Scenario. $107 a barrel, Hormuz blocked, Russia's Baltic export terminals in flames — and Texas oilmen who had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago two years ago are posting margins they haven't seen since 2022.
If you think that's coincidence, read on. If you think it's a coordinated plan, also read on. The truth sits somewhere in the middle, and where exactly depends on which angle you're using. Mine is simple: who wins at every step?
The Dinner and the Invoice
April 2024. Trump invites the top CEOs of the US oil industry to Mar-a-Lago. Harold Hamm from Continental Resources organizes. Kelcy Warren from Energy Transfer Partners, Tim Dunn from CrownQuest, George Bishop from GeoSouthern Energy. Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Cheniere Energy leadership at the table. Vicki Hollub from Occidental Petroleum builds the donor network from inside the industry.
The offer was direct: raise a billion for the campaign, and you'll get it back in tax relief, deregulation, and federal land access. The full billion didn't materialize, but at least $75 million in direct donations and PAC money arrived. The inauguration fund got another $19 million from the sector. Chevron alone put in $2 million. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental contributed a million each.
The returns: Chris Wright, Liberty Energy founder and fracking industry veteran, becomes Energy Secretary. Federal land opened for drilling, the Arctic refuge unlocked, Biden's LNG export pause reversed. Every line item on the donor wish list, executed.
"Drill baby drill" was never a slogan. It was an invoice with a delivery schedule.
Why $107 is the Golden Age
During the campaign, Trump sold voters a story: pump enough oil and gas drops to $2 a gallon. Happy middle class, cheap fuel, prosperity for everyone.
The economics are considerably more interesting for the producers.
American shale has made a quiet technological leap over the past five years that most people still underestimate. Diamondback Energy's breakeven sits around $37 a barrel. ExxonMobil's Permian Basin operations turn profitable at $50. New Permian wells require roughly $62-65 WTI to break even, per Dallas Fed data. Existing wells need $38.
At $107 Brent, every barrel carries $40-70 in net margin above breakeven. At that level, it's not a business cycle — it's a machine printing cash at full speed.
This windfall didn't appear because Trump miscalculated the "drill more, prices fall" arithmetic. It appeared because 20 million barrels a day vanished from the global market. Three separate supply disruptions, running simultaneously, pointing at the same beneficiary.
Hormuz: Not a Disaster, a Result
Four weeks into the US-Israeli war with Iran, over 2,000 dead across the Middle East. Iran responded with what it had left: a Strait of Hormuz blockade. Tanker transits dropped 90-95%. Under normal conditions, 20 million barrels a day flow through that strait, a quarter of global crude supply. Now six ships pass per day, and Iran decides which six.
Trump called it the "Strait of Trump" two days ago. The audience laughed.
The question isn't whether that's funny. The question is who benefits.
Global oil at $107. America is the only stable large-volume supplier. The Middle East is burning, Russia is under sanctions and drone strikes, Venezuela is under sanctions, and Iran is at war. The buyers — Europe, Japan, South Korea, India — have no alternative route. The currency they pay in is dollars. There is no other option in this market.
I won't speculate about intentions. I don't have a transcript from the situation room. But I watch outcomes. And the outcomes, week after week, show the same thing: American producers profit, the dollar strengthens through physical energy control, the rest of the world pays.
The Gas Station Without a Nozzle
Ukrainian drones triggered the most severe oil export disruption in modern Russian history this week. Reuters used exactly that phrase.
Four strikes over six days. Primorsk on March 23, Russia's largest Baltic oil export terminal. Ust-Luga on March 25, the second-largest — both burning simultaneously. Kirishi refinery in the Leningrad region on March 26, processing roughly 350,000 barrels a day and nearly 7% of Russia's total refining capacity, shut down. Yaroslavl refinery on March 28, supplying fuel directly to Russian military operations.
Result: roughly 40% of Russia's oil export capacity (about 2 million barrels a day) currently offline. The Druzhba pipeline through Ukraine has been inactive since January. Shadow fleet tankers are being seized by American, French, British, Finnish, and Swedish naval vessels in international waters.
Russia, the "European gas station" American policymakers used to mock, now has no nozzle and no cashier. CREA data shows Primorsk, Ust-Luga, and Novorossiysk went several consecutive days without loading a single vessel. The Russian government is preparing to ban gasoline exports from April 1st because there isn't enough left for domestic use.
Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces were precise about the logic: "Strikes on refineries and port infrastructure break the chain. Less processing capacity, harder logistics, bottlenecks at other nodes." Military analysts project that if the strikes continue at this pace, Russia will be forced to idle portions of upstream production, not just export terminals.
Hormuz cut, Middle Eastern supply severed. Ukrainian drones destroying Russian export infrastructure, Russian supply severed. What remains in the global market? America, with its shale production, its LNG export capacity, its dollar-denominated contracts.
Could this be a coordinated strategic plan between Washington, Kyiv, and European capitals? Could it be three separate processes that happen to converge? I'm not labeling the scheme. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know the rest.
Europe: A Client With No Exit
In 2022, Brussels rang with declarations of diversification. Never again dependent on a single supplier.
Four years later. Germany sources nearly all its LNG from America. The EU takes more than 50% of its liquefied natural gas imports from the US.
In July 2025, von der Leyen flew to Trump's Turnberry resort in Scotland and signed a $750 billion energy purchasing agreement. The White House celebrated it as the largest trade deal in history. Europe framed it as a strategic answer to Russian energy dependence. Analysts noted that the EU would need to triple its current US energy imports to reach that figure, and American LNG export terminals are already running at full capacity. The agreement is legally non-binding, but the political signal is unmistakable: Europe has been placed on American energy dependence. The supplier changed; the structural vulnerability didn't.
Now Hormuz is blocked. Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG complex, damaged in an Iranian strike on March 18-19, has a repair timeline of 2029 at the earliest, most likely 2031. European gas storage is below 30%, a five-year minimum heading into summer refill season.
Germany's Merz flew to Saudi Arabia to explore alternatives. The Persian Gulf also flows through Hormuz. Belgium's Prime Minister De Wever said it publicly: "We need to normalize relations with Russia." Others are saying the same thing through back channels.
Europe is diversifying from the supplier it diversified to when it diversified from Russia. China, meanwhile, barely registers this as a crisis. Beijing spent a decade electrifying its transportation fleet — over half of new car sales are now electric. That's not climate ideology; it's an energy security strategy built precisely for a shock of this kind. Europe built no equivalent.
Dollar and Energy: One Mechanism
BRICS pushes yuan settlements, central banks accumulate gold at record pace, and de-dollarization narratives fill every financial conference. The dollar's structural dominance faces genuine long-term questions.
America's answer isn't monetary policy or interest rate maneuvering.
It's physical control of energy supply. Want oil? It exists: American oil, priced in dollars, with no credible substitute at scale. Every nation that needs fossil fuels, and most still do, needs dollars to buy them. That's the mechanism.
This is the petrodollar architecture from the 1970s, updated for 2026. In the original version, Saudi Arabia sold only in dollars in exchange for US military protection. Today America no longer needs the intermediary — it is itself the world's largest oil producer, and the market needs its product with urgency.
The stablecoin piece fits the same logic. America explicitly rejected a central bank digital currency. But a private stablecoin, regulated at the federal level, is simply dollar hegemony extended through crypto infrastructure — the dollar's digital projection into the global settlement layer. Tether and Circle already hold more US Treasury obligations than most sovereign nations. The architecture for dollar dominance in the next monetary era is being assembled quietly while the public debates whether crypto is speculative.
Rheinmetall and the Housewives
March 27. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger gives an interview to The Atlantic. The journalist asks about Ukrainian drones — the same ones destroying armored vehicles that are Rheinmetall's core product.
Papperger: "It's a game with Lego bricks. What innovation is there?"
The journalist mentions Ukrainian manufacturers Fire Point and Skyfall. Papperger: "Those are Ukrainian housewives. They have 3D printers in their kitchens."
Within 48 hours, Rheinmetall issued a public apology. Zelensky's advisor Kamyshin noted that their "Lego drones" had destroyed over 11,000 Russian tanks. #MadeByHousewives went viral. Ukraine's Economy Minister Svyrydenko: Ukrainians deserve not only respect but the right to have others learn from them.
The irony doubles. The same Papperger who dismisses Ukrainian drones as kitchen-table innovation is watching those exact drones burn 40% of Russia's oil export capacity this week. A drone costing under €1,000 destroys equipment and infrastructure worth millions. German military analyst Nico Lange warned that this kind of institutional arrogance becomes a genuine security liability.
Expensive and polished loses to cheap and effective: on the battlefield, in energy markets, in industrial disruption. Same principle, every time.
Your Wallet. Yes.
All of this reads elegantly from a strategic altitude. From a household budget, it just hurts.
Fuel costs are rising. Food is up because logistics costs are up. Heating and electricity following the same curve. None of this is accidental, and none of it is temporary.
Am I worried about autumn? Yes. If Hormuz doesn't reopen by summer, if Ras Laffan stays offline until 2029-2031, if Europe needs to refill gas storage from 30% at whatever price the market will bear — autumn will be expensive in a way that "higher than last year" doesn't capture. Think second half of 2022, without the surprise element.
