I’ve been thinking a lot about the Strait of Hormuz recently. What would you do if it closed? That’s probably not even the primary question: you didn’t even know it existed a month ago. How many layers, then, do you pull back to start trying to understand what you would do if it closed when you didn’t even know it existed a month ago?
I was thinking about it anyways, but then I got distracted looking at Twitter (or, X I guess) and what everyone was saying about the president posting that picture of himself as Jesus healing some group of people. And was there a demon in the sky behind him? On second look, it seems like there was. Isn’t the president beloved by Christians? Why would he post that?
Too many questions! There aren’t even answers to these questions. There’s no order to be found here, you can’t make sense of chaos. You try and navigate chaos. You don’t own it or order it, you look for the best or – if you’ve managed to make a game out of it – the most interesting path through it.
Very well, but when might there be justice? Not the kind where someone appears before a judge or their peers, is charged with something, presented with the evidence, and given a judgement. Maybe we’re past that.
I mean the kind of justice where truth is recognized, or honored somehow, when no obvious consequences are on the line. Justice in the cosmic sense – what is so spiritually true that the most sycophantic among us has to accept. Is it too much to expect that? I think it might be, but I keep holding out for it to happen. And the president posting a picture of himself as Jesus with eagles and jets and the flag soaring behind him, and that weird demon, seems like the perfect playground for that kind of justice to be found.
Somewhere there’s an internet-sensei who would say, turn your attention away from these games young man. Do not look for justice where there is no desire for it. They have captured your attention and will beat you down if you don’t cut your losses.
Very well.
So this Strait of Hormuz thing. Did you know that it existed? I mean, maybe you knew it materially existed but did you know that something like 20% of the world’s oil comes through the Strait every day? Alright so let’s say you knew that, well done. I didn’t know that. Perhaps you read The Economist, or Foreign Affairs, or for some granular knowledge like that surely you’re reading reports from energy analysts themselves. But, however you knew, you knew.
Unfortunately, you can’t just know percentage of oil flows from the Strait to make sense of what’s happening; you certainly can’t just know percentage of oil flows from the Strait to know what’s coming.
No no. You have to know about the middle distillates.
Middle distillates?
Yes, middle distillates.
We’re talking about jet fuel, diesel, heating oil, and MGO (marine gasoil for the tankers). These are the things you’ve never thought about, man. I’ve never thought about them. No way. Diesel to me is just a phrase uttered by guys who understand the goings on with a farm. But these things matter, man. The middle distillates are everything. You can’t just think about the oil, man. You can’t. You have to think about the middle distillates. What if London Heathrow goes a month between shipments of jet fuel? Will Arsenal lose the Premier League because of that? If Arsenal aren’t playing coming May because of jet fuel shortages from the Strait of Hormuz, what’s happened to the pubs? And if the pubs are hurting, what’s happened to the Church of England?
Let’s say you did know about the middle distillates. You know about them; well done, man. Maybe you read the weekly Wednesday report from the Energy Information Administration. Maybe you track tanker flows through OSINT Twitter accounts. Maybe you read Kjpler and their work on reroutes around the Strait. Man, maybe you even read investor memos from Twelve Arrows Capital, who invest in Kjpler, and you’ve got real edge. Maybe, man, maybe you do.
Unfortunately, you can’t just know about the middle distillates even though you follow OSINT Twitter account on tanker flows and Kjpler reroutes through the Strait, or the EIA weekly Wednesday reports, to makes sense of what’s happening; you certainly can’t just know about the middle distillates even though you follow OSINT Twitter account on tanker flows and Kjpler reroutes through the Strait, or the EIA weekly Wednesday reports, to make sense about what’s coming.
No no, man. You have to know about fertilizers.
Fertilizers?
Yeah man, fertilizers. And not just fertilizers in general, but nitrogen fertilizers. Urea to be exact. That’s what they’re saying.
They put these fertilizer production facilities next to the natural gas facilities in the Middle East because the process is so closely linked that you might as well cut transportation costs and put them right next to each other. The fertilizer producers capture nitrogen from the air while the natural gas producers get hydrogen from the methane and then they combine those – somehow, man – to make ammonia, and urea from there. Isn’t that way over your head? It’s way over my head. I didn’t even know the Strait of Hormuz existed a month ago. Now I’m concerned about whether farmers in the midwest will make the planting window. That’s not my issue! But I was told about the Strait of Hormuz being closed and now it’s all of our issue.
It’s all as connected as they say it is, huh? Commodities, middle distillates, the price of Brent Crude: it all moves in tension like a New York City street full of bodegas delivery vehicles and courier cyclists. It somehow works both because it’s so connected and in spite of it being so connected. It’s in quantum superposition with itself. Or it is, itself, a quantum superpositions. Or, outside of itself it is in quantum superstition. It might even be in multiple quantum suppositions. And those superpositions might be entangled with one another, man.
But then one day, you wake up and you have a life that was before knowing that the Strait of Hormuz existed and was essential to the liberty of the free world through its ability to consume energy and you have a lost post-Hormuz Superposition.
Now what?
I’m torn between paying attention to it all or doing all I can to live like an old Greek man smoking cigarettes and drinking espresso with his friends all morning, hardly any pennies to scratch together.
What does urea really matter to him? He’s a proper Paulian of the New Testament: Ephesians 4:12, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
Bother me not if Arsenal can’t finish the Premier League season due to jet fuel shortages.
Wishful, man. I think that’s wishful thinking.