Shashank Joshi
@shashj · Military & weapons analysts
Shashank Joshi is The Economist's defence editor.
Is traffic back to normal through Hormuz? Probably higher than you think, but lower than Trump claims. "Kpler’s eventual reading at the turn of the month may near the 9m b/d seven-day average that Chris Wright, America’s energy secretary, cited on September 6th. Part of the gap lies in definitions: what counts as oil (crude only or products too); where the counting line sits (the strait or the Gulf of Oman); and when a barrel is dated (at loading, at crossing or on reappearance) ... That still doesn’t explain Mr Trump’s 18m b/d. Perhaps he cherry-picked an exceptional day: since March, counting every possible oil product, Vortexa has recorded only two days above 16m. Or maybe he mixed in exports that now bypass the strait entirely"
“An Israeli army reservist shot and killed two Palestinians near a school east of Ramallah on Tuesday morning, authorities said, in the latest episode of violence convulsing the occupied West Bank…Israel’s military said that the gunman was a civilian, an army reservist who wasn’t mobilized. The military said that he hadn’t been arrested, but that the incident was under investigation.”
Axios reports: "In recent weeks, traffic through the southern channel has grown to 20 to 30 tankers every night, carrying an average of 9 to 10 million barrels, per U.S. officials. That's roughly half the pre-war volume." Not wildly off what Lloyd's List calculates. But pre-war transits were over 100 per day, no?
“The Justice Department is preparing to activate a long-dormant maritime war court to streamline military capture of Iranian oil tankers as US prizes, according to three people familiar with the plans.” https://t.co/51ajbIItjv