Oil & Gas Corner

Friday, 2026-09-25 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

Crude gives back ground as Iran's latest roadmap meets Houthi missiles. Brent eased roughly 1.5% toward $105/bbl and WTI fell near 2% to about $92.60/bbl on Friday, unwinding part of Thursday's spike, as markets weighed Tehran's new offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within days against fresh Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. The National

Diesel-ban talk widens the Brent-WTI spread to its biggest gap since May. The spread hit about $12.68/bbl as traders priced in lower US refinery throughput should Washington restrict diesel exports, while war-risk freight on the Gulf Coast-to-Asia VLCC route has ballooned to roughly $50 million a voyage from about $16 million before the war — a cost now large enough to blunt the arbitrage the wider discount would otherwise open up. BOE Report (Reuters)

Baker Hughes: the US oil rig count climbs to its highest since 2024. Weekly data out Friday showed the US count up four to 599 rigs (oil +3 to 455, gas +1 to 135) — a third straight weekly rise — while Canada's count jumped 11 to 208. Baker Hughes · BOE Report (Reuters)

Upstream — exploration & production

Iran pitches a seven-day Hormuz reopening in exchange for an end to the US naval blockade. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters at the UN that Tehran would reopen the strait within a week if Washington eases military pressure, lifts its blockade and waives sanctions on Iranian oil sales, layered on top of Iran's broader 60-day regional-ceasefire roadmap; Trump has ruled out lifting the blockade before Iran shows "sufficient goodwill." Al Jazeera

France to send troops and air-defence systems to guard Saudi Arabia's Yanbu export terminal. Macron said Paris will deploy soldiers, radars and defence systems — not to fight, but "to protect this site" — after repeated Houthi missile and drone attacks on the Red Sea port that anchors the kingdom's East-West pipeline and its Hormuz-bypass exports; Saudi officials are separately seeking support from Pakistan and Turkiye. Defense News · Euronews

Update — Libya's Sharara blockade has now cost roughly 720,000 barrels over four days. NOC figures show daily losses climbing from about 129,000 b/d on Monday to nearly 238,000 b/d on Thursday as the armed group's valve closure persists, with the Zawiya refinery and Brega's marketing offices still shut and force majeure still threatened. MEES · Newsquawk

Midstream — pipelines, LNG & shipping

VLCC earnings break another record as the Hormuz-bypass shuttle trade balloons. Global average VLCC earnings have jumped 68% to roughly $451,000/day and the Middle East-to-China route is near $800,000/day, as a ship-to-ship transfer operation outside the strait — now moving more than 6 million b/d versus almost none before the war — strains available tonnage faster than owners can redeploy it. gCaptain

No fresh LNG FID, SPA or export-terminal milestone in the window; the tanker market is where midstream stress is concentrated today.

Downstream — refining, fuels & chemicals

Ukrainian drones hit a Lukoil refinery 1,500km inside Russia, the deepest strike of the campaign. The overnight attack set fire to the Permnefteorgsintez plant — a roughly 13-million-tonne-a-year refinery in Perm Krai — for the second time since August, with the regional governor confirming the strike and the deployment of first responders. Kyiv Post · United24 Media

Trump says he personally backs a diesel export ban; his own energy secretary and industry say it would backfire. Trump told reporters at the UN "I've said let's not send out the diesel," and Treasury's Bessent confirmed advisers are studying whether a full or partial ban is "feasible," even as Energy Secretary Chris Wright and a coalition led by the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable warn a ban would cut refinery runs and raise — not lower — gasoline and jet prices. Yahoo Finance · CNN

The Chatter

Breakwave Advisors (fund insights): in "Deciphering the Dirty Tanker Record Rally," Breakwave argues the VLCC spike is not just war-risk headline noise but a structural repricing — a Hormuz-bypass ship-to-ship transfer operation that barely existed before the war is now handling 6mn+ b/d, and its labour- and equipment-constrained logistics take far longer than normal STS work, tying up tonnage that would otherwise ease the market. Breakwave Advisors

Doomberg (Substack): in "Escalation Clauses," Doomberg argues Ukraine's deep strikes on Russian refineries — including the Gazpromneft Moscow plant — are a deliberate campaign to cripple domestic fuel supply rather than opportunistic hits, and that the string of refineries damaged this month signals Kyiv now rates refining capacity a higher-value target than crude production itself. Post (paywall)

HFI Research (Substack): in "How Would US Diesel Export Restrictions Impact Energy Stocks?," HFI argues the legal path to a ban is shakier than the headlines suggest — Congress repealed the president's direct export-restriction authority in 2015, leaving only an IEEPA emergency declaration as a viable route — and that any restriction would more likely cut refinery utilization than lift domestic supply, a dynamic HFI says is worth pricing into refiner equities. Post (paywall)