My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
It's once again been a relatively slow week, with "only" quite a few oil tankers being struck in the US's attempt at an oil corridor in Hormuz. I've seen several analysts speculate on just how leaky Hormuz might be despite Iran's attacks, and if it is leaky, then why and to what extent. Now that we're firmly in August, we have noticeably passed the predicted July ETAs on the physical oil cliff (the paper oil price manipulations notwithstanding), and so analysts are trying to find explanations for the current situation, in which various factors are being considered, of which I'll list a few I've seen personally.
First is, as I said, a potentially leaky Hormuz, because it's been revealed that in lieu of official corporate insurance, the US is directly paying captains massive sums of money if they're brave enough to try and run the strait under US air cover - hence why Iran keeps hitting tankers practically daily without them ever seeming to get the message. Obviously, this covert operation by itself would not be enough to even approach pre-war transit levels, and so there must be other factors going on. Second is Red Sea oil redirections predominantly by Saudi Arabia; if this was a big factor, it's something Ansarallah is now actively combatting with their blockade of the Bab el-Mandab and semi-regular strikes on their pipeline infrastructure. Third is that perhaps world oil reserves are somewhat larger than first considered, especially given China deciding to go on a bit of an oil diet over the last six months, and especially especially if countries really start pumping from one-shot emergency supplies; e.g. there's been much discussion by Naked Capitalism about just how much the US could extract from the rapidly dwindling SPR if it no longer cared about the irreversible damage to the storage caverns caused by pumping out as much as physically possible. Fourth and finally, perhaps the data on stockpiles was just bad in such as way that they were being consistently underestimated by e.g. 10% or so. Ultimately, regardless of the many complicated factors involved here, the antsy and indecisive behaviour of the US, as well as some anxiety about the midterms, betrays any attempts at American confidence (e.g. by Bessent) about this becoming a stable situation for even the medium term.
We've also seen some of the fruits of the serious discussions between Iran and Oman over how exactly Hormuz is going to be governed, with one major and intriguing proposal being that Iran could have total control over what vessels enter (i.e. tolling when entering), and Oman has partial control over what vessels leave, with Iran having a veto there too (i.e. no tolling when exiting, but de jure Iranian military control). Iran has come out and said that regardless of what they agree to with Oman, the US will have to make major concessions - at least on the order of the MoU concessions and perhaps even beyond them - for Hormuz shipping to restart. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkiye have signed some kind of military alliance or agreement of some kind; I'm waiting for some big expert analyses on the many implications before I give any takes here, but it's already been dealt a rather large embarrassment by Ansarallah seeming to not really a give a shit, continuing strikes on both Saudi pipeline infrastructure and also Saudi-backed mercenaries.
And finally, over in Latin America, the Southern Spear Joint Task Force has given way to a new version which looks likely to increase inland strikes, which is a major escalation from the strikes targeting mainly fishing boats, which were presumably done to a) cause socioeconomic fractures in certain countries (largely Venezuela), and b) further the kayfabe that the US is trying to stop drugs entering the US while obviously covertly further amplifying it through friendly comprador countries. While Latin America struggles to find its way forward out of American regional hegemony due to the rather mixed results of both electoralism and warfare (guerrilla and otherwise), what greatly interests me will be how the region's domestic capitalists respond to the attempts by the US to wean them off from China's growing economic sphere. I've wondered previously about whether a potential way out of imperium, in lieu of the ability of the region's working class to take (and, more critically, hold on to) power, will be China, intentionally or not, causing major fractures between the US capitalists seeking a monopoly to loot the continent as much as possible with the absolute minimum domestic development possible to maintain profits, and domestic capitalists who want to trade with an ever-growing China and internally develop their countries for their own self-benefit.
Last week's thread is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
US oil reserves plunge to 40-year low as war on Iran strains energy supplies | The Cradle
article
US oil reserves have fallen to the lowest level in 40 years, raising fears that the underground caverns holding them could be permanently damaged as Washington struggles to manage the fallout of its ongoing war on Iran.Data released last week by the Department of Energy showed that the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) will fall to roughly 243 million barrels of oil after the current release of 172 million barrels is completed.
Before the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, the SPR held about 582 million barrels of crude oil.
According to market analysts at Rapidan Energy, the fall of the SPR below 170 million barrels will cause damage to “cavern integrity and pumping infrastructure.”
To extract oil from the caverns, fresh water is pumped into the bottom of the cavern to force oil up to pipeline intakes.
President Donald Trump authorized the massive drawdown of the reserves, which are held in 60 underground salt caverns across four sites in Texas and Louisiana, to keep oil prices low amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran closed the strait to exports of Gulf oil in response to the start of the US-Israeli [sic] war on the Islamic Republic in February, causing world oil prices to spike from roughly $70 per barrel to $170 per barrel in some markets.
Nearly six months later, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, while high gas prices in the US threaten to damage Trump’s Republican Party in the October mid-term elections.
The AAA National Average for a gallon of regular gasoline has now reached $4.07, the highest price on record for mid-August.
In a speech on Friday, Trump said US consumers should not complain if they have to pay more for gasoline.
“When you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s OK, I mean, it’s not. I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing,” he added.
Higher gas prices in the US and across the world have been coupled with rising food prices since the start of the war, harming people in poorer countries especially hard.
The Department of Energy rejected claims that the caverns are at risk of damage, saying that a reserve of only 70 million barrels of oil must be maintained.
“The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich said. President Trump is “responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be,” he claimed.
Amos Hochstein, a senior energy advisor to President Joe Biden, questioned the Energy Department claims.
“Don’t believe the people out of the government that are saying the SPR can go to 70 million barrels. It’s nonsense,” Hochstein told CNBC on Thursday. At such a low level, the reserve would be depleted to “the point of never resurrecting it,” he said.
bit idea: prefixing news headlines with "TO THEIR WHITE SURPRISE, "
that "it's not" part where he just contradicts himself immediately is really funny somehow
like an LLM out of 2023 that caught its own bullshit
Experts keep saying the US can't scrape the bottom of the SOR but how do we know what is "the real bottom" then? If it came to it, could the US pull off some BS and re-refine that oil?
The short answer is: nobody knows!
The long answer is:
The salt caves are full of an oil-water mix. Oil does not dissolve the salt, water famously does. The crude oil floats on top of the water, and the intakes for the pumps that extract the oil are at the top of the reservoirs. As more and more water is pumped in to extract the oil, it weakens the "pillars" of salt holding up the cavern ceilings. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the oil layer is the "sludge" which I understand to be basically unusable and moreover damaging to the pumping equipment to even get it out
Like so many late stage US empire things we are living through right now, anyone with technical expertise can see the absolute unsustainable looming catastrophe, but denial and market manipulation are the only policies the state has to offer
That's very informative, i figured they would just pump salt water down there but maybe that comes with its own problems.
When thinking like an engineer, yes drawing the reserves below 250-300 million barrels is bad in the long term.
When thinking like Donald Trump (a landlord at the end of the day), the long term is somebody else's problem. As president he doesn't even have to install new linoleum floors. So imo the US is going to 70 million barrels.
I agree, I think he will metaphorically drive it till the wheels come off not unlike these two aircraft carriers (so far)
Also I also wondered why they didn't use salt water but I don't hear it mentioned as an option. All the sites seem very close to the coast but who knows?
best i can tell from some minutes of searching is that fresh water is simply cheaper to use, that they will maybe sometimes use under-saturated brine if it's cost-effective, and generally the "fresh" water they're using isn't potable to begin with