Jeff Currie of Carlyle went on live television and said the oil market is completely mispriced.
He said futures price crude at around $100 a barrel, but physical oil delivered to Asian refiners is actually costing between $130 and $170.
At one point this month, Oman crude, the benchmark for oil on the free side of the Strait spiked all the way to $173 a barrel.
The paper market and the real world have completely split from each other and Currie was explicit about why that split is dangerous.
He said jet fuel spiked to $230 a barrel in Singapore last week, then the same spike hit Rotterdam at $220 a barrel, then Thailand, then the Philippines, then New Zealand, then Australia.
He called it molecular contagion, a physical shortage virus spreading across global supply hubs one by one.
To understand why that phrase matters, consider what the Strait of Hormuz actually is.
Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day moved through that single 100-mile waterway.
The IEA now says flows have dropped from 20 million barrels per day to what they described as a trickle and Barclays estimates the effective supply loss at 13 to 14 million barrels per day in a prolonged closure scenario.
Currie said there are no more spare barrels in the system.
The price spread between Singapore and Rotterdam which normally tells traders where surplus oil is sitting has completely disappeared and when that spread goes to zero, there is no buffer left anywhere on earth.
He said this supply shock is nearly equal in size to the COVID demand crash, and he reminded viewers what COVID did to global supply chains.
COVID wiped out approximately 20 million barrels per day of demand and fractured supply chains for two full years.
This war has now wiped out a comparable volume of supply and supply chains cannot work from home.
The data behind his warning is already visible.
Middle Eastern crude exports to Asia have collapsed from roughly 19 million barrels per day in February to under 7 million barrels per day in March.
Dubai crude surged past $166 a barrel on March 19, hitting an all-time record and Oman crude crossed $150 for the first time in history just days before.
Meanwhile, Chevron's CEO and Shell's CEO both stood up at the CERAWeek conference in Houston and confirmed the same thing Currie said, physical disruptions are now spreading from South Asia into Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and are beginning to reach Europe.
Currie said the reason WTI and Brent paper prices stayed suppressed is that Russian Urals crude rallied 65 to 70 dollars a barrel after sanctions were lifted.
That closed the gap between cheap Russian oil and expensive Western benchmarks.
Once that gap closed, the last pressure valve in the global system shut off and now the entire complex has nowhere to hide.
The next 5 days could determine whether 90 million people lose power and whether the world's oil supply survives.
Tonight, Donald Trump delivered a live ultimatum to Iran, reach a deal by April 6 or watch every single power plant in the country get hit simultaneously.
He also acknowledged he has been deliberately holding back from hitting Iran's oil fields and made clear that option is still sitting on the table.
"We haven't hit their oil," he said. "But we could hit it, and it would be gone, and there's not a thing they could do about it."
Since the war has started, over 1,200 Iranian civilians have been confirmed dead.
Twenty-five hospitals damaged, nine hospitals completely destroyed and a single US airstrike killed 165 civilians in a school.
Thirteen American service members have also been killed.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows every single day has been nearly shut down since the war began.
The International Energy Agency called it the largest oil supply disruption in recorded history.
Global oil prices surged up to 76 percent, brent crude hit $106 a barrel, LNG prices spiked nearly 60 percent and gas prices went up 43 cents in a single week.
And that is before Trump touches the oil fields.
Trump has already extended it twice, once for five days, then again for ten.
Behind closed doors, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey are all acting as messengers between two governments that refuse to speak directly.
The new deadline is April 6, 8 PM Eastern Time.
If no deal is reached by then, the Pentagon already has plans drawn up for what they are calling a "decisive strike" which may include ground troops and the seizure of Kharg Island, the terminal through which 90 percent of Iran's oil exports move.
The world's entire energy system is one negotiation away from its worst shock in modern history.
The clock runs out in 5 days.