Hormuz Crisis Series: European Jets Jets Jets

By Paul Sankey Published on April 18, 2026 at 4:37 PM

Last week, having satisfied my curiosity on Taiwan and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) — which basically concluded that TSMC will keep getting cheap reliable subsidized government electricity even if it means Mrs Cheng has no aircon. That is globally important; AI is the counter theme to Hormuz and after TSMC’s earnings call, we concluded they are good to go for another quarter of crisis, so relatively very comfortable. Nothing it at all comfortable right now in …

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Sunday If it Wasn’t for Bad Luck…

By Paul Sankey Published on March 29, 2026 at 8:19 PM

Greetings, The situation in Gulf War III is actually normalizing. The problem however, is that the “new normal” is total Iranian control of both the Strait of Hormuz, and likely the Bab El Mandeb. There is increasing recognition that with Netanyahu strengthened in Israeli domestic politics by Gulf War III (war approval is ~85%), and President Trump weakened — facing a 59% overall disapproval rating and 64% disapproval on his handling of the conflict—the main …

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Sunday Gulf War III Week 2 – Tanker Passage, What Tanker Passage?

By Paul Sankey Published on March 8, 2026 at 7:56 PM

Well, that was quite a week. And there it is, oil through $100/bbl on the Tokyo open. It is blatantly clear that the Trump Administration had zero, nada, nothing, as contingency plan for Iran declaring the Strait of Hormuz shut to transit. Even now, their $20bn insurance knee jerk response has been completely ineffective. We are facing the largest overall oil & gas volume outage of my career, which started in 1990, Gulf War 1. …

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