00:00 Josh
Let’s look at the energy markets now. Oil prices have surged above $100 a barrel for the second time since the war began, as the conflict sees no signs of ending and as Frey joining me now for more on this.
00:12 Frey
Yeah, Josh, and if we take a look at the energy markets right now, I mean WTI up more than 8% for the week. You’ve got Brent Crude up around 11% for the week. Brent going back above $100 per barrel. And the bottom line is that despite the all of the things that have been done to sort of try and calm the energy markets, you are still ending up with oil above 100 a barrel when it comes to Brent. So you’ve had SPR releases, you’ve had easing of some sanctions as well.
00:46 Frey
You have considerations perhaps of doing away with the Jones Act temporarily because of these price hikes. And you are seeing though that the energy market is still not calm. And that is because the Straight of Vermouse is still nearly at a standstill.
01:03 Frey
We took a look at data from Lloyd’s list intelligence. This is a firm that tracks the maritime traffic. And basically what they’ve shown is that between March 1st and March 10th, only 77 transit went through the straight of Vermouse. Typically, during that period last year, you had over 1,200 transit. So you can see the minimal, minimal traffic that has gone through. And some of that traffic are Iranian tied vessels.
01:36 Frey
So you are seeing that Iran is able to take some of their oil to be exporting still some of their oil, but not the case for uh the rest of the vessels that uh would like to go through the that straight. So, certainly the uncertainty of the straight of Vermouse is really what has been driving these markets higher. And by the way, even if the US Navy is able to escort out uh vessels at some point, uh this data is showing that that would only account for less than 10% of the traffic through the straight of Vermouse.
02:11 Frey
So, this is not a solution yet to the big problem uh with with respect to the war.