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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

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Stuart Turley: [00:00:10] Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Daily Standup, my name is Stu Turley, President of the Sandstone Group. It is just nuts out there on the news desk. Let’s start with our list of stories today. Iranian oil exports to China are rolling. The West will have to reconsider Russia’s sanctions as part of the Ukraine peace deal. There’s a lot going on in this story. Diamondback boosts Midland Basin presence with $4 billion acquisition. Holy smokes, Batman. The UK government relaunches Net Zero Council. And just when you thought I’m done with President Trump, nope, here he runs rolling in. Trump’s policy deluge is causing a paralyzed oil market. You cannot buy this kind of entertainment. Holy smokes. [00:01:02][52.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:03] Let’s start with the first one here. Iranian oil exports to China are rolling. Iranian crude oil flows to China have rebounded after a month of crackdown on shipments launched in 2024 from the Biden administration. The Trump administration is threatened to return to maximum pressure. Kipler said in a recent analyst in the return to the maximum pressure campaign against one of the part of the Washington was likely to weaken oil exports to China for a while. But in the meantime, they’re shipping everything they can. [00:01:37][34.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:37] Let’s roll to the next one. The West will have to reconsider Russia’s sanctions as part of the Ukraine peace deal. Ending the conflict could be historic around opportunities for U .S.-Russian relations. The U .S. Secretary of State said Rubio, he’s doing a great job out there and hats off to him. Rubio is right out in the middle of it. And I’m thrilled that the discussions from George McMillan and I on where they were starting to where they are now. Really, he was right. George McMillan was right on a lot of things. And I did get notification from some of the world folks out there that it looks like President Trump is this is early and it is not talked about in the mainstream media here. Eastern European official has told German newspaper that the U .S. is considering removing some of the troops from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Montegro, North Macedonia and Poland and Romania. That’s what this is saying. I have to confirm this, but those are all countries that are been added back in in contrary to the President Reagan Gorbachev agreements on NATO that NATO kept adding back in. And if President Trump is considering removing troops from those countries, it seems that President Trump may be looking to go back to the Reagan agreement with NATO on that. That’s huge because that could be very bad for the EU and the warmongers. So I think we’re going to see some peace coming around the corner on this. And that’s hats off to George McMillan. Again, he has been right where the early Trump team was wrong. And so I’m pleased to see that things are moving forward. [00:03:39][122.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:40] Diamondback boosts Midland bases presence with four billion acquisition. Diamondback Energy announced a deal today, double eagle in a acquisition valued about four billion dollars, which gives an increased presence in the Midland Basin in the top producing formation of the Permian. This is pretty cool. While there are four hundred and seven locations adjacent to our core position, this is largely undeveloped asset, adds high quality inventory that immediately competes for capital. That is outstandingly huge. Hats off from David Blackman. I got to give David Blackman a shout out. He had in his substack outstanding information. Andrew Dittmar, director over to Enverus, who I’ve interviewed several times, said in an email that deal means that Diamondback has taken over the mantle of being the premier large Permian play with broadly comparable scale to pioneer at the time of its sale. Diamondback’s market capitalization with double eagle value added would amount today roughly 50 billion as compared to the 59 .5 billion value of ExxonMobil’s buyout of Pioneer. So this is actually a huge story. Hats off to everybody that’s been following this. Well,. [00:05:01][80.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:01] Let’s roll to the next story here. The UK government relaunches Net Zero Council. You can’t buy this kind of stupid. The UK government is actually floundering so bad with their energy policies and doubling down on Net Zero. Net Zero is not going to happen with our current technology. Offshore wind, solar, none of it is going to happen. And so by them trying to add all this in, the council co -chaired by Energy Secretary Ed Milbrand and Cooperative Group CEO Shrine. I don’t want to mispronounce your name, and I apologize. Karruggy Hogg brings together leaders from some forms of the UK’s biggest businesses, charities and organizations such as trade unions and local authorities. Quite honestly, that sounds like money laundering to me, but that’s just me. I don’t know that by working in partnership, we can drive the investment innovation and industrial transformation to make the UK a clean energy superpower. You’re not going to make it a clean super energy power by relying on grid interconnects on intermittent wind and solar. It’s not going to happen. Before I go to the last story here, I’d like to give a shout out to Reese Consulting, outstanding group of folks. They are very knowledgeable in the United States, and I highly recommend that you reach out to them. And if you’re in the natural gas space and you’re looking to put in a natural gas power plant or you’re looking for Bitcoin miner and you’re wanting stranded gas or you’re wanting to buy and sell oil and gas. These guys are the the tip of the spear, so to speak. Give them a shout out. And again, thank you, Reese Consulting, for being the sponsor of The Daily Podcast. [00:06:52][110.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:53] Trump’s policy deluge is causing parallel parallel paris’s parallel. I cannot even say it is. I’m laughing at this in the oil market. It is funny because President Trump, I can’t keep up with the entire news desk. Trump spent his first weeks in office rallying against OPEC seeking an end to the war in Ukraine and threatening tariffs against some of the main crew suppliers in the US. All those could have major consequences. The oil market is showing signs of disorientation in face of the sheer volume of new policy stances. I don’t think we’re done yet. Buckle up and just get ready for some fun things. OPEC plus producer group continues to keep barrels off the market, which is as a twin effect of lowering supplies long enough to keep a floor on prices. We are still going to be seeing a a eighty dollar, I believe an eighty dollar price range for oil. And I believe that that is because there’s still not enough money, even though they may be holding back. There’s still not enough money invested in oil. And I believe demand once things get kind of outlined out, Trump’s policies become more widely accepted. We are actually going to see a huge, beautiful growth. And I don’t do a very good Putin imitation or a Trump imitation. But we’re going to have a beautiful global economy. Once all this gets nailed down, we’re going to have peace. And we are going to see a lot of large growth opportunity for businesses. [00:08:34][100.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:35] With that, like, subscribe, share and pass this on to your folks, friends and watch this about six or seven times. We sure would appreciate it. Have a great day. [00:08:35][0.0][500.4]

