Disappointing commentary on LPG/LNG and West Asia from some fellows on X and YouTube. Some critical facts;
🚨Hormuz has been shut for 7 days now (minus the ships that may be passing through with their transponders off).
🚨Nobody in the world could have predicted Hormuz to be weaponised, not even the Americans, as evidenced by their mobilisation of the G7, and then the news of the IEA releasing 400 million barrels of oil from reserves.
🚨Hormuz is NOT an Indian diplomatic failure. All vessels are stuck. Crude, cargo, everything, of every country. The few making through (as per reports) can't compensate for the pre-war traffic remotely. Iran is weaponising energy supply chains.
🚨Hormuz being shut is NOT the only problem. The blockade is creating a glut of oil at sea (Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf), leading to storage issues, leading to output cuts.
🚨If the above weren't enough, Iran is also bombing refineries across the Middle East, resulting in stalled operations, output cuts, complete shutdowns, and the cessation of delivery contracts. In Qatar (where we import from), this happened with one of the largest LNG plants.
🚨To say why India didn't diversify in time. Well, Hormuz is shut for 7 days, and it takes at least five days for deliveries from the Middle East to reach India. Twenty from Russia.
🚨LNG, LPG, and Crude are not your normal merchandise that can be picked up from anywhere. Forget the contracts on the spot prices; there are grades and types, and the ones producing them have infrastructure that takes years, if not decades, to ape.
🚨The one saying we could have diversified in time thinks that if war started on Feb 28, India should have had a new importer on March 1, and vessels at our shores on March 10th. This is not your Blinkit, Zepto, Big Basket order. This is not instant noodles. This is not how it works. Sad but true.
🚨Countries across the world are facing disruptions. TSMC is not getting its helium. Singapore port has a cargo disruption problem as vessels take an alternate route. Europe is witnessing a spike in energy prices. Stop confusing it for an India-centric issue.
🚨This is the pandemic of energy supply chains. 20% of the global crude passes through Hormuz, and India's consumption is less than 6%. Other countries are suffering too, and yet no one is foolishly siding with Iran, because for the regime, we are economies to be held hostage for them to challenge the US and Israel.
Hope this helps.