(MEMO) Memo - The Fun Is Just Getting Started
Oil is caught between the battle of giants. Who wins?
By: Wilson
It appears the Trump administration is going all in on economic fury, since Operation Epic Fury didn’t succeed in opening the Strait of Hormuz.
According to comments made by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today:
Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.
It will be a combination of economic isolation like the world has never seen before, and the continued blockade in the Strait of Hormuz that will keep anything from going in or out of the Iranian ports.
Iran is about as sanctioned as you can get at this point. The only way for Bessent to pull off a real sanction is if it goes all out on the Chinese. But even if that happened, China would just ignore it and continue doing business the way it has been.
What’s funny about this new strategy of “waiting it out” or playing for time is that the US thinks it has the variable time on its hands when it’s the exact opposite.
In Goldman’s latest oil report, it posted this chart, which will likely get heavily scrutinized by Bessent tomorrow.
But the drop in visible total oil inventories is obvious since most of it came in oil-on-water. If the Strait of Hormuz shuts off, oil-on-water falls, which translates into lower onshore inventories.
China, which was somewhat immune to the initial drop in crude imports, is no longer showing the same invincibility now. Suddenly, onshore crude oil inventories are falling as if some underground storage was drained first.
Surprise!
And as I wrote in June when the MOU was first signed, China’s onshore oil inventories won’t build despite higher crude imports. Why?
Black box in, black box out.
Going forward, China has two choices: