Krystal Ball

sanctions against the country.

So, Sagar, what they point to here is the fact that, you know, a lot of the reason that ships have not been transiting the Strait of Hormuz is obviously the war led to an inability to transit and there were mines in the Strait.

But also, even if you wanted to, you were not going to be able to get insurance.

Mm-hmm.

You know, the shipping companies that own these giant tankers are not willing to take that risk.

And so now you have a situation that continues to be very tenuous.

Are they going to be able to get insurance in the near term?

Are they going to wait the 60 days until a deal is actually secured before they begin transiting again?

So it will be a further delay before traffic fully returns to normal.

You also have a situation where, you know, everybody's stockpiles have dramatically diminished.

So there's very low levels in our strategic petroleum reserve as well as countries around the country.

So there's going to be, you know, further increased demand as things come back to normal.

All of this is to say that it may still be a while before things truly return to anything approximating what they were before the war.

So they say in this piece, too, that, you know, a lot of oil and natural gas producers, they, you know, some of them shut their wells.

Some of the oil fields, there was significant damage that occurred during the war as well.

So, you know, are you going to do the difficult work of bringing everything back online, of repairing everything when things continue to be uncertain, at least for the 60-day period?

According to this New York Times report, Gulf countries slashed up to 15 million barrels a day of oil production this spring.

That's nearly 15 percent of global supply.

So you have to judge, OK, is it worth going back to the production levels we had?

which is not a simple and straightforward thing?