The Hormuz Trade: Who Collects the Toll When the War Ends

Dear Reader,

Markets are closed today. The country is grilling in the backyard, watching the parade, raising a glass to the men and women who never made it home.

I am watching something else.

Oil fell on Friday. Brent crude dropped below $110. WTI pulled back toward $103. The headlines said: "Iran deal signals ease supply fears." Most investors read that as risk-off on energy. Sell the oil stocks. Take the profits. Move on.

I read it differently.

When the Hormuz crisis ends, oil does not stop flowing. It flows more. The pipelines, the LNG terminals, the refineries, the nuclear plants feeding the data centers, they all collect their toll regardless of who sits in Tehran or Washington. The war created the emergency. The peace creates the throughput.

That is where I am focused today.

THE WIRE

Five signals worth your attention this Memorial Day morning

• THE BARREL: Oil fell on US-Iran deal signals Friday. Brent near $110, WTI near $103. OPEC approved its third straight monthly output hike, 188,000 barrels per day for June. The diplomatic move that spooks traders is the exact setup toll-collector investors have been waiting for.

• THE GRID: Oklo just signed a 12-gigawatt nuclear power agreement with data center operator Switch. Twelve gigawatts. Through 2044. That is one company, one deal, one data center operator locking up enough power to run a mid-sized city. AI is starving for electrons and nuclear is the only baseload that can feed it.

• THE POLICY DESK: The Trump administration quietly eased Venezuela sanctions in February and March. PDVSA is back at the table. Add five Defense Production Act orders for energy infrastructure and a $2.7 billion DOE bet on domestic uranium enrichment. The deregulation trade is not just talk.

• THE PLAY: When Hormuz reopens, the barrels have to go somewhere. The infrastructure that moves them gets paid on volume. I am looking at the toll-takers: LNG export terminals, midstream pipelines, nuclear operators. They win when oil is at $60, and they win when oil is at $110.

• Everyone is talking about Elon Musk's Space X IPO. But according to tech investing legend Jeff Brown, this is NOT about launching rockets to Mars, satellite internet, or anything you've heard from the media. Click to see his investigation and discover how to get your stake.

THE BARREL

Oil, gas, and the price of conflict

Brent crude finished last week near $110 a barrel. WTI spot was at $103. Those are not low numbers. Those are numbers that reflect a world still priced for a closed Strait of Hormuz.

The New York Times ran a headline Friday: "Oil Prices Fall on News of Possible Iran Deal." CNBC called it a weekly loss for crude. Traders interpreted diplomatic progress as supply relief on the way.

Here is what they missed. OPEC+ just approved its third consecutive monthly output increase, 188,000 barrels per day for June alone. Those barrels exist on paper. They cannot physically reach markets until Hormuz reopens. When it does, $110 crude becomes $80 crude. But the infrastructure shipping those barrels does not care about the price. It collects on volume. Volume goes up when the war ends.

The UAE shocked the cartel in late April by walking out of OPEC+ after six decades. The bloc's cohesion is fraying. That is a long-term story. The near-term story is simpler: eleven million barrels per day want to flow through Hormuz. The question is when, not if.

Watch WTI Tuesday at the open. If the Iran deal gets a formal announcement, energy equities move fast in both directions. The toll-collectors move differently than the drillers. Know which one you own.

THE GRID

Nuclear, data centers, and the power arms race

Oklo just signed what Power Magazine called one of the largest corporate clean power agreements ever executed. Twelve gigawatts of nuclear capacity committed to data center operator Switch through 2044. Twelve. That is enough electricity to power a city the size of Philadelphia.

This is not a future promise. Oklo's Aurora microreactor is targeting pilot operations as early as 2027. Switch is building the data centers. The power contract is already signed. The question is not whether this happens. The question is whether you own any of the infrastructure before the rest of the market catches up.

