|
Wednesday, October 14, 2026 |
|
The Last Page.
The last page, first.
|
|
Saudi Oil Now Leaves Through One Port. Your Gas Price Rides on It.
Goldman Sachs expects oil to ease toward $90 by December. The Houthis now call every Saudi airport a target. One Red Sea port decides which ending reaches your gas tank.
|
|
Today: one Saudi port, your gas price and your fund. First, a paid message about a different oil deal, in Venezuela, and what its author says it means for the dollar.
|
President Trump’s deal with Venezuela covers a reported 65 billion barrels across 17 oil fields. America’s own proven reserves are about 46 billion barrels.
As reported, Washington gets a 35% stake in the company that controls those fields and 20% of their oil at production cost. The concessions last a century, and Chinese operators are pushed out.
|
|
|
The story
Two Houthi missile strikes on the main airport in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, killed 14 people over the weekend. The airport stays closed through Saturday. The Houthis, the Iran-backed rebels who hold northern Yemen, now say every Saudi airport is a target.
Since February, the Iran war has closed most of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf’s main exit for tankers. Saudi crude now goes the long way. A 750-mile pipeline carries it across the desert to Yanbu, a port on the Red Sea.
Yanbu sits on the same sea the Houthis shoot across. They claimed a strike there in late September, and a separate drone attack shut the pipeline for about a week that month.
This one reaches your gas tank either way. Brent, the main world oil price, closed Monday at its highest since mid-September.
Wall Street split within hours. Goldman Sachs raised its December Brent forecast to $90, still about $17 below Monday’s close. Commerzbank, a big German bank, warned of “a dangerous escalation that could draw in the US.” Asked about joining the Saudi strikes on Yemen, President Trump said, “We may.”
|
|
$106.65
Brent crude at Monday’s close, the highest since September 15
|
5.8M
Barrels a day Saudi Arabia says it now pipes to Yanbu, around Hormuz
|
$4.34
The national average for a gallon of regular on Tuesday, per AAA
|
Oil is bought and sold in dollars, so a war over oil routes also tests the dollar. The paid message below is about what central banks hold instead.
|
Monetary systems come and go. The gold standard broke under the debts of World War I. Bretton Woods, which pegged the dollar to gold, ended too.
Its free guide, The Golden Retirement Account, explains an IRS-approved program to move retirement funds into gold without penalties. Gold prices can fall too.
This is an advertisement.
|
|
|
If Yanbu keeps loading
Run forward to December 2026
|
If the Houthis hit Yanbu
Run forward to January 2027
|
|
|
Best case
DECEMBER 2026. The Houthis kept firing at airports, and Saudi air defenses kept most of it out of the sky. Riyadh reopened on schedule. Yanbu never stopped loading.
Tankers queued off the Red Sea coast the way they had since spring, slow and expensive and steady. With the bypass holding, traders stopped paying for a disaster that kept not arriving. Brent drifted down to the $90 Goldman had forecast.
That is about $17 off Monday’s close. A barrel holds 42 gallons, so it works out to roughly 40 cents a gallon at the pump. Your regular slipped back under $4 before Christmas.
Airline stocks bounced first. Energy stocks gave back part of their year, and your index fund barely noticed. The war in the Gulf went on, and traders went back to pricing it like one.
|
|
Worst case
|
JANUARY 2027. The drone that mattered came in low over the Red Sea in November and hit a tanker dock at Yanbu. Nobody died. The port stopped loading anyway, and the repairs ran for weeks.
With Hormuz still mostly shut, there was no third road for Saudi oil. Goldman’s own high-price scenario had Brent at $125 in December. The market got there early.
That is about $18 above Monday’s close, or roughly 44 cents a gallon. Regular crossed $4.75 across most of the country.
Washington joined the Saudi strikes on Yemen after the midterms. Your statement showed energy stocks up and everything that burns fuel down: airlines, truckers, the stores that ship by truck. The Fed, already raising rates, found one more reason to keep going.
|
|
|
How it ends
You get oil sliding back toward $90 by Christmas, unless a Houthi strike stops the loading at Yanbu.
We ran it both ways. The airport strikes are deadly, and they shut the capital’s airport. The price of oil answers to the port.
Saudi crude moves through one door now. It crosses the desert by pipe and leaves from Yanbu, because Hormuz is still mostly closed. As long as that door stays open, the extra price traders pay for war risk fades slowly. That is the path Goldman drew.
The Houthis have aimed at Yanbu once already, and the Saudis shot those missiles down. A drone attack still shut the pipeline for about a week in September. A strike that wrecks a dock would take longer, and the market would pay up while it waited.
This has happened once before. On September 14, 2019, drones hit Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil plant, and knocked out half of its output in an afternoon. Brent jumped about 15% the next trading day. Within two weeks it had given nearly all of it back. Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, fixed the damage faster than anyone had priced.
For you, the line runs from one Red Sea port to your gas tank and the energy stocks in your fund. Watch the port, and leave the airport footage to cable.
|
|
|
Yanbu, the Saudi port on the Red Sea that now loads most of the kingdom’s crude. Any report that its tankers stopped loading, after a strike or a pipeline shutdown, moves this story to the worst case. A halt there would show up in the price of Brent the same morning.
|
|
|
One story a weekday, run all the way to its ending. If you would rather not get these anymore, the button below takes you off the list.
|
|
The Last Page.
The last page, first. Reply and name the story you want finished.
|
|
|
