Gulf crude exports collapsed to about 8.5 million barrels a day, yet oil fell anyway, with WTI slipping below $100 and Brent sliding near $108. The reason has less to do with tankers and more to do with Washington. Here's how the Russia sanctions waiver reshaped the oil trade, and the 1 price level that decides where inflation goes next.

OPEC+ is leaving its November targets unchanged with Brent above $100, and it barely matters. Core producers were pumping about 5 million barrels a day below pre-war levels in August, so higher targets would be permission they cannot use. The real price driver is whether oil and fuel can physically move. Here is what the $11 Brent-WTI gap is telling you, and the one level to watch when trading reopens tonight.

Brent crude slipped back under $100 on Friday, not because new oil arrived, but because Europe is talking about releasing 50 million barrels of diesel and 50 million barrels of crude. Diesel benchmarks fell nearly twice as hard as crude, and that gap shows where the real shortage is. The next test: whether G7 leaders turn a proposal into actual barrels.

A ship was hit in the Strait of Hormuz overnight — but the tanker isn't the story. It landed while Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, carrying 4 to 5 million barrels a day, sits shut after drone strikes, and Houthi forces tighten their grip on the Red Sea exit. Three chokepoints, one system, no spare route. Here's what that means for oil, for record diesel prices, and for Wednesday's Fed decision.

Brent crude ran to $97.93 overnight and OPEC+ declined to add supply, but the number that actually explains this market is 10: the daily average of commodity ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the lowest since May. No very large crude carrier has exited since Wednesday. Here's why spare capacity can't fix a chokepoint, how diesel carries this into the inflation data, and the four signals that would prove the thesis wrong.