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Under current and prospective policies from the International Maritime Organization, European Union, and the US, the business case for green shipping corridors could improve markedly – but not sufficiently – according to a new 72-page report published by UMAS, UCL and the Global Maritime Forum (GMF). 

Titled ‘Building a Business Case for Green Shipping Corridors’, the report looks at the significant commercial challenges associated with green shipping corridors, how these could change under future regulation, and what additional support may be needed to ensure the viability of such projects.

Green shipping corridor projects – which focus on initiating the maritime value chain for scalable and sustainable fuels such as hydrogen-derived e-ammonia and e-methanol – have thus far faced an insurmountable cost gap. Against the backdrop of an evolving global and regional policy landscape, the business case for such first mover initiatives will begin to improve, but targeted support will be needed to ensure uptake of e-fuels.

The report emphasises the important role of regulation in enabling shipping’s energy transition and the wider implications for the industry operating under a future compliance regime where fleet and bunkering strategies will need to become more sophisticated. Policies such as the IMO’s new global fuel standard, the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), and the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will play a critical role in reducing costs for green shipping corridors but fall short of fully bridging the gap between the cost of e-fuels and the cheapest solution to meet compliance.

The report explores the potential opportunities and options that could be available for green shipping corridors in three different shipping sectors—gas carriers, container ships and bulk carriers—to highlight how public and private efforts could accelerate early adoption of e-fuels. The scenarios explored reveal that while biofuels and blue ammonia are lowest cost options over the near term, scalable e-fuels such as e-ammonia are expected to become increasingly competitive as production costs fall and compliance requirements tighten, indicating that targeted support would only be required over the short term.

With 62 green shipping corridors initiatives already announced, support for these early mover projects could enable significant strides to be made in the development of sustainable fuel production and in investment in the storage, bunkering, and port infrastructure required to decarbonise the wider shipping industry later in the transition.

Deniz Aymer, senior consultant at UMAS, commented, “Upcoming regulation will shift the business case for green shipping corridors – as well as shaping how the wider shipping industry approaches compliance. To fully bridge the cost gap, however, targeted support for e-fuels is needed. But this short-term support will pay future dividends by ensuring that scalable and sustainable fuels are available to the wider industry when needed.”

To accelerate progress, the report outlines actionable solutions for industry and policymakers. It highlights how business models will need to adapt under incoming regulation and how long-term commitments from cargo owners and shipowners and operators can help de-risk investment and drive e-fuel adoption. Strategic partnerships across the value chain will be essential for sharing risks and rewards, ensuring a more equitable cost distribution while advancing green shipping corridor projects.

