Above, clip from Oil analyst Jeff Currie on Bloomberg News, discussing the fulminating situation with supply chains in the Middle East and globally – thanks to the Trump administration’s war for oil, a warming climate, and a monster El Niño.
Vladimir Putin’s wildest wet dreams could not have imagined what Donald Trump’s sheer stupidity, greed, and venality has wrought.
Chickens—>roost.
Saudi Arabia said Friday it shut down a major pipeline a day after it was attacked by drones, and Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels captured a strategic island at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, two officials said, opening a new front in the Iran war.
The Houthis made their biggest territorial gains in years along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s key shipping lanes. The advance could boost Iran’s strategy of driving up world oil and gas prices to pressure the United States.
Saudi Arabia said it had shut down the East-West pipeline after it was attacked the day before. The Saudi Ministry of Energy called the shutdown “a precautionary measure.”
The Saudi Foreign Ministry blamed the attack on several drones that came from Iraq. In a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the kingdom said it would not respond to give the Iraqi government “an opportunity to take the necessary measures.”
To get from Minnesota to China, a load of soybeans might meander down the Mississippi River on a barge, transferring around New Orleans to a ship that carries it through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific.
But this summer, low water levels have throttled traffic moving through the canal and limited barge cargo on the river. In Europe, the Rhine and Danube rivers, both important shipping channels, also saw record-low water levels.
In addition to the heat, floods and storms that have delivered acute shocks to local economies in recent months, climate change is worsening droughts, increasing shipping costs and slowing movement through the waterways that act as conveyor belts for global trade. Add in record-setting prices for the diesel that powers the global cargo industry, and it’s no wonder costs of goods are climbing.
New York Times has another good piece pointing to the Panama Canal, the Mississippi, and Europe’s Rhine as examples of key transportation arteries slowing due to drought extremes.
Houthi attacks had already stopped most of the crude and fuel output from the Red Sea, but blowing up the East-West Pipeline itself means that those Red Sea ships and refineries have nothing to refine or carry anyway.