Google made the same bet in October with Kairos Power: 500 megawatts of molten salt reactors by 2035. Constellation, Vistra, and PSEG are all in similar conversations for existing nuclear plant restarts. Data centers running AI workloads now require 80-plus megawatts each. A traditional data center needed 32 megawatts. The demand curve doubled. The grid did not.

That gap is the opportunity. Nuclear is the only dispatchable zero-carbon baseload that can meet it. Solar and wind can't run a data center at 3am when there's no sun and no wind. Nuclear runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, regardless of weather or geopolitics. The tech giants figured that out. Now they're signing 20-year contracts to lock it up.

THE POLICY DESK

Washington, deregulation, and the energy rearmament

In February, the Trump Treasury issued General License 49. In March, General License 52. Both targeted Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA. GL52 allowed US companies to do business directly with PDVSA for oil sales and exports. That is a dramatic reversal of years of maximum-pressure sanctions.

The reason is straightforward. The White House needed more barrels. Venezuela has them. Venezuela also has crumbling infrastructure and no capital. The license opens the door for US operators to bring Venezuelan crude back online. It is not a fast trade, but it is a real one.

The administration also invoked five Defense Production Act orders on April 20 to accelerate US energy infrastructure. In January, the DOE committed $2.7 billion to restore domestic uranium enrichment capacity, targeting high-assay low-enriched uranium for next-generation reactors. The stated goal is growing US nuclear capacity from 100 gigawatts to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

Four hundred gigawatts of nuclear. That is four times the current fleet. The policy and the private contracts are pointing at the same destination. The infrastructure to get there does not exist yet. That is where the money gets made.

Before I get to The Play: there is one specific structure in the current energy setup that most investors are completely overlooking. It is not a drilling company. It is not a refiner. It is the asset class that collects a fixed fee whether crude is at $60 or $110. And right now, that structure is priced like the war lasts forever.

THE PLAY

The toll-collector thesis in a world that just changed

Here is the setup I keep coming back to.

While markets focused on whether crude goes to $120 or $80, the smarter question is: who gets paid on the volume, not the price?

The answer is the midstream. LNG export terminals. Pipelines. Nuclear operators with long-term power purchase agreements. These businesses run on throughput. A barrel of oil at $60 that moves through a Cheniere LNG terminal still generates the same fee as a barrel at $110. The terminal does not care. It just needs the gas to keep flowing.

Cheniere Energy reported record export volumes in Q1 2026. Europe, starved of Qatari LNG from Hormuz, has been absorbing every US export cargo at premium prices. Venture Global just finished its Plaquemines facility in Louisiana. New Fortress Energy has floating LNG infrastructure positioned for exactly this kind of demand spike.

When the Iran deal closes, if it closes, crude prices normalize. But European energy security anxiety does not normalize. The 15-year LNG contracts being signed right now lock in that anxiety as a revenue stream. The demand that built during the crisis does not walk out the door when the crisis ends.

Nuclear is the same logic applied to the grid. Oklo, Constellation, Vistra, the operators signing 20-year power purchase agreements with hyperscalers are not betting on oil prices. They are betting on compute demand. Compute demand does not end when Hormuz reopens. It doubles every three years.

The question is not whether energy infrastructure is a good business. It clearly is. The question is whether you own it before the rate of return gets priced in by everyone else.

That is what I am watching this week.

Stay empowered

P.S. Saudi Families Get $3,600 a Month. What do you get? The Saudis pay their citizens just for existing. Funded entirely by oil revenue, the average Saudi family collects $3,600 a month. Meanwhile, you get nothing from America's $300 billion energy industry. Politicians argue. CEOs get rich. You get nothing. But there is a way to get your cut. It's called P.I.P. When you enroll, you get paid 42 times a year from 14 partnerships that control America's pipelines, terminals, and processing plants. Right now, P.I.P. is paying 10% a year. It's the closest thing to Universal Basic Income you’ll ever see. The next payout is days away..