Despite this, the business case for green shipping corridors will remain challenging without targeted measures to support the uptake of e-fuels. Mechanisms such as Contracts for Difference (CFDs), e-fuel auctions, and/or multipliers for overcompliance with e-fuels will be crucial to the short-term viability of these initiatives. Economic support could be underwritten by the IMO through revenues raised by a levy on shipping industry emissions. In the absence of a global levy, however, national governments may need to step in to directly support corridor projects.

Jesse Fahnestock, director of decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, commented, “The most important role Green Corridors can play is to coordinate and kick-start the value chain for tomorrow’s shipping fuels. Participants in corridors will need to be creative in how they leverage a range of regulations, but it’s clear from this work that the scale of their impact will depend on policymakers delivering targeted support for e-fuels.” 

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More people, more workers, higher incomes, more spending. Banks eager to lend at high rates and collect swipe fees.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Delinquency rates for credit cards 30 days or more past due declined for the second quarter in a row, to 3.08% of total credit-card balances at all commercial banks at the end of Q4, seasonally adjusted, according to Federal Reserve data on yesterday. This includes credit cards issued to prime and subprime-rates borrowers.

The plunge in delinquencies during the pandemic was a result of Free Money flooding households which helped some folks get caught up; and it was also driven in part by limited options of spending, with restaurants, flights, cruises, entertainment venues, etc. being largely shut down.

Then the spending boom took off, the Free Money ended, and delinquency rates normalized, then overshot a little. The high point was in Q2 last year (3.24%), and the delinquency rate has dropped since then:

For prime-rated cardholders, delinquencies of 60-plus days have hovered at around 1%, sometimes a little under sometimes a little over, not seasonally adjusted, right where they had been before the pandemic, according to data from Fitch Ratings, which tracks the performance of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) backed by prime credit card balances.

Credit Card Balances are a measure of spending, not of debt.

Credit cards are the dominant payment system in the US, and credit card statement balances therefore are a measure of spending – including for expensive business trips that are reimbursed.

They’re not a measure of borrowing because most balances are paid off by due date and never accrue interest, but allow cardholders to get their 1% or 2% cashback, airmiles, and other loyalty benefits.

Of the roughly $6 trillion a year that flow through credit cards, only a small portion doesn’t get paid off every month by due date. Credit card balances that are “revolving” – meaning becoming an interest-bearing loan – amounted to $645 billion at the end of Q3, according to the Philadelphia Fed’s report in January. Big-ticket items, such as furniture to equip the new house, are a common example of balances getting run up that then get paid off over the next few months.

Lower-income people rarely have access to credit cards, and usually have to make do with debit cards, or if they have access to credit, the credit limits are low. So in aggregate, they cannot run up the revolving balances; it’s the young high-income dentist with five credit cards, each with a $30,000 credit limit, that can a dent into those balances.

More people, more workers, making more, spending more.

Credit card statement balances rose by $45 billion, or 3.9%, at the end of Q4, not seasonally adjusted, to $1.21 trillion, according to the NY Fed’s Household Debt and Credit Report, after blockbuster holiday spending by our Drunken Sailors, as we’ve come to call them lovingly and facetiously. Year-over-year, statement balances were up 7.3% — more people, more workers, making more money, and spending more.

“Other” consumer loans, such as personal loans, payday loans, and Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) loans remained unchanged year-over-year, at $554 billion (blue line).

BNPLs are subsidized by the merchant and are interest-free for the consumer, if they stick to the plan. Merchants like them because the fees can be lower than credit card swipe fees.

Combined, credit card balances and “other” consumer loans rose by 3.1% in Q4 from Q3 and by 4.9% year-over-year, to $1.76 trillion.

The credit-balance-to-income ratio.

The burden of debt on households – accounting for more people, higher employment, and higher incomes – can be tracked with the debt-to-disposable-income ratio, a classic measure of the borrowers’ ability to deal with the burden of debt.

Over the past 20 years, disposable income has surged by 144%, a result of higher employment with workers making more money on average, while balances of credit cards and “other” consumer loans combined has risen by only 58%.

Disposable income, released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, represents an after-payroll-tax cashflow from all income sources: Household income from after-tax wages, plus income from interest, dividends, rentals, farm income, small business income, transfer payments from the government, etc. This is the cash consumers have available every month to spend on housing, food, debt payments, etc. But it excludes capital gains.

