Oil & Gas Corner

Wednesday, 2026-09-23 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

Crude snaps a five-day slide as Iran's president tells the UN "we will not surrender." Brent rose about 3.9% to settle near $103.08/bbl and WTI added roughly 1.8% to about $92.16/bbl on Wednesday, ending their longest losing run in months, after Masoud Pezeshkian's General Assembly address hardened Tehran's public line even as Washington and Iranian envoys separately described their latest meeting as productive. CNBC

Record bearish Brent options bet unwound within a day. Tuesday's session saw Brent put-option volume hit roughly 764,000 contracts — the most on record on ICE Futures Europe — as traders piled into downside bets on the Saudi pipeline restart and US-Iran diplomacy, a position that ran straight into Wednesday's reversal. Bloomberg (paywall) · Cornerstone Futures

EIA's weekly report shows a surprise crude build as products keep drawing. Commercial crude stocks rose 2.969 million barrels for the week ended September 18 versus a forecast 641,000-barrel draw, while gasoline fell 1.7 million barrels and distillate fell 0.4 million; refinery utilization dropped 2.8 points to about 94% with Joliet still working back toward normal runs. EIA · OilPrice.com

Upstream — exploration & production

Pezeshkian tells the UN Iran won't yield on its nuclear program, missiles or Hormuz. In Wednesday's General Assembly address, Iran's president said the Islamic Republic "cannot be made to surrender" and will not bow on its nuclear program, missile defenses, or control of the Strait of Hormuz, a harder public line than the "very productive" meeting Trump's team described with Iranian envoys a day earlier. CNN

Libya's Petroleum Facilities Guards shut the Zawiya refinery and choke the Sharara field over pay; NOC warns force majeure could follow. Protesting guards blocked the Zawiya refinery's gates and closed a valve on the Sharara-to-Zawiya line this week, cutting an estimated 130,000 b/d and putting roughly a quarter of Libya's ~1.4 million b/d output at risk in an industrial dispute over compensation. Arab News · Libya Herald

Midstream — pipelines, LNG & shipping

Saudi Arabia targets Saturday for a "meaningful" East-West pipeline restart. Aramco is running pressure tests on the line and aiming to rebuild flow toward its roughly 4 million b/d capacity by the weekend, though sources caution full resumption of the kingdom's main Hormuz bypass could still take weeks. Bloomberg (paywall) · The National

Ignitis locks in a decade of EQT LNG for Lithuania. The Lithuanian state utility signed a 10-year deal for about 10 cargoes (roughly 1 TWh) a year of US LNG from an EQT marketing unit covering 2027-2036, following a competitive tender — a small but telling sign of US gas's reach into the Baltics. Natural Gas Intelligence

Woodfibre LNG clears a tunneling milestone on its BC feedgas line. The project finished the complex under-estuary and under-mountain tunneling stage for the pipeline feeding its Squamish terminal, keeping the roughly 2.1 million tonne/year export project on track for a 2027 startup. Natural Gas Intelligence

Downstream — refining, fuels & chemicals

Ukrainian drones set Rosneft's Kuibyshev refinery ablaze for a second straight day. An overnight strike Monday hit the Samara plant's AVT-5 unit and a fresh fire broke out there again heading into Wednesday; roughly half of Russia's six largest diesel-producing refineries have now cut or halted output this month, while US diesel held just a cent off Tuesday's record at $6.52/gallon (AAA). Kyiv Post · Ukrainska Pravda

Dangote breaks ground on a $17-20 billion, 700,000 b/d refinery in Kenya. Construction on the Lamu deep-water project starts September 30, priced at $17 billion by Kenyan officials and $20 billion by Aliko Dangote himself — the group's second major African refining bet after its Nigeria plant. OilPrice.com

The Chatter

Javier Blas (Bloomberg Opinion): in "China Isn't Buying More Oil, It's Buying From Different Markets," Blas argues five buffers — SPR releases, Gulf bypass pipelines, commercial stock draws, clandestine Hormuz runs and softer Chinese buying — are what has kept oil from blowing through $100 despite the war, not any real restoration of lost barrels. Post (paywall)

HFI Research (Substack): in "Here's My Game Plan For The Oil Trade (Sept 23)," HFI argues record-high tanker rates are themselves now rationing demand — pricing Chinese teapot refiners out of aggressive buying even as Beijing caps product exports near 1 million b/d — while global onshore crude inventories sit at their lowest since 2017. Post (paywall)

Liam Denning (Bloomberg Opinion): in "A Diesel Export Ban Is a Bad Idea. Trump Needs It Anyway," Denning argues the US isn't actually short of diesel, but with midterm odds worsening for Republicans, a ban on diesel exports — bad policy though it is — now looks more likely as a political move than an economic one. Post (paywall)