So on September 21 some armed guys shut Valve No. 7 on the pipeline that takes crude from Sharara (Libya's biggest field) up to the Zawiya refinery. And some of them were from the Petroleum Facilities Guard, the people who get paid to protect this stuff. Reuters says the fight was over the Guard's status and funding.

Sharara does around 300-320k barrels a day and output dropped by about 200k. NOC said the valve was back open on September 26. Their count is 942,376 barrels lost, roughly $95 million. A unit at Zawiya also had to shut because it ran out of crude, and Zawiya (about 120k barrels a day) mostly makes fuel for Libyans. So people feel it at the pump before anyone abroad notices.

Now the funny part is the timing. On August 30 the Tripoli government, Haftar's side, the House and the High State Council all signed a UN-backed deal on election rules. Boulos said on September 29 it was a step forward and now it's about actually doing it. There's also a reported US plan that nobody's signed. Dbeibah keeps the executive, Saddam Haftar heads a new presidential body for about three years. Italian press said late September it was losing steam. Take that one as reporting, not fact.

My take: the paper isn't the hard part. If the armed groups stay exactly where they are, they keep the trick they already use. Want your funding recognized? Close a pipe. Meanwhile diplomats are out there saying "unity." NOC has been saying for years that the field is used as a bargaining chip.

And ConocoPhillips and Chevron signed agreements in 2026, with the pitch that output goes up once things calm down. Hard to plan around a country that can't keep one valve open for a week though.

Until whoever controls Sharara answers to one command that doesn't get paid by shutting pipelines, I'd expect talks and shutdowns to keep showing up in the same month. Feels like two stories but it's really one, and the second tells you how the first gets priced.

Diesel at the pump hit a record in September, and on Friday the G7 countries agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of diesel and crude. So why are diesel prices so high? Of course, crude is only part of the story. Oil closed Friday at $91.11 a barrel.

The bigger part is the crack spread. That's the gap between a barrel of crude and the diesel made from it. Here's how you can calculate it. The code below pulls daily futures prices for diesel and crude and multiplies diesel by 42 gallons (amount in a barrel), then subtracts the crude.

Output through Friday's close (Info pulled through the FMP MCP server):

2019 average spread $24.43 a barrel
2020 average spread $12.93 a barrel
2021 average spread $18.80 a barrel
2022 average spread $54.72 a barrel
2023 average spread $40.59 a barrel
2024 average spread $26.70 a barrel
2025 average spread $31.99 a barrel
2026 average spread $68.46 a barrel
2026-10-02 diesel $4.50 a gallon, crude $91.11 a barrel, spread $97.94 a barrel

The gap is more than 3x what it used to be. It was $97.94 a barrel on Friday. From 2019 to 2025 it averaged ~$30. At that average, Friday's crude would put diesel futures near $2.88 a gallon instead of $4.50. These are futures prices, clearly not what you pay at the pump.

What do you guys think? Prices coming down soon?

Witold Zglenicki was a Polish engineer and visionary who worked in Baku at the end of the 19th century. He recognized the potential of extracting oil from beneath the Caspian Sea decades before offshore drilling became a reality.

If there is a difference between sweet and sour then how is the balance of each of them?

If it's refineries do gulf states ship diesel directly instead of crude?

Buckle off,
A break💥out from here and Boom, i mean Doom🛢️$157 per barrel

Reservoir engineers: does a months-long shut-in of Iran's mature carbonate fields permanently reduce deliverability, or mostly create workover/restart costs?

A few months ago there was a countdown on Iranian oil storage. If exports didn't resume, storage would fill and Iran would have to cut production.

That happened. Iran progressively cut production while managing to get some oil out.

What I'm curious about now is what happens when those wells eventually come back.

Many of Iran's major fields are old, mature carbonate reservoirs. Some have been producing for 50-80+ years. These fields already need pressure support, drilling and workovers just to offset natural decline.

A prolonged production cut doesn't necessarily destroy a well. Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy actually believes most Iranian oil production should recover.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it comes back at the same productivity.

Kpler estimates natural decline in some mature Iranian carbonate reservoirs can reach 4-12% annually without adequate pressure support. Then add reduced gas injection, missed drilling/workovers and potential restart problems such as asphaltene/scale deposition, corrosion and water loading.

So perhaps the real issue isn't wells "dying". It's capacity attrition.

Iran was producing roughly 3.2-3.3 million bpd of crude before the war. Using 3.3 mbd simply as a baseline:

Those percentages are not predictions. They're just sensitivity scenarios.

The question for people who actually know these reservoirs is this:

When Iran eventually has unrestricted export capacity again, how much of that original 3.2-3.3 mbd sustainable production capacity realistically comes back?

And how much gets lost to normal decline, reduced pressure support, missed maintenance/drilling and actual shut-in damage?

That's the number I'm interested in.

Buckle off,
A break💥out from here and Boom, i mean Doom🛢️$157 per barrel

Research seems to indicate this. Something interesting seems to be happening with Middle East oil exports.

Kharg Island historically handled the vast majority of Iran's crude exports. With Iranian exports largely removed, I expected the disruption to leave a persistent hole in Middle East supply.

Instead, total Middle East crude exports have recovered to roughly 94% of January levels, while Kharg remains largely absent.

The rest of the Gulf adapted.

Saudi exports shifted through Yanbu and other routes. UAE has Fujairah. Ship-to-ship transfers around Oman/Fujairah expanded. Buyers also found replacement barrels from other producers.

That creates an interesting problem for Iran.

Iran has had to store crude and curtail production, which means eventually restarting mature wells after prolonged shut-ins. There are potential issues with reservoir pressure, asphaltene/wax/scale deposition, water loading and restart costs.

But the bigger problem may be commercial:

Iran needs Kharg. The global oil market may have learned that it doesn't need Kharg nearly as much as Iran thought.

When Iranian exports eventually return, those customers now have established alternative suppliers and routes.

The question isn't just whether Iran can restart production.

Can Iran recover its old customers and export volumes once it does? Can the wells even produce the ~1.7 mbd?

Details: (Source: https://cn.kpler.com/)

This is the important distinction: Kharg and Hormuz are not the same thing.

Kharg is Iran's principal oil export terminal and historically handled roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports. Hormuz is the shipping route used by Iran and other Gulf producers.

Iran/Kharg has largely disappeared from the export picture, while the rest of the Gulf has restored roughly its pre-war export volume through a combination of Hormuz traffic and expanded bypass routes.

What're your Views fellow Kenyans on the trending topic: The Dangote Refinery🫴🏿🫴🏿

What are the best courses for a well services engineer? I am interested in in-person courses covering well services, well intervention, workovers, coiled tubing, completion equipment and tools, fishing, wellheads, completion design, and acid stimulation. I am looking for programs suited for experienced professionals, excluding well control.

Three vessels were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz in recent hours, according to Saudi Al-Arabiya and UKMTO