We finally got a little air in this diesel-squeezed market. Oil came off last night after reports of more barrels moving through the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump talking about a possible off-ramp in the Iran fight. That’s the Sunday-night reversal traders needed after weeks of living on a war premium.
The diesel crack is still the real story. After hitting $110.28 overnight it pulled back to about 10 three and changed them is now back above 104.00. We’re short refining capacity, and Ukraine keeps hitting Russian diesel plants. President Trump told the Financial Times he’s worried about diesel at home. Over the weekend he pressed President Zelenskyy to stop those refinery strikes, saying they’re making a global shortage worse and driving U.S. pump prices. That’s a new friction point heading into their U.N. meeting this week. Trump’s point is simple: other targets if you must — leave the diesel standing.
Some actual good news on the water. Admiral Brad Cooper at CENTCOM said oil and LNG shipments through Hormuz over the past two weeks hit a six-month high. Mine clearance, naval escorts, and Gulf allies have moved more than a billion barrels through the strait in recent months. “Momentum is building,” he said. Markets still lean on something like 10 million barrels a day through that choke point, so every extra tanker matters. That’s Bloomberg and CENTCOM.
Saudi Arabia is part of that bounce. After Houthi hit the East-West line and trouble at Yanbu, loaded more from the Gulf terminals and used ship-to-ship transfers. Kpler and JPMorgan tracking show Saudi exports back above 4 million barrels a day in September after August’s slump to about 2.4 million — the weakest in years. Satellite data has Saudi through Hormuz around 2.9 million barrels a day over the last six days, up from about 700,000 in August, according to Reuters and JPMorgan.
Venezuela is putting more barrels on the water too — and that’s where the politics walk right into the oil story. Exports have climbed back toward multi-year highs as U.S. licenses, , and traders move more crude to the U.S., India, and Europe. EIA figures show Venezuela has already shipped well over 100 million barrels to the United States this year. Those heavy barrels matter to Gulf Coast refiners.
But don’t confuse more oil with a clean political picture. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly — the first Venezuelan head of state at that meeting since Maduro in 2018 — and she’s slated to see President Trump on Tuesday. Caracas is selling peace, dialogue, and the new oil partnership. Fair enough on the barrels. The concern is elections.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado is still trying to go home and force a real vote. She’s told Democrats Review she wants that “popular democratic energy” channeled into a genuine electoral process. Secretary Rubio now says Washington won’t block her return. That doesn’t make it safe. Last week Venezuela’s intelligence service grabbed former Torres mayor Javier Oropeza right after a local interview in Barquisimeto — 48 hours after he came back from two years of exile in Spain. Protests followed. He was out in about six hours. That’s the secret-police problem in one afternoon.
A U.N. Human Rights Council fact-finding mission that was in the country from September 2025 through late July said the institutions that ran repression are still standing. Some political prisoners were released, and the street has a little more room. But the laws used to criminalize dissent are still on the books, the intelligence services look the same, and the colectivos were never disarmed. Machado says U.S. pressure stopped some of the old routine brutality — and that torture centers, a high prisoner count, and daily threats from Rodríguez’s circle are still there, according to The Wall Street Journal, Reuters.
More Venezuelan crude is a plus for supply. A messy fight over free elections is a risk premium if the street and the secret police collide. Watch that Trump–Rodríguez meeting this week the same way you watch Hormuz: barrels first, politics attached.
On the other side of the U.N. week, U.S. and Chinese officials came out of New York talks sounding constructive ahead of Trump-Xi. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the discussions “very successful.” They floated a U.S.–China AI dialogue and a notification system for AI incidents with national-security implications. Xinhua said the atmosphere was good. Bloomberg and the New York Times reported that.
Nat gas futures has gone in the harbor nation even as president trump and present and see if China expect to sign a deal to increase Chinese purchases of US energy as well as but the core sets down the road in the near term we still have to keep an eye on fox weather because they’re the only one that could knock us out of this the shoulder season sideways market. Fow Weather is reporting that the latest European tropical forecast model shows an increase in activity in the Atlantic as we move into late hurricane season despite a strengthening El Niño predicted to reach super status. Fox Weather says that The Atlantic hurricane season is off to a quiet start, with only one named storm in mid-June, and no significant tropical activity expected heading into mid-July.
Forecast models show the Atlantic Basin is expected to remain quiet as peak season approaches and El Niño continues to intensify heading into the fall months. However, starting late September into early October, things could shift, as above-average sea surface temperatures return across much of the Atlantic. The warming sea surface temperatures have the potential to offset some of the suppressing effects of El Niño, the FOX Forecast Center said. We already know El Niño conditions are present in the Pacific, which typically suppresses tropical activity in the Atlantic due to harsh upper-level wind shear in the Atlantic.
This intense wind typically rips developing tropical disturbances apart before they can organize into dangerous hurricanes, the FOX Forecast Center said.
El Niño usually has the exact opposite effect in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, where deep warm water and low wind shear create the perfect environment for dangerous major hurricanes and super typhoons.
