Dear Reader,

Vessel crossings through the Strait of Hormuz are down 66% in one week. 53 ships made it through last week. The previous week: 157. That chokepoint handles 21% of the world's oil and 25% of global LNG. The market called it a temporary disruption. I stopped believing in temporary disruptions in 2008.

Inside today's issue:

  • THE BARREL: Brent at $84. WTI at $79. War risk insurance is now 300x normal. The Hormuz premium is not going away.
  • THE GRID: AI is eating electricity. Nuclear stocks are up 40% this year. The DOE deadline that could move SMR stocks this week.
  • THE PLAY: The one type of energy company that profits whether oil goes to $120 or drops back to $65. Follow the toll booth, not the commodity.
  • The last energy revolution made investors rich. The next one is already underway.

THE BARREL

Brent crude hit $84.55 this morning, up 1.5% on the session. WTI is at $78.94. Those headline numbers do not tell you what is actually happening.

The real story is war risk insurance. Before the US-Iran conflict escalated in early July, premiums for shipping through Hormuz ran a fraction of a percent per voyage. Today, underwriters at Lloyd's are quoting rates 300 times that. Operators are not paying. They are rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope. That adds 14 days to every delivery.

Iran attacked two tankers this week. Vessel traffic through the strait fell 66% in the past seven days. The IRGC told all foreign tankers they must now follow routes designated by Tehran or face immediate military response. The Iranians call Hormuz their atomic bomb. They are not wrong.

The United States is fighting back. CENTCOM launched fresh strikes Tuesday on Iranian coastal defense systems and missile sites. Trump reimposed full oil sanctions last week and blockaded Iranian ports. The June ceasefire is dead. There is no peace deal on the table.

Energy companies that move oil inside the US are not exposed to this disruption. They operate in a completely different world. I will explain who those companies are in a moment.

THE GRID

While Washington fights over Hormuz, the domestic grid story keeps compounding. Constellation Energy, the largest private nuclear operator in the country, has locked in long-term power purchase agreements with Microsoft, Meta, and CyrusOne. Its stock trades 26% below the year-to-date high. Wall Street's target: $360.

Cameco, the uranium miner, beat Q1 estimates by 38%. It holds 230 million pounds under long-term contracts and is deploying $80 billion in AP1000 reactor capacity with Brookfield.

Oklo is the only SMR developer with both a site use permit and secured fuel supply. It has 14 gigawatts of customer agreements anchored by Switch. The DOE is expected to announce its first loan commitments for advanced reactors this week. That is the catalyst the sector has been waiting on.

Hyperscalers need 24/7 dispatchable power. Wind and solar cannot do that. Nuclear can. This is not a prediction. It is a contract signed by Microsoft.

THE POLICY DESK

Trump has reimposed full Iran oil sanctions and revoked licenses allowing Iranian crude to flow. That removes roughly 1.5 million barrels per day from global supply. OPEC is not filling the gap. Saudi Arabia is already pumping near capacity.

The PPI for June came in at -0.3% month over month. Mainstream headlines called it a deflationary signal. Look closer. Goods prices fell because energy input costs temporarily dropped in June. Services rose 0.3%. The underlying pressure is still there. And that was before oil surged another 4% this week.

Federal Reserve Chair Warsh spoke Monday and sidestepped every inflation question. That tells you everything. The Fed knows it cannot raise rates while a war premium is building into energy prices. They are trapped.

But first — our friend Porter Stansberry has been tracking something that connects directly to this story. Take a look:

SPONSORED: PORTER & CO

THE PLAY

Now. About those domestic energy companies.

The Hormuz shutdown hurts importers. It hurts refiners dependent on foreign crude. It hammers international shippers. It does not hurt the companies that move oil and gas inside the United States through pipelines that have nothing to do with the Strait of Hormuz.

Pipeline operators charge a fee for every barrel that moves through their infrastructure. They get paid whether oil is at $65 or $120. When global supply tightens and US domestic production becomes more valuable, the toll booth collects more traffic. Not less.

Institutional capital figured this out before you did. Prudential just moved $60 million into TYG, the Tortoise Energy Infrastructure fund. That is a portfolio of midstream pipeline operators. Big money does not put $60 million into something because they think oil goes down.

The Hormuz tax is now structural. Every day it stays closed, US domestic infrastructure becomes a more critical link in the global supply chain. Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope adds 14 days and hundreds of dollars per ton to shipping costs. That cost gets priced into everything. The toll booth does not care about geopolitics. It just counts the barrels.

I am not telling you to buy any specific stock today. I am telling you to understand which type of asset wins in a world where 21% of global oil supply runs through a contested military zone and the people who control the alternative infrastructure have pricing power they have never had before.

That is the play.

Chris Carroll

Publisher, Money, Power and Profit

P.S. The governments of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait once hired our friend Larry Benedict. So did the banks that hold money for Exxon, Chevron, and Shell. For decades, he helped the most powerful players in oil grow their money. Now he is revealing his top oil strategy, adapted so ordinary folks can use it too. Watch the free presentation here.

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