One of the interesting dilemmas facing the oil market today is that even if the Strait of Hormuz opens fully tomorrow, there are now north of 180 million bbls sitting in tankers.

All of those tankers will have to unload first, which would take 35-45 days.

After, it needs to travel back to the Middle East, which would be another 25-30 days.

Meanwhile, other tankers will be in route to countries like Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq to load. This will take 25-30 days.

Altogether, flows physically can’t resume to normal even if it opened tomorrow.

This is why we are headed for the breaking point in the oil market.

The physical dislocation I just explained above saw the reverse take place during COVID when OPEC+ came to a historic production cut agreement of 10 million b/d.

The cuts came too late as demand destruction had already taken place. Couple that with the fact that the cuts weren’t going to start until May, and the agreement was in early April, sent oil prices into the depth of hell 2 weeks later.

So manage your expectations accordingly.