In Q4, driven by holiday spending, statement balances are always higher, and then they dip in Q1 as spending sags, seasonally. These balances are not seasonally adjusted:

• In Q4 from Q3: credit balances +3.1%, disposable income +1.3%.
• Year-over-year: credit balances +4.9%, disposable income +5.1%.

As a result, the burden of the combined credit card balances and “other” balances, in terms of the debt-to-disposable-income ratio, increased quarter to quarter due to the seasonal spending burst, but declined year-over-year, and is very low by historical standards, as our Drunken Sailors have learned a lesson coming out of the Great Recession.

Banks eager to lend at high rates and earn swipe fees.

The aggregate credit limit rose by $269 billion year-over-year, to $5.08 trillion, as more card accounts were opened by more workers, and as credit limits were raised on existing cards (blue line).

Over the same period, credit card statement balances rose by $87 billion, to $1.21 trillion (red line)

And the available unused credit surged by $182 billion year-over-year, to a record $3.87 trillion. Following the Financial Crisis, credit tightened as banks were skittish, and available credit plunged by $1 trillion:

In case you missed the earlier parts of the debts of our Drunken Sailors and their debts in Q4:

Here Come the HELOCs: Mortgages, Housing-Debt-to-Income-Ratio, Serious Delinquencies & Foreclosures in Q4 2024

Household Debts, Debt-to-Income Ratio, Serious Delinquencies, Collections, Foreclosures, Bankruptcies: Our Drunken Sailors’ Debts in Q4 2024

Auto Debts, Auto-Loan-to-Income Ratio, Serious Delinquencies for Prime & Subprime: Our Drunken Sailors and their Auto Loans

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Energy Secretary Chris Wright called the pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 ‘lunacy,’ specifically criticizing the UK.

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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday called a pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 a “sinister goal”, and criticized the British government’s attempts to hit clean energy targets. [emphasis, links added]

Former President Joe Biden set a target in 2021 for the United States to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 to help fight climate change, in part by using subsidies to encourage an expansion of clean energy and electric vehicles.

“Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal,” Wright said, speaking via videolink at a conference being held in London.

“The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”

Wright also used a question and answer session at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) event to say his number one priority was for the government to “get out of the way” of the production of oil, gas, and coal.

President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Biden paused them early last year.

“We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue,” he said.

“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses we don’t have replacements.”

On net zero, he took particular aim at Britain, saying its pursuit of a decarbonized energy system – which the current UK government wants to reach by 2030 – had damaged living standards and exported emissions elsewhere in the world.

“No one’s going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom anymore. It’s just been displaced somewhere else,” he said.

“This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place.”

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Top image of Chris Wright (large screen) at ARC 2025/YouTube screencap

Read rest at Yahoo! News

 

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The Consensual Hallucination that drove the EV SPAC mania didn’t die with the EV SPACs; it moved on to other stocks.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Nikola, the “legendary” maker of fuel-cell electric and battery-electric class-8 trucks that had gone public in June 2020 via merger with a SPAC, finally filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy today, as long expected, and intends to liquidate by selling its assets through a bankruptcy auction. It’s “legendary” because:

• Founder and CEO Trevor Milton was sentenced to four years in the hoosegow for lying to investors about the company’s technology;
• It settled fraud charges with the SEC for $125 million;
• Its stock price had given it a valuation of over $28 billion shortly after it went public in a fantastic display of what we have come to call “consensual hallucination;”
• It has lost $3.36 billion since 2019 in ever larger annual increments, on essentially no revenues.

And this long show, produced so elaborately by this outfit, which still calls itself “a global leader in zero-emissions transportation and energy supply and infrastructure solutions,” is over. The stock has long been just about worthless, and became worth even less today, (-40%), to $0.46, adjusted for the 1-for-30 reverse stocks split in June 2024, where each 30 shares became 1 share:

The company today said that it has $47 million in cash on hand, down from $202 million at the end of Q3 on September 30. In Q3, it lost $200 million. For the three quarters in 2024 so far it lost $482 million. In 2023, it lost $800 million. Since 2019, it lost $3.34 billion. It was very good at producing huge losses, we can say that for sure.

