Subject: Re: The US used its own 'Dark Fleet'
Why isn't oil at $150 a barrel and climbing?

Because we are tapping the “Strategic Reserve” to the tune of 1.5m bbl a day.

Because China is using about 3m bbl per day less oil.

China Is Propping Up the World Economy by Importing a Lot Less Oil
Beijing plugs a three-million-barrel hole with little visible disruption, but analysts aren’t sure how long it can keep going

A sharp fall in China’s crude oil imports during the Iran war has been instrumental in holding down oil prices and keeping the global economy humming.

Clues are emerging in the mystery of the missing three million barrels—the oil that China would normally be importing but isn’t now. Chinese people are driving fewer gasoline-powered cars and taking trains instead of planes. The country is dialing back operations at the plants that turn crude oil into feedstock for materials such as plastics. And Beijing is beginning to draw down reserves.
https://www.wsj.com/business/e...

Because Saudi Arabia has ramped up its east-west pipeline by 2m bbl per day to the unrestricted port of Yanbu.

Because international air travel is significantly down since March, because domestic air routes have been cancelled, because China has cut back flights in favor of rail, because of similar economic events happening throughout Europe and elsewhere.

Prior to this foolishness, the Strait handled about 20m bbl per day. Not quite half that has been replaced - or in China’s case “unconsumed” - or in some places Reserves have been pumped, meaning the full impact of the siege is not yet being felt. China can’t keep this up forever (neither can we), but they don’t want a worldwide recession any more than we do, and they have throttled some of their industries which are the biggest consumers of oil and derivatives in the interest of lowering consumption. That is easier to do in a command economy than in one without those kinds of direct controls.

And one more time: we haven't tried to force our way through.

And we won’t. The last thing Trump wants is soldiers and sailors coming home in body bags in the run up to midterm elections. Congress doesn’t want it. The American people don’t want it. Nobody wants it except Pete Hegseth and the other deadenders with the “big guns” mentality. (Even then, it’s entirely unclear that it would work, given our stretched supply lines, lack of permission from other Gulf states to operate from our bases there, and the dubious ability to hold a small piece of territory amid drone and missile strikes from anywhere.) Oil tankers are notoriously big and slow, a ripe target for a drone volley, and there’s no indication that we could operate Kharg Island effectively under an assault that Iran could manage.

In the old days you could tell where a missile had been launched from, and since it took those kinds of facilities you could preemptively strike that target before another came on. Today’s drones can be launched from the back of a box truck or out of a garage, they are, except for using massively expensive and hard to source defensive measures, effectively unstoppable in toto. You can hit a lot of them, true, but if you can’t get them all, an oil tanker, a pipeline, or a refinery is just a sitting duck.