Oil & Gas Corner

Saturday, 2026-09-05 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

A war bid into a decision weekend. Brent traded at $96.90 Friday morning (9am ET, per Fortune), easing from Thursday's spike but still on track for a weekly gain of roughly 9%, with Iranian strikes on Gulf US bases and near-empty Strait of Hormuz transit lanes keeping the risk premium bid. Products are leading crude: the US diesel crack set an all-time record above $106/bbl on Monday. OPEC+ meets Sunday at 11:00 GMT. Fortune

Upstream — exploration & production

Iran strikes US bases in Kuwait and the UAE; Kuwait intercepts. Kuwait's army said its air defences intercepted a missile and drone attack on Thursday as Tehran targeted US allies across the region, days after the extensive US bombardment of Iranian sites. Neither the US nor Kuwait confirmed damage; for the barrel the question is Gulf loadings and insurance, not the blast radius. AFP via Malay Mail

OPEC+ expected to hold October steady on Sunday. The seven members meeting at 11:00 GMT are likely to leave output policy unchanged, per Reuters sourcing, after September's 188,000 b/d addition completed the rollback of the 1.65 mb/d voluntary cuts — though a meaningful share of those paper barrels never reached the market, with Hormuz disruptions capping actual Gulf exports below quota. Reuters

Midstream — pipelines, LNG & shipping

Hormuz has all but shut for LNG. Only four commodity vessels passed the strait in the last ten days against a typical ~15, with LNG flow described as practically halted; Qatar's force majeure now extends into November, Asian spot LNG sits at its highest since 2022, and European gas logged a fourth straight weekly gain. LNG Global

Williams closes the Momentum Midstream acquisition. The deal is completed, adding Haynesville gathering and treating scale pointed straight at the Gulf Coast LNG pull — consolidation following the demand. LNG Global

Cove Point outage clips Appalachian demand. The Maryland liquefaction plant's outage is expected to cut demand for Appalachian gas while it lasts, per Natural Gas Intelligence — a reminder of how much basin pricing now hangs on single export facilities. NGI via LNG Global

Downstream — refining, fuels & chemicals

The diesel crack is the story of the tape. US diesel crack spreads rose above $106/bbl on Monday, a record, as Iran-linked disruptions and Russian refinery outages (plus Moscow's fuel-export ban) tightened global distillate; US refiners are tilting yields toward diesel and jet, thinning domestic gasoline supply into autumn. Transport Topics

The Chatter

Rory Johnston — Commodity Context (Substack): the September North American Oil Data Deck lands with June production at 31,242 kb/d, up year-on-year — his running argument that North American supply keeps grinding higher straight through the crisis, whatever the headlines say about shale discipline. (paywall — public preview) Post

RBN Energy (daily blog): "Basket Case" argues the $100/bbl diesel crack is what it looks like when 2026's supply shocks meet a refining system with no slack — Hormuz disruption and shifting Venezuelan exports rewired crude and product flows faster than the world's kit could adapt. Blog