As if to add some dry situational humor, in August 2022, Nikola, whose shares by then had already collapsed by 92% from their peak, acquired collapsed EV-battery maker Romeo, which was supplying batteries to Nikola. In the press release back then, Nikola said:

“Integrated commercial vehicle electrification platform is expected to lead to manufacturing excellence and expected annual cost savings of up to $350 million by 2026; reduce non-cell related battery pack costs by 30-40% by the end of 2023.”

You see, the outfit has never once run into a shortage of bullshit to dish out to investors. For the few companies that bought its trucks, Nikola will provide direct service through March 2025, so about another six weeks. And then maybe someone else can step in, please? In the press release today, it said:

“Subject to Court approval, the Company intends to continue certain limited directly provided (non-dealer) service and support operations for trucks currently in the field, including certain HYLA fueling operations through the end of March 2025. Thereafter, the Company will need one or more partners to support such activities.”

EV SPACS that are no longer twitching:

These EV SPACs we have amused ourselves with for the past four-plus years, as one after the other were inducted into our pantheon of Imploded Stocks, were born during the era of free money and what we’ve come to call consensual hallucination, and reality just didn’t matter. Then they started collapsing and filing for bankruptcy, one after the other.

Electric Last Mile Solutions filed for bankruptcy in June 2022, only 12 months after it had gone public via merger with a SPAC. This was kind of a record.

Proterra, which produced a few electric buses, filed for bankruptcy in April 2023, 25 months after having gone public via merger with a SPAC. It once had a market cap of nearly $4 billion.

Lordstown Motors, which tried to make electric pickups, filed for bankruptcy in June 2023, less than three years after it had gone public via merger with a SPAC, during which time it lied to investors to get more of their cash and stay alive.

Fisker filed for bankruptcy in June 2024. It had gone public via merger with a SPAC in October 2020 amid fake promises and ludicrous projections, and then burned $1 billion of investor cash to have some EVs manufactured by contract manufacturer Magna Steyr in Austria. CEO Henrik Fisker had already driven his predecessor company, Fisker Automotive, maker of the plug-in hybrid Fisker Karma, into bankruptcy in 2013.

Lion Electric, a Canadian company that made electric trucks and buses, filed for creditor protection in Canada and for chapter 15 bankruptcy in the US in December 2024. It had gone public in the US via merger with a SPAC in November 2020.

Canoo, which lately called itself a high-tech advanced mobility and energy company, filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in January 2025 and shut down, four years after it had gone public via merger with a SPAC in late 2020. In 2024, it had joined the corporate exodus from California to Texas. It designed some electric vans but never sold any and died with zero revenues in Texas. But before it died, it bought some of the assets of bankrupt EV maker Arrival in the UK.

EV SPACs that are still twitching…

Faraday Future Intelligent Electric [FFIE] issued a bankruptcy warning in May 2024 and withdrew its production forecast. It had gone public via merger with a SPAC in July 2021. Among other things, it became legendary for imposing mega reverse stock splits: In August 2023, a 1-for-80 reverse split, where each 80 shares became one share; in February 2024, a 1-for-3 reverse split, and in August 2024 a 1-for-40 reverse split. In total, 9,600 shares became 1 share. These things are just a bad joke:

Mullen Automotive [MULN] had gone public via SPAC merger in November 2021, and has lost $2.1 billion since then, with no revenues to speak of, other than selling a few imported Chinese vehicles early on. In April 2022, short-seller Hindenburg Research came out with a report that said, “Mullen Is Among the Worst EV Hustles We’ve Seen in A Crowded Field of Contenders.” After some whoppers of reverse stock splits, including another one a week ago, which became effective on February 18, there’s essentially nothing left, and the whole thing is a joke.

VinFast Auto [VFS], a Vietnamese EV maker that’s part of the conglomerate VinGroup, went public in the US via merger with a SPAC in August 2023, with a minuscule float, and the shares of this misbegotten creature then exploded giving it briefly a market cap of over $230 billion. But two months later, the stock had plunged 92%, becoming one of our favorites in the pantheon of Imploded Stocks. They’re currently at $3.82, down 96% from the high. Its market cap has imploded from over $230 billion to a still ridiculous $9 billion.

Lucid Motors [LCID] went public via SPAC merger in 2021. Ayer Third Investment Co., an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has invested $6.4 billion in Lucid, including $1 billion in March 2024, and owns 64% of it. Lucid has lost $10 billion since 2020, but it actually makes and sells higher-end EVs that are well regarded, and can be seen out in the wild.

