MULTIPLE SAUDI OIL AND GAS FACILITIES STRUCK BY HOUTHIS, FOUR BURNING– w/ Chris Martenson

Saudi facilities struck and Strait of Hormuz mine

00:02Hello. Hello. >> Hello. >> How are you, Chris? [snorts] >> Good. Good. It's um lots going on all the time. >> Yeah, I was looking at your your interviews talking about the um dollar debasement. Also talking about the um gold and silver, how it's uh underperformed. It's been weak in the last uh in the last few months mainly due to the inflation expectations and increasing yield. It was an interesting conversation you had. Um, but while you know that was the plan to talk to you about this, when I saw that interview, I'm like, this is a good topic to get Chris's thoughts on. Uh, Saudi lights up. You've got refineries across Saudi on fire. You got the airport struck again today. The international airport,

00:46which was struck yesterday, struck again today. Yesterday was terminal 3. Today, Terminal 4. >> Yesterday, they stopped operations for about 12 hours. Now, operations have been halted again. and their other airbor king fahed I think has also been struck yesterday and today so the Houthies are trying to enforce an air blockade on Saudi while they strike their refineries including Abcake one in Abcake I think the I forgot the name of it it's the biggest uh um biggest refinery in the world and then you've got the straight of Hummus a ship struck a mine in the straight of Hummus but the crazy this is the second time I think in the last few weeks the crazy thing though is that let Let me play the video

01:25actually. Let me send it to you, Paul. Um, this is here. This is it. So, this is a ship blowing up after Oh, you know, getting damaged after striking a mine. But the the interesting side of the interesting aspect of this that not many people are talking about is the fact it was filmed with a drone. So, to me, that indicates that the Iranians were expecting that ship to strike a mine. They knew that mine was located there and they were filming waiting for the ship to strike it. Um, which again for me it indicates that the Iranians know where their minds are located or this is some sort of mine they can maneuver. I don't know. I really don't know what to make how to make sense of this. Unless it's not an actual mine. Maybe it's a

02:07sea drone and they're saying it's a mine to to scare other ships. That's also a possibility. Um, but either way, a ship has been struck. Ships are being struck more than ever before on the Straight of Hummus. Even outside the straight of Homos, away from the straight of Homos, they're being warned and they're being struck. One of Qatar, one of Fujra, I think. So, it's >> Wait, wait. But wait, there's more. [laughter] >> What is it? >> Um, actually, so that's all big news. And by the way, looking at that video that you just showed, I'm not sure that's a mine. So, a typical mine if it blows up is going to throw a large column of water up. Now they have these new ones which are these sort of lurking

02:45loitering mines that will hang out and then attach themselves limpit style to the bottom and then go off. That might be what we're seeing, but that that attacked the back of the ship, the the engine room, right? That would be more consistent with a missile strike. But again, technolog is changing so fast. I haven't Listen, I've I haven't seen one of those limpit mines go off yet. If that's a video of that, you know, that's new information. >> Or it could be or it could be a sea drone as well. But for me, cuz they did film it, so for them to know a mine there, to have a drone just sitting there filming it, waiting for them to slowly hit a mine, >> it's I don't know. That one to me seems less believable. A lot of people are

Tanker shortage and shipping delays

03:22making those claims seems less believable than it was an attack, a missile or drone attack, and they were filming the impact as they were attacking it. For me, that seems more feasible. But, uh, >> either way, the ship the ship is like, "Guys, I'm struck right now. I'm not going anywhere. I don't care if it's a sea mine or not. Get me out of here." Yep. Yep. Well, so for me the biggest news of this is big news and and I think both it was either Goldman or JP Morgan said, "Hey, we're actually running short on tankers, right? No surprise. A lot of them are getting damaged." So now and also there's a a a time delay which they pointed out which is that when you do your ship to ship transfer that might

03:57take up to 10 days because you're just using the pumps on one ship to transfer million or more barrels to another ship. Just takes time. So, it used to be it was a two-day loading process, but now you have this STS or ship to ship 10-day loading process. It just means that it's kind of like having fewer tankers available because it just takes longer for them to do what they're doing. So, plus they're now taking long routes to evade hostile zones, etc. At any rate, shipping rates going through the roof, both because there's fewer of them and we're at a bottleneck and also because it's more, you know, destructive. They they're blowing up. So, this is this is for sure not a sign of like if we're

Damage to gas and oil processing plants

04:32winning, it's really weird uh sign of winning like that. But the big news that I think is still under reportported is the damage that's happened at the gas and oil treatment facilities. So, three of them got lit up this weekend that we know about pretty reasonably. The biggest of the big is the car one, which is about halfway across Saudi Arabia. And that one, when I tracked that on Saturday, I was using the NASA firms data. So it just shows you where there's a fire, right? And if a fire has a certain intensity, the firm satellite gives you a FRP, a fire radiative potential, I think it stands for, but it's it's measured in megawws. So a normal flaring operation would be, I don't know, one to maybe up to 20

