00:00What's your assessment of the disruption we're seeing to supply in the Middle East?
00:04Well, our expectation is that we've got our eyes on the horizon,
00:07that we know that sometime soon we're going to have a much more stable Venezuela
00:12with high stable energy output, a much more stable Iran with high and stable energy output,
00:18which is going to be very good not only for energy markets but for risk premia around the world.
00:23Don't forget that this move against Iran is happening because they've promised to destroy us all.
00:29Like if that's not something that affects risk premia, I don't know what is.
00:33And so I think with an eye on the horizon, then you can see that this is a huge positive
00:37for the global economy and global markets.
00:40The question is, you know, when will the current near-term disruption end?
00:45And that's something that will be decided by the military.
00:47And there, of course, will be some uncertainty about when they decide to move in part
00:52because the uncertainty protects the lives of American soldiers.
00:55And Kevin, in the meantime.
00:56But we expect that it will be resolved, you know, quite soon.
00:59As you see, we're starting to see a hit to production.
01:02Because we can't move the oil, we're breaching storage capacity in select producers right now.
01:07You saw some of that with Iraq earlier this week.
01:09The Journal reporting moments ago we're seeing the same thing in Kuwait.
01:12And UAE and Saudi Arabia might follow.
01:15That's obviously a bigger, more acute issue for the Asian refiners right now,
01:19which is why the Treasury Secretary came out and issued a waiver for the Indians to buy from Russia,
01:25the Russian crew that's offshore in tankers right now.
01:28But, Kevin, I wonder what else the White House has got in store.
01:31Not just to tell people to wait, because in the future it will be better.
01:34But what are the remedies that you can produce right now?
01:36Oh, sure.
01:37You know, the sanction waiver that Secretary Besant came out with
01:41is just one of many, many tools that we have ready.
01:45We've got a whole flow chart of tools to use depending on this or that.
01:50And we're ready to move them as soon as we have to.
01:55But we're also very optimistic that we're going to be able to get this near-term problem resolved relatively quickly.
02:00The Biden administration, as you know, burnt through the SPR, took it down quite dramatically.
02:05Is there space left in the SPR to deploy some of that, to bring down prices just a bit for
02:09consumers?
02:11You know, there is no conversation right now to dip into that.
02:16But we've got something like 400 million barrels ready to go if needed.
02:22But there is, I reemphasize, that there has not been a conversation to dip into that yet.
02:28Because our expectation is that this effort in Iran is way ahead of schedule.
02:34And we understand that there are near-term market fluctuations, but we have our eyes on the horizon and we
02:39think that's where people should be looking to.
02:40Kevin, you say ahead of schedule. Is there a schedule?
02:44Yes, but obviously we're not going to go through the schedule on TV.
02:48The timing of this is so important to people, though.
02:50They need to understand the duration to understand how acute the problem will be.
02:54It feels very open-ended.
02:56It feels different to what we saw in Caracas.
02:58Tehran is not Caracas.
03:00Iran, as you know, is not Venezuela.
03:02Can you assure people this won't be something that goes on for months?
03:06This is something that will go on for weeks?
03:09There's nobody that expects that we're going to have a disruption.
03:13Is there anything like what the Bears right now fear?
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