Polestar [PSNY] went public via merger with a SPAC in June 2022 and started trading at $11, giving it a market cap of $23 billion. The stock is now at $0.21, down 98% from the peak. The company is majority owned and controlled by Chinese giant Geely, which had bought Volvo, which had bought a startup that became Polestar. All the vehicles were made in China until late 2024, when the company started manufacturing the Polestar 3 at its factory in South Carolina.

Rivian is not part of this lineup because it went public via classic IPO, not SPAC merger, in November 2021. In trying to ramp up mass-production, it has burned through many billions of dollars, but has three models – a pickup truck, an SUV, and a deliver van – that are well regarded and can be seen in the wild.

It started out with Amazon as one of its backers and huge customer for its commercial vans. It has now made a deal with Volkswagen that’s bringing in more cash. Today, shares [RIVN] trade at $14, down by 93% from its peak in November 2021.

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The oil market is becoming increasingly numb to the array of changes that Donald Trump is trying to make now that he’s US President again.

Trump spent his first weeks in office railing against OPEC, seeking an end to the war in Ukraine, and threatening tariffs against some of the main crude suppliers to the US. All those things could have major consequences for supply and demand in the oil market.

But rather than causing price swings, the futures market is flat-lining. A gauge of implied volatility for benchmark Brent futures — a measure of how far traders expect oil prices to swing — fell to its lowest level since July this week.

“The oil market is showing signs of disorientation in the face of the sheer volume of new policy stances,” Standard Chartered analysts including Emily Ashford wrote this week. “Faced with so much information and the realization that a single social media post could move the market significantly in either direction at any time, many traders have responded by reducing their risk exposure.”

To be clear, an underlying lack of volatility predates Trump’s return to the White House. Even unprecedented sanctions against Russia by the Biden administration quickly lost their impact.

The OPEC+ producer group continues to keep barrels off the market, which has the twin effect of lowering supplies enough to keep a floor under prices, while simultaneously meaning there is plenty of spare capacity available to meet unexpected disruptions.

Although prices briefly rallied when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil imports, they have since fallen as the US attempts to strike a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

In between that, there have been overtures around a maximum pressure strategy on Iranian oil exports, as well as pledges to boost US production and fill up the nation’s strategic oil reserves. All have failed to dramatically shake the market’s outlook so far.

Brent futures have stayed anchored around the $75-a-barrel mark in recent months and so far in February have swung in a band of less than $4. Speculators have also posted one of the largest pullbacks in net-bullish wagers in years over the past three weeks.

Source: Bloomberg

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Iranian crude oil flows to China have rebounded this month after a U.S. crackdown on shipments launched in late 2024 decimated them in January. In a last-minute push to sanction Iran, the Biden admin blacklisted a number of tankers, trading entities, and shipping companies as participants in sanctioned oil trade.

The February average of Iranian oil exports to its biggest buyer is set to average 1.74 million barrels daily, according to preliminary data from Kpler cited by Bloomberg. The figure is an 86% increase from January flows.

The boost in shipments was enabled by the opening of new receiving terminals and more ship-to-ship transfers, the Bloomberg report noted.

The Trump administration has threatened to return to the maximum pressure approach of Trump’s first term in a bid to force Iran to give u developing a nuclear weapon. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the target is to squeeze Iranian oil exports to a tenth of their current levels.

Kpler said in a recent analysis that the return to a maximum pressure campaign against Iran on the part of Washington was likely to weaken oil exports to China, at least for a while. “Some buyers, particularly larger Chinese privately owned refiners, are likely to steer clear of such dealings as a precaution in the near term,” due to higher prices resulting from workarounds to avoid U.S. sanctions, Kpler analyst Homayoun Falakshahi wrote.

China’s private oil refiners, the so-called teapots, are key buyers of Iran’s sanctioned crude, and the two sides have established a trade relationship favorable for both. Iran gets to sell its crude that nearly everyone else shuns, while China’s independent refiners, the so-called teapots, get cheap oil. However, the tougher U.S. squeeze on Iran’s oil industry will inevitably lift prices, which would affect buying decisions, as noted by Kpler.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

History of Iran Oil Shipments from Grok on X:

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