05:14megawws. When you're getting into 50 60, you have a problem going on. Um, by the time you're you're up over 100, for sure you're dealing with some sort of damage. So I captured this yesterday. Um I saw a a fire an FRP uh 550 plus megawws at the car uh processing plant which I believe yeah you've got the smoke coming out of it. This is massive. Even today it was 160 megawws still on fire. So this is a two-day burn. This process this this plant does two things. Very important plant. One it's processing a a lot of the crude that's coming out of the car field. That's about 1.8 8 million barrels a day. And this is the only processing plant for that stuff. It's not like, oh, you know, this one's offline, we'll send it elsewhere. And it

06:02does a second thing, which is pushes about 2.8 million barrels of seawater or water injection per day back into the field to maintain the pressure. So if this thing is offline, we just lost and we don't know for how long a pretty sizable chunk of Saudi Arabia's output. That should be the headline. Top of fold news here. >> Is that the one is that the one in Abcake or separate? >> Separate. Um, Abk is is even further um, over towards the coast over there. So, yeah, you've got the curace there, um, which you saw also. Well, we can talk about the shegdom and also the Hawa uh, plants. Those are both gas processing plants. Those also apparently got got torched. But the carase one way over there, you see that? Um, that's a major

06:42processing facility for Saudi Arabia has two giant fields. Gowir up a little bit to the north and then the curace field. And, um, that one, you know, 1.8 98 million barrels a day, high quality, you know, medium Arab uh it's it's a good it's great stuff. But if that's gone missing in action for any appreciable amount of time, it's huge news. So, I saw that you had posted or somebody on your team under your name had posted about that hit and I'm on the community notes program at at XYC proposed community notes. Dude, that thing got so lit up. All these all these community notes came in like, uh, Saudi Arabia hasn't admitted to this. [laughter] like >> they really got on it quick which tells you something.

Viral post and community notes pushback

07:21>> Yeah, [snorts] >> I posted yesterday Saudi is burning like I meant like it's burning cuz I'm seeing all the smoke from all the refineries. >> It went extremely viral and I just posted it casually. Um and it just went extremely viral like no Saudi is not burning. There was no there's no register. Actually, let me find the tweet. This community notes are so funny sometimes because they get all the all the >> there's no confirmation from the Saudis on this. [laughter] Exactly. Exactly. What is it? So, Saudis burning community. No, let me show it to the uh to the what is it? Didn't go that viral actually, but got a bit of reach. A lot of people started calling my team saying, "What is this? This is not

07:58journalism cuz obviously they're upset and I I understand. I respect them. I get this from every country when I post something like this." Community notes. Saudi is burning misleadingly. Oh, you can't see. Oh, there it is. Saudi burning misleadingly implies nationwide fires. Saudi authorities reporting it reported an October 10th attack on Riyad airport with 12 dead and 300 injured. The evidence does not support nationwide fires [laughter] like okay you've got another four refineries four or five other refineries burning. I think I think that we can say Saudis burning but yeah it's it's honestly it's it's wild. The energy infrastructure is just getting pummeled. >> Yes. >> It's crazy. >> It is. It's absolutely crazy. It is. And

08:40so um and and then of course you know all the tankers getting hit and then and then and then right so so this is about as intense an attack series as we've seen since about March or April. And uh you know the idea that this isn't going to just completely somehow you know harm global energy supplies is is ludicrous. With the fires we just saw at some of these plants. This is pretty big damage. We don't know how long it's going to take to repair. But I think what we've seen is very clear. So when the East West pipeline got hit and Saudi Arabia could do some workarounds, but let's be completely honest, if they can't fix the actual pumping facility, routing pipes around it just simply means you're going

Saudi air defense failures and airport strikes

09:19to be operating with less pressure, which is less flow. They were very vague about, oh, we've resumed operations. Well, at what level, right? So they they haven't said that really clearly. And so I think Saudi Arabia is just scrambling at this point. They're highly incentivized to keep damages under wraps. They don't want to allow any operational uh details to leak out so that anybody understands how successful they've been on one end, but also their the world to understand how damaged they've been on the other side. I think they're just uh lying as as is they're keeping all this as under wraps as they can. >> Yeah. Um have you also seen so one thing the East West pipeline being hit by the groups in

10:00Iraq that was the first strike on the East West pipeline. First it shows how vulnerable it is. second it forced Saudi to go up using the straight of Hormuz. Now, I've been speculating for a while. We spoke about it. It was initially speculation, then I confirmed it and I was more confident with it, that Gulf countries are paying Iran a big chunk of the revenue they're making. That's why so many ships were going through. Well, now there is more reporting that this is the case. Speculation, still nothing confirmed, but you wouldn't expect. I'm very confident of it. The number similar to what I said, 10 to 20%. So, that explains why so much oil has been going out over the last few weeks. But after

10:33the UN General Assembly, some reason all ships are starting getting struck. Not all, many ships started getting struck by the Iranians. Um, so it's odd on what changed then. Are the Americans trying to sneak out other ships? Are the Iranians pissed about the negotiations? But it shows Iran could still strike the ships. Now, why am I mentioning this now? So, there's a lot of talks that the Iranians are responsible for the strike on the East West pipeline, not the Houthis. Um, and that's to force Saudi to go up use the straight of hummus and then force Saudi to pay a cut to the Iranians. And I think it's a message to the region as well by the Iranian saying, "Hey, you can build alternative pipelines, but

11:12it's cheaper for us to strike those pipelines than it is to strike your ships in the straight of Ham. So go ahead, build them and we'll just strike them with drones and missiles whenever we uh whenever we want." So the the there's like um you know when you break a certain taboo it becomes it changes everything like the dynamic in the region a region that felt safe and stable. Now you've got the kingdom, the most powerful country in the Gulf, in the Persian Gulf, you know, Saudi out of the Gulf countries, um, the most powerful one literally facing an existential crisis where oil exports, we have, we don't have the numbers, but are collapsed. They're paying a big chunk to the Iranians. The small group of the

11:52Houthis that a lot of people dismissed are able to essentially close down Saudi airspace. Putting aside the impact on the global energy market and this is um now I don't use the word existential lightly. I live in the Gulf so I have to be very careful when I say that. I don't have to be careful. I speak freely but I'm more cognizant of it when I say it. Um and this is existential starting at Saudi right now. What a stupid decision. Stupid stupid stupid decision to start a war with the Houthis right after they saw what happened with the Americans with Iran. >> Totally agree. And um you know one of the things that's really important uh in power is the appearance of power. And what what did we learn during the first

12:35part of the Iran war which was well even the United States plus the Saudis had no real defensive capabilities to stop missiles coming in if they wanted to or drones. I mean very light. I think the UAE did a very credible job for a while compared but Saudi Arabia for whatever billions they've spent on American hardware not well spent I guess or something about that. But now what's just happened? They've shown that they have no air defenses that I can detect. >> Right. The the Houthis are just dialing in on their airport at will. >> Um I have no reports yet of any missiles being shot down or one snuck through, they fired 50. You know, the usual stuff they try and claim like with Jordan, right? It looks like they're completely

13:14defenseless. So what do you have with the Saudi kingdom? You have um a very very topheavy uh [snorts] country, right? You've got a several thousand princes and then several million sort of not princes. Uh it's it's this could be this could this could lead to the toppling of the kingdom if this carries on. >> Um I'm just going to check now cuz you mentioned an interesting po an interesting point. Um cuz you said you're talking about how Saudi doesn't have much air defenses at all. That's absolut ab absolutely true. It just doesn't look like it. So I'm actually going to check how many missiles and drones. It's hard to really verify. The Iranians fired at the Dubai and Abu Dhabi airport because there was

13:54no strike. I think there was one strike that landed in the airport. Very limited. I think it was a drone strike with no casualties. And then to see what's happening in the Saudi airport. Be interesting to see cuz the Iranians fired total hundreds and hundreds of I think they fired two one to 2,000 drones I think at the UAE. Jesus. Yeah, it was a massive attack at the UAE. One to 2,000 drones. uh roughly 160 missiles, two to two 500 drones towards the UAE in the first days. Yeah, the UAE got pummeled. Now, we don't know how many of those were actually targeting the airport, but to see the UAE infrastructure, you know, barely struck by such a massive attack by the Iranians, but the Houthis barely

14:36firing a few missiles and drones and being able to cause such a mass casualty event. 300 injured yesterday. I was actually seeing a video of the strike on the terminal. We could uh play it because it doesn't show anything gruesome. I'll send it to you now. Um, I've just sent it to you, Paul, if you could play that video of the strike on the airport. That was the one yesterday that led to 300 casualties. I think about 15 dead. Um, and I want to ask you as we we play that footage. Um, we talked a lot about Russia Ukraine. I would love to get your thoughts. There it is. That's the terminal 3 yesterday. That's not the one today. Today was terminal 4. And there we go. Wow. >> I hadn't seen that one

Trump-Putin energy infrastructure deal

15:12>> since. Yeah. >> Yeah. That just came out a few minutes ago. About 30 minutes ago. Um, so I want to ask you about the the deals that um Trump brokered seemingly with Putin um for a very small amount of diesel, bit of money for Putin, but a bit of FU to Zilinski. And now he's reporting without confirming with Zilinski that there's a deal for both sides not to strike each other's energy infrastructure, starting with refineries. By the way, I don't know if you saw this the deal. Have you seen the that Trump announcing that we have a deal, they're not going to strike the energy infrastructure? You saw that? Yeah. So, you'd expect that deal to include not striking any energy infrastructure before we went live. Um,

15:53I got a report that no, so first Putin struck a power plant in Ukraine. Um, so literally within the first hour of that deal being announced, I'll I'll show you a video of it as you're speaking. And actually, there it is. I'll send it now. So, it's a major the I think the biggest power plant in Kharkov, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Kharkov's main power plant got struck. I'll play a quick video now. And then we got information from is it official? Oh okay. So according to Axio so yeah semi official this is a refinery. The deal this is this is embarrassing. The deal the proposed deal includes Russia and Ukraine would initially require both sides to halt attacks on oil refineries which Ukraine doesn't have any oil

16:37refineries. Um, with Washington expecting Zilinski to comply and the administration hopes a refinery for refinery agreement could eventually expand to include power plants and electricity grids. What? Like so so Zaski stop striking their refineries and maybe we can convince them to stop striking the power plants and electricity grids. Um, I I don't know. What do you make of this deal? Because it just shows, look, it's a step in the right direction. Anything to reduce strikes is good. Maybe that's a positive way of looking at it, but it does show a bit of desperation. >> Well, of course. Yes. And and Trump is obviously going to get increasingly desperate leading up to the election. Um I can find no reason whatsoever that

17:20Putin would offer anything out of the goodness of his heart to help Trump. Um there's just nothing to suggest that. So whatever deal Trump might have made, it has to include something for Putin. Um otherwise, there would have been no deal. Uh clearly we don't know what the other side of that deal was, if there was one. Uh but again, what have we learned? We've learned that when Trump says stuff, there's a very high likelihood that it's actually not true to be gentle, right? He's just making it up. Um it's a figment of his imagination. Whatever we're going to color that with. So I I don't put a lot of stock in this. We know that that Russia is already hurting for diesel on its own. We know that their refining

17:58capacity is down 50 to 60% currently. We know that they are already facing shortages of key products. We know that they put a ban on all sorts of things. Diesel, jet fuel, also gasoline exports, I think, through November. Um maybe not for all three of those, but but they definitely put the diesel on through November. So, what are they going to do? They're going to release this stuff. Now, funnily enough, Trump says 500,000 tons followed by 700,000 tons followed by a million tons. Now, that's Russian convention, also European. We don't do that. We do barrels. So, it's kind of weird that he put it in tons, right? Um, so if Trump says we're going to get a million tons of diesel out, it's about 7

18:37and a half barrels per ton. So that means 7 and a half million barrels of diesel was going to be released, I think he said in November. The world's burning about 28 million barrels a day right now of diesel. So 7 12 million barrels stretched out over 30 days. I it's it's it's nice, but it's certainly not going to make a huge dent in the situation that we have right now. Now fast forward. If it turns out that the carase field has been hit, if it turns out abike has been hit, which I believe it has, those are both places where you're getting both the source oil and then also Abkike is the world's largest prochemical processing plant in the world. About 7% of total output. It's massive. And I don't know how much

19:18product has been leaking out of the, you know, straight of but it looks like it's mostly oil. We're still missing a lot of product. So that's what the world's short on. Diesel, jet fuel, gasoline, all this stuff. So I get it. Trump's a little bit desperate for that stuff. But as soon as that deal was announced yesterday, I think um first thing Zalinsky did was they they hit a a product export terminal. Like that was the first thing. H and then um this this deal came out and I I think both both parties Trump said there's a deal and I think both parties came out and said what? They they weren't aware of that. So uh you know maybe there's some they're going to say oh oh you meant you weren't talking about power plants were

19:53you? Um so they'll find what the nuances is. Um, we have to consider the fact that Trump got a deal. He thinks he got a deal. And that there are elements of this war that are no longer under his control. And these could be elements of mercenaries, companies, rogue actors, deep state elements like like he can say what he wants, but whoever's been providing the targeting information and the assistance to Ukraine, they may have their own idea about what needs to happen next. And and I think that's worth considering here. It is getting out of control. Just thinking about what you said now. Like the fact Ansar will last striking Saudi refineries. That wasn't even part of the calculation when Trump started a

20:38war against Iran. We said maybe the Houthies could join, but the Saudis would pay them off. The Saudis did reportedly pay them off. But now the Iranian wars on pause. Actually, maybe a good way to ask you seeing all the reports about military assets moving to the region. Um probably as an economist yourself, you're looking at this, you're like, "Nah, he's not going to do that." Like there's refineries getting destroyed in Russia. There's refineries getting destroyed and pipelines getting destroyed in Saudi. There's a a global shortage. The storage um storage facilities, all the storage have been depleted. Strategic petroleum reserves are the lowest have been since the establishment of those um those caves.

No credible military or diplomatic solution on Iran

21:18Um there is no way he's going to restart the war. Um, is that what you're thinking or you think no, he's stupid enough to go go and give it another shot? >> It's kind of be but with a twist. Um, I've come to the conclusion lately and I put this out for my subscribers last week which is that when you finally you have to you have to so I'm just always trying to figure out what's the pattern. What's actually happening here? Okay, so there's incompetence, there's stupidity, there's malice, there's intentionality, you know, where are we? and uh nothing I can find. We've had this conversation before, but but I can't find anything to show that we have any intention of doing anything other than prolonging this and

21:58getting into a worldwide energy and food emergency, right? And that's just because I take people at their action. So, you probably know a lot more about this than I do, but you know, here from from the people I talked to, I'm not aware of really any what I would call legitimate diplomatic efforts ongoing between the United States and Iran. Some low-level stuff. um no direct talks, you know, nothing really that looks like progress. Yeah, maybe they meet every so often at a certain level. Iraqi comes over and says a few things to some some delegates, but at the end of the day, we the United States have our list of demands. Iran has theirs. I haven't seen any budget. I haven't seen one single concession yet

22:35across that map where they go, "All right, we'll give up this, you give up that." And that's what negotiations usually entail. Haven't seen it. So, that means we're not serious about negotiations. So, what are your options? Well, you either perpetuate this as is, which we just learned this past week, can lead to major destruction of energy infrastructure in the region and Russia. Or you have to entertain the idea that you're going to try and do something militarily, right? And again, we've discussed this, but I would consider that to be the most malevolent thing you could do because at that point, we risk the actual destruction, long-term destruction of Gulf Energy assets. So if Iran drops 50 ballistics on the Abkike

23:16refinery and it's not aiming for the storage tanks to make big splashy, you know, smoky fires, but it aims for the coing towers, it aims for the for the hydro units, it aims for the actual refining stacks. If it hits those, that'll be a year fix minimum. Um, and if it does that, I mean, that's when we get into a worldwide global economic disaster. If Trump is willing to risk a global economic disaster, I have to include the idea that that it's not just Trump, right? Obviously, Trump can say whatever he wants. He's got a whole team of people. There's other people involved. There might be other forces beyond that that we have to talk about. If he does that, it's because they want that destruction to happen. Because

23:53there's not a credible military person I've talked to yet, maybe you've heard differently, who says, "Yeah, we have a military solution in in Iran that we think has a high chance of success and a low chance of them dialing up and taking out Gulf energy assets the way they've promised. There's no credible military solution here at this point in time. There is a something we could try militarily, but it quickly leads to some very, very bad outcomes. And unless we think we can somehow convince them to step in line by dropping a tactical nuke or something like that, which has its own Pandora's box of outcomes, then we have to face up to the idea there is no military solution. They're not pursuing a

24:30diplomatic solution. Tada. This means they want it just like it is, which is in a in a in a very gross stalemate that's going to lead to some really bad economic and probably food outcomes over the next year. But can't the bond market, same as it did during the tariff war, can't operation I can't remember what he called it back then. The what was it? Operation the tariff war. What did he call it? Operation whatever it was. >> Um was the recogn during the China days a couple years ago, a year and a half ago. >> I forget. >> Yeah. We'll call it operation piss off all our allies. But since then, so that's the bond yield started spiking. That's when Trump immediately walked back those tariffs. And um why why

25:17aren't we seeing the same thing here? Isn't the bond market enough to force Trump and any president really? Like you don't mess around with the bond market and the yields are 10 years at 20 whatever high um 30 years I'm sure is breaking hitting new highs as well. Isn't that enough to pressure Trump into like saying all right maybe I should tackle on this whole Iran thing and just move on to Cuba? Well, I would like to think so, but but that would be mean if you Mario, he he would have to be sort of um uh a aware actually of what's at stake here and b um he would have to have that as a concern of his. >> I'm not sure that we can see that that doing something that would um absolutely crater the US economy. I'm not sure

Gold prices and China's buying

25:59that's off the table at at this stage. Um so >> because all of this, I mean, let's just be let's be clear. I mean, we we there's lots of things we could do, we the United States, to back off of this and, you know, save as much face as we can, okay? Lick a couple of wounds, but there's a lot that we need to be attending to right now on the economic front back home and we're not doing it. So, >> yeah, I want to ask you about gold prices as well. So, I was seeing a report. Let me see what we're what the gold price is at 4,100. So, we're down over the last month 5%. So, it's not a big drop. I thought it was a bigger drop last 6 months, 10%. Um, but I was also reading a report that China's buying up a lot of the gold, the most in

26:42I don't know how many months. Let me see that report there. Um, there it is. China central bank officially bought 23 tons of gold in September. And that's just the official numbers. I think unofficially a lot more gold moves around between those countries that we don't know about, which is the large largest monthly purchase since September 2023. So, China's stocking up even further on gold. Um and if you see I'll show you I'll put the graph up later maybe I'll send it now I can show that image for the audience but why are gold prices u languishing are people just the the high yields of the treasuries and the inflation expectations are leading people in the short term to avoid commodities and put it in higher

27:21yielding assets. >> This has been one of the more um oh that's a great chart. Yeah. Uh, and by the way, the last time, if you look at that and sort of draw a line mentally, visually across that, the last time China bought that much gold, uh, that was when gold moved from about 1,800 to about 4,000. Um, so, so that's where it went through another big run. H maybe that's a correlation. Maybe it's a causation. We don't know. We'll we'll figure this out. Uh, but you know, I used to be a little lonely in this cuz I I traded gold futures, silver futures. I traded futures for a while um in my life. It's something I sort of came to know pretty familiarly. And I saw that there were a lot of games being played

27:57in the futures market, right? And now, you know, for a long time, people said, "Oh, Chris, sour grapes, you know, you know, if just because the market doesn't do what you think it should, don't cry manipulation." But there's a difference between a legitimate price discovery in a market. And this is what Tucker Carlson wanted to talk to me about cuz he he thought out of all the things that he sees are not working well, you know, election systems, politics, all that stuff. He thought the markets were still sort of sacrianked, you know, that they were still their own um they still had some purity to them that that markets would set things straight. And so we went through the data and I said, well

Commodity market manipulation and silver

28:32actually you can look at this and markets have been manipulated for a long time and here's the data, right? And so a market, what should it be? It's a legitimate place where price discovery happens. There's buyers, there's sellers, and the price that happens balances out supply and demand at that point in time. Great. It's how it should work. Now, we haven't had that in a long time in the in the uh commodities market, which is largely set by the United States globally, right? tell you this for silver. So for silver, if supply and demand were matched out by price at an appropriate level, we wouldn't see what we're going to see today will be this year will be the seventh year in a row where there's too

29:11little silver relative to demand. And I'm talking hundreds of millions of ounces every year. There's more demand than supply. Mines aren't keeping up. It's being drawn down from stockpiles. And the normal price signal mechanism that should happen is the price should go up and then people will be incentivized either to sell gram of silver into the market or you know open new mines or do something supply will come. So that's how commodities work. Price signal tells you where you should be. Now if you had a legitimate silver market we wouldn't see there's a chart I can send you and you're going to love this one. It says that if you just bought silver starting 30 years ago and you only held it during the time when US

29:48markets are open. So call that from 8:30 to 4. If you only that's it. You just held silver. What would what would you and that you you buy it at the morning, you sell it in the afternoon. What would your silver worth? It's worth 11 cents per ounce. What if you would only bought silver at the minute the US markets closed and held it overnight and then sold right before the US markets open? Silver would be worth to you about $380 an ounce right now. It's just how it's been. Overnight people buy. in the US markets we sell. Okay, fine. Uh that's not really a market, you know, and it's it's crazy that, you know, you see that sort of thing happening over a long term because it shouldn't happen. That same

30:29thing's happened with copper. We're going to face enormous copper deficits over the coming years. It's just it's extraordinary. Big big big story about that. Um you might want to talk to Robert Freedelland about that. He's the world king on that stuff. But man, we just gonna be so short on copper. Gold is the same story. It's been the price has been set by people who lost that idea of free markets being important and ran with the idea that it was instead important for commodity markets, particularly gold, to send the right signal. What's the right signal? It should go up, but not too fast. Because if it goes up too fast, it means people are losing faith in our paper currency. If they lose faith in our paper

31:05currency, maybe that hits our bond market. So there's powerful reasons to want gold to be sort of not too jumpy, you know, and and that just became policy. And by the way, I can show you amazing data from the 70s where they were all concerned about how they had to contain the price of gold so that it didn't send the wrong signal and supported policy. Um, so gold's been a policy thing for a long time, but that bled over and it's bled over into everything, including oil, which I did not think they were going to be able to pull that one off because oil's different cuz we we burn it. Uh, it comes out of the ground, we set it on fire, you know. Um, I didn't think they could pull that off, but they have. And

31:47so, what are we seeing now? Because they've they've fundamentally messed with the price signal for oil, they're keeping the price down. It's easy. If your price is too low, demand is going to be too high relative to supply. Is that true? Well, I can show you chart after chart after chart that ever since the war started, global supplies of oil are just sinking. Well, now why are supplies going down? Because demand is too high relative to supply. Why is that? Because the price is too high. Airlines have not been impacted at all. Miles driven not been impacted at all. We're still demand is still there. Supplies aren't there. And that's because somebody somewhere has been able to manipulate the oil

32:27markets and that's what they do. And you know they may have strong political reasons why it's so important to do. But they have messed with the most fundamental thing of all which is the sanctity formally of the markets to send legitimate price signals so we have the outcomes we want. And that's a tragedy. But if there is that type of manipulation, wouldn't that give countries like China, Russia, various other countries the ability to just profit from that? That manipulation is being done for so long, a lot of people would know about it. And there just seems that massive arbitrage opportunity of being able to capitalize on it. Just the example that you've given, if you if you held copper, but you bought it at

33:07the beginning of the the trading session, the trading day, and sold it at the end. >> Yep. >> Oh, sorry, not sold it at the end. just held it at the beginning and that's it, you know, your silver would be worth pretty much nothing. And then if you did the complete opposite and held it at the end of every That's just a crazy number, by the way. I'm still like, you know, the those numbers that are just really hard to to to visualize. >> But if you bought silver, sorry, not copper, at the end of the trading day, it'll be worth, you know, 300 and whatever. >> That's just wild. That discrepancy is crazy. But wouldn't that be that arbitrage opportunity with that information? >> It should be. it should be competed away

33:43right away. It should not be allowed to persist. Um but it has for for a long time and so it does create opportunities, right? So I watch that happen and I just think, "Wow, that's great. I get to buy gold and silver for below mark below their fair market price." Um I'm actually actually I'm happy with that. You know who else is happy with that? China. That so that look at that that China import. You're like, "Wow, what's going on with this crazy ramping up of like ch why is China buying so much gold?" because the price is being held down. The problem with holding the price down is the west is your vault's empty and it all goes to the east. Um it's crazy. So we have this crazy thing. So in the United States, we

34:22get marketed against gold all the time. Like you know, subtly and overtly and all that stuff, you know, barbarous relic, you wouldn't want to hold this stuff. Whenever the price goes up, Bloomberg floods the airwaves with stories of people cashing in grandma's gold, you know, at the at the pawn shops because we like when when when [clears throat] prices rise on things, that's what they sell to us in our financial markets here in the US. Oh, Nvidia, look at it. It's a brand new all-time high. You should get in. Asia's built different. They're like, "No, no, we'd rather buy it when the price is low." Which >> is a a sentiment I share, of course. So the price has been low, Asia's been buying, and there's only so long you can

Diesel pressure and tanker surge

35:02continue that until you sort of, you know, you get dusty vaults and you kind of run out. And um we'll we'll hit that we'll hit that inflection point at some point. >> Have you have diesel prices calmed a bit in the last few days? >> They have, but the crack spread is is back up um well over 100 at this point in time. So it they're about to go back up again. Um, we'll see. I We'll see what the impact of this so-called Russian diesel release is. Um, diesel markets are are not really prone to being whipped around too much. They they do have a futures component, but at the end of the day, you know, the railroad needs the diesel, the trucks need the diesel, jets need the jet fuel. It's it's it's a lot more um uh it's a lot

35:47more realistic market all that considered. But I mean, consider like Trump just he tried to um strongarm the Europeans. He's like, "Either you release your strategic diesel reserves or we'll ban it." And then a few days later, he's like, "I got Putin to release some." You can tell he's scrambling. Diesel's obviously a weak. It's a pressure point. >> Well, the Iranians have him in a really good uh good place, at least for them from their perspective. >> A really, really difficult position. >> Uh let me see because there's news coming in all the time. So 300 in that video we saw 309 people were injured and 12 were killed. the video of the airport. Saudi airport is completely closed. The one in Riyad is completely

36:27closed right now. The one in Dam is also closed and the one in Jedda is experiencing major disruptions. It's crazy how much damage the Houthis have been able to cause Saudi. And meanwhile, US Air Force KC135s and KC46 aerial refueling tankers are returning to Sentcom and Yukcom in increasing numbers with approximately 20 additional tankers recorded in the region over the last 4 days. The last similar surge in the tanker numbers was observed shortly before Operation Epic Fury began in 2026. >> Well, there's another component here which um you know, we think airports and sometimes we think people flying around. Uh but for the most part um Saudi airports have been really important in helping to keep them supplied because

37:12they don't have the container ships coming in that they used to up through uh the Persian Gulf and landing at their ports. So, you know, this is they can't keep their airports closed for long before they start running into um some various issues, foods, medicines, you know, important things. >> Oh, man. What a situation they're in. Like, it's um you know what's crazy is when we would be talking months ago. I'm sending this to Brandon. So, he looks at this cuz he watches these um tracking websites all the time for the refueling tankers cuz there's a lot of rhetoric that gets thrown around. Trump's makes a post about different things. I'm not going to attack before the midterms. I will not attack. Actually, let me think

37:48about it. That was two days ago after the Riad strike or yesterday and then I'm not going to attack. Same same statement again before the midterms. So, you got all these different statements coming out, but the how the military assets are being positioned on the ground is honestly the best indicator um on what could come next. Um but it's just crazy to me is that we've spoken for for a long time now and um even before this war, but throughout this war, we have all these various scenarios of what could happen. We had some worst case scenarios without going down the nuking path or wiping out civilization just within logical within the logical realm. And honestly like this scenario that we're in now is beyond any worst