Energy shocks are reliable recession catalysts: 1973, 1979, 2008, 2022. The pattern is consistent. Before that, though, likely a pump. Markets don't price physical reality immediately — they price liquidity, narrative, and positioning first. Through that lens, summer could be the last blow-off top before the correction catches up. Risk assets still have room to run while the real-world data accumulates.
This is my read, not financial advice — just pattern recognition through the framework I use.
The Bucket List
Every major item from the Mar-a-Lago donor wish list, current execution status:
Oil deregulation: done. Federal land, LNG permits, regulatory rollback across the board.
Tariffs: running. The Supreme Court may eventually rule them unconstitutional, but the revenue is already collected. By the time courts resolve it, the term is over. Fait accompli.
Iran war: in progress. Trump promised peace, delivered conflict. The structural side effects: the Hormuz blockade, oil price appreciation, and dollar strengthening all serve the same donor base that funded the campaign.
Crypto regulatory framework: in process. Stablecoin legal architecture under construction.
Europe financially committed: $750 billion in energy purchases, 5% of GDP toward NATO, American economic stimulus flowing through allied treasuries.
Line by line: the donor invoice, being honored.
Boots on the Ground — Not “If,” But “When”
The Pentagon is already moving forces. The 82nd Airborne Division, the “All American,” received written deployment orders for the Middle East: two battalions of roughly 800 soldiers each, Major General Brandon Tegtmeier and divisional staff. Alongside them: two Marine Expeditionary Units — the 31st MEU from Sasebo, Japan, which reached the region March 28 aboard USS Tripoli, and the 11th MEU from San Diego, transiting the Pacific and Indian Oceans since March 18 and arriving around mid-April.
Total additional ground forces: roughly 7,000–8,000, on top of the 50,000 American troops already in the region.
These forces don’t deploy to watch. The 82nd is trained to parachute into contested territory and hold ground within 18 hours of an order. Marine Expeditionary Units are built to land from sea and secure coastline.
The media has already decided: the landing will be Kharg Island, 15 miles off the Iranian coast, home to the country’s largest oil export terminal. The logic sounds clean. But I’m not a general, and even from the outside I can see why this is closer to suicide than a plan.
The Iranians know exactly what CNN and the BBC are broadcasting. They’re already mining the approaches, positioning air defenses, moving troops. Kharg can be struck from the air and sea without any ground operation — and it already is being struck. Sending the 82nd and the Marines into territory the enemy has spent weeks fortifying, under constant rocket and drone fire, 15 miles from the Iranian coast, to hold a terminal that’s easier to destroy from a safe distance — that doesn’t sound like a plan from generals who studied Fallujah and Ramadi.
My read: ground forces will be used somewhere completely different from what the media is discussing. I won’t speculate on specific locations — speculation is speculation. But the logic is consistent: you strike where the enemy isn’t prepared.
The math is straightforward. Every additional week Hormuz stays closed, American oil sells at $107, generating $40–70 per barrel above breakeven. The dollar strengthens because the entire planet buys American energy in American currency.
War is expensive. But if war earns more than it costs, it continues. That’s not cynicism. That’s hegemonic cycle arithmetic.
What to Watch
A ground operation — not where the media is pointing, but the first signs of real movement somewhere Iran isn’t prepared for it. That’s the escalation threshold: once crossed, oil prices could break $130–150, and the conflict enters a phase measured in years, not months.
European storage levels heading into summer. At 28-30% with Hormuz blocked and Ras Laffan offline, Europe will pay whatever America asks for LNG. The $750 billion "deal" becomes real leverage.
Ukrainian strike continuity. If Russian oil infrastructure continues taking hits, the gas station scenario compounds. Watch Primorsk and Ust-Luga recovery timelines — if they stay offline past April, Russian export capacity faces structural, not temporary, damage.
US stablecoin legislation. If it passes, the dollar acquires digital infrastructure, extending hegemony into the next monetary layer.
Blow-off top signal in risk assets. If equities and crypto surge through summer while the energy supply reality stays unchanged, autumn becomes a collision between narrative and physics.
Everything I see points to one conclusion: the system is working. Not the way it was sold to voters. Exactly the way it was sold to donors.
meška
P.S. Rheinmetall CEO: the Ukrainian housewives with 3D printers just burned 40% of Russia's oil export capacity. Maybe the kitchen has something to teach the conference room.
P.P.S. The duck metaphor stands.
If this gave you a clearer frame for what’s happening — share it with someone who’s tracking the same questions. The best conversations start with a shared reference point.