Saudi crude exports hit their highest level since the Iran war started. Pipelines are getting blown up. Missiles keep landing. The oil just keeps flowing.
This must come as devastating news to every technical analyst who spent the past six months drawing triangles on WTI charts and explaining to their Discord followers that geopolitical risk premiums were about to send crude to $200. The Saudis looked at their damaged infrastructure and thought "we could fix this or we could just load more tankers." They loaded more tankers.
Iran-backed militants in Yemen and Iraq have been attacking Saudi oil facilities with the dedication of a retail trader refreshing their portfolio during a Fed meeting. Drones. Rockets. The full menu. Saudi Arabia responded by exporting more oil than before the attacks started. Brilliant counterterrorism strategy. Get bombed, sell more product, refuse to elaborate.
Somewhere right now a 23-year-old with $847 in Robinhood is reading energy sector analysis and nodding along as some verified checkmark explains how pipeline outages create supply constraints that drive prices higher. That kid bought USO calls three weeks ago. He's down 60%. He's convinced this Saudi export data is bullish because it proves demand is strong. He will buy more calls. The Saudis will export even more oil. He will lose even more money. The cycle continues until his account hits zero or he discovers cryptocurrency, whichever comes first.
The funniest part is that none of this matters. Oil goes up, oil goes down, Saudi Arabia prints money regardless. The charts don't care about your missile strike thesis. The kingdom has been in the oil business for decades and apparently figured out that boats work just fine when pipelines don't. Revolutionary stuff. Call McKinsey, they'll turn it into a $3 million consulting deck titled "Alternative Conveyance Strategies in Conflict-Adjacent Hydrocarbon Distribution Networks."
Your stop loss already got hit while you were Googling where Yemen is.
Photo by Oualid Lakhrouti on Unsplash
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