Tracy Alloway

How much do the spot prices actually matter at this moment in time?

Because, you know, you can look up something like Dubai Oman or some type of oil that you would assume would be maybe flowing into East Asia and you can look at the spot price.

But like if it's not actually moving, does that like moving out of the Strait of Hormuz into Asia, does that mean anything?

So you mentioned refineries there.

And one of the headlines that's come up recently is Asian refining margins slip into negative territory, which would seem like a bad thing if you're a refiner.

And I take the point that you need to keep these assets going because it's hard to shut them down and then restart them again.

But if you're not making any money, how long are these refiners actually going to keep going for?

For Asia, how much of a role does Russian oil play right now in terms of replacing lost Middle Eastern supply?

Wait, say more.

Yeah.

Oil as geopolitical tool is a tale as old as... As old as time.

I was going to say time, but I guess as old as, what, 200 years or something like that.

Okay.

So we were talking about the potential for an energy crisis to actually hasten decarbonization efforts in Asia.

And this is something that came up before on an episode we did on China's teapot refineries.

Are you seeing rumblings of that at the moment or are people still in sort of wait and see mode?

Follow Leaders with Francine Lacroix wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah.

Sending coal aside for a second, when you look at alternate sources of energy, do you have like, I don't want to say a personal favorite, but which one of them do you think comes out on top in the sort of medium to longer term from this particular situation?

So one of the things that stood out from a previous episode we did on the energy situation with our Bloomberg colleague, Javier Blas, was he was talking about how the world is still very much divided between, you know, I guess east of the Suez Canal and west of the Suez Canal.