38:29case scenario. I remember discussing with any strategist throughout the war. I don't think there was ever a time where in this year you'd have assuming the war continues. You have a continuation of the war. So I'm assuming it does. If it doesn't that that's a different story. But based on these the build military buildup, continuation of the Iran war, um while S Israel continues striking Lebanon, continues striking the Gaza and talking about invading um annexing the West Bank, but that's a different discussion. Um Syria potentially sending troops to help the Saudis in Yemen. Obviously, the Houthies now destroying the energy infrastructure in Saudi and closing the airspace as we're seeing now. um the East West pipeline being

Worst-case scenario unfolding

39:10inoperable, the Red Sea being closed for Saudi ships, the Strait of Homo getting struck, ships getting struck more than any time throughout the entire war. This is a complete worst case scenario that is unfolding and we haven't even gone to what's happening in Africa. Eritaryia, Ethiopia are fighting again because this is next to the Red Sea. So the Horn of Africa is really important strategically. It's a different discussion, but we're honestly witnessing the worst case scenario. It's um it's just and the way it's just you're boiling a frog honestly like people forget and I was kind of wake myself up. I did a post about it this morning. I'm like guys just realize that before all this before Trump decided

39:47walk up said you know I'm going to strike them today. That's it. Before all this oil was at what $65 70 a barrel WTI >> and then um Yemen was there was a ceasefire in Yemen. There was no fighting Yemen. Hard to imagine. There was no Israeli troops deep inside Lebanon. that had only these three small hills. There was um Gaza was Gaza unfortunately and heartbreaking. Iran, there was peace time. US bases were fine. Diesel prices were fine. There was no talks about energy markets. The the odds of the Republicans winning the House and the Senate were much higher. Now you're looking at a clean sweep by the Democrats. It's crazy that new like how we slowly kind of walked ourselves into that new reality and people in the

40:28US are not aware. I think the Iran wars ended not knowing the mess that was created in the Middle East and the Gulf is a completely oblivious. You know, I'm in the UAE, so I can, you know, relate to this. They're completely oblivious of of, you know, what's happening just next door in Saudi, which was the most protected country in the Gulf. The least hit country in the Gulf of Saudi other than Oman was Saudi. They had some sort of deal. They were the biggest. I remember some of my guests would say, "Mario, Saudi would not be struck because they have the ability to hit back." Well, obviously that that doesn't exist anymore. That argument is gone now. And they can't even deal with the Houthies. So, it's h obviously a

41:04really really bad reality we're dealing with now. It's just insane. >> Well, it is. And you know, there there's um all this crazy stuff coming out of the Trump administration that oh, we have just as much oil as before the war, which is not true. Or maybe even it was technically true. Like technically, oh, you didn't mean energy plants when you meant energy infrastructure, right? Electricity plants. like the technically right is the best kind of right. The UA the the whole strait in 2025 gave us 21 million barrels per day of oil and products. So it's about 15 to 16 million barrels per day of oil but also 5 to six per day of products right which is diesel, gas, LPG, you know um ethylene all this stuff, right? Products. The

41:50products are completely missing in this story at this point in time. There was an LPG tanker they tried to sneak through that got actually just completely torched, lit on fire. I haven't seen a single LNG tanker come through yet. Of course, those are highly explosive. You wouldn't dare risk that. And we're missing because of Qatar's shutdown of of their side of the South Pars field. 20% of world LG shipments, MIA, >> that's insane. >> And so all the analysis, you know, as much oil as before the war, there's all this other stuff that's completely missing. If we had an honest analysis, we say, "No, this is a complete cluster. This is no good. This is really bad at this point in time." [snorts] >> Chris, I appreciate you coming on. I

Missing products and closing remarks

42:30appreciate the analysis as always. Um, and hopefully next week, I'm not going to say this. Next week's probably going to be worse. Let's just deal with reality. So, let's brace oursel for another crazy week. Thanks. >> Absolutely. Thank you. My pleasure, >> guys. Um, Peak Prosperity is where you can listen to more content that Chris creates on a regular basis. He does a great interviews, great analysis. He's got a very loyal following, their subscriber base. I highly recommend you put Chris Martinson Peak Prosperity on Google and check it out. Um, and uh, Brandon will be taking over the rest of the interview. Seems things are seemingly heating up, especially with the military assets, the refilling

43:08tankers moving to Sentcom and Yukon. Professor Hanky will be live in a couple of minutes with Brandon, followed by Alan Er, Larry Johnson, and uh Charles Finfrock. So, tune in with Brandon in a couple of minutes. Hope you enjoyed today's coverage. And as always, I'll go through all your comments today. See what you think, your various feedback, any questions you have about the various interviews. I read the comments as you know by now, if you've been watching the show for a while, very often on a daily basis, on a regular basis, multiple times a day. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye.