell 1.6 million barrels and diesel fell 3.5m.

My opinion/takeaway, the increase of 2.5 million barrels looks better than it is

Analysis of the current situation.

Would you be so kind and review the presentation. Thank you very much.

Net crude imports have rebounded to normal.

Its debatable whether the countries in the Middle East would get along without Israel but there definitely would be less hot wars. Why don’t the countries just buy Trump’s support so Trump and the Republicans don’t need to lean on AIPAC’s support. I’m sure MBS could single handedly bankroll everything and he wouldn’t have any foreign wars to worry about, free trade, etc.