One thought on “Monday Message Board”

1. Trump’s “war of whim” gets crazier by the day.

   – US warplanes have attacked Iranian military installations on Kharg Island. They left the oil installations alone. And why not? The USN has enough warships in the Gulf to stop Iran from exporting crude simply by boarding undefended tankers at sea. It has not done so, and Iran – alone among the Gilf petrostates – continues to sell its oil unimpeded. (Lawyers, Guns and Money blog, extensively quoting the paywalled WSJ: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/03/towering-political-supergenius The reason is presumably that Trump rightly fears that the rising oil price – up over 60% already – is turning the already dim electoral prospects for the GOP in the midterm elections into a likely wave loss.

   – The USN is moving a warship designed for amphibious expeditions, the USS Tripoli, from Japan to the Gulf. It carries 2,200 Marines. These are capable and well-equipped soldiers, and Hegseth will post Warrior porn video clips of them doing one-armed pushups and waving machine guns. But what are they supposed to do in the Gulf? Capturing Kharg Island is pointless, see above. Capturing Bandar Abbas in the Straits of Hormuz, a city with a population over 300,000, or clearing 100 km of rugged coast on either side, would obviously be quite impossible against any organised resistance. The ship would make a very tempting target and it could easily be lost.

   – Trump has appealed in desperation for international support to unblock the Straits of Hormuz, mentioning China(!), South Korea, Japan, France and the UK. This would make them co-belligerents in an illegal, unwinnable, and barely planned war by an unreliable ally they have conspicuously failed to support when it was going well. Trump gas doubled down by issuing vague mafia-style threats of repercussions in NATO, the Atlantic alliance he has been busy dismantling.

   – There is another group of people the Trump court has forgotten whose cooperation would be essential in breaking the blockade: those involved in shipping, from shipowners, insurers, ship’s captains and ordinary sailors – who typically sign up for specific voyages, and are free not to do so if they think it too risky. In theory Trump could commandeer the tankers, staff them with navy sailors, and lead them in a slow banzai charge through the swarm of attacking drones. This would not tum out well, and they clearly have not planned for it.

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   There is a quite large silver lining to the oil crisis. LNG prices have gone up as much as crude oil, with more regional variation: https://www.iru.org/news-resources/newsroom/war-iran-fuel-prices-remain-high-and-volatile In many, perhaps most countries, marginal electric generation is from gas turbines, very often supplied from tankers not pipelines. Last year about 655 GW of new solar was installed globally , on the basis of ROI cakulations using the then current relative prices of gas, solar, BOS costs like inverters and grid hookups, and batteries. The reference Netherlands gas price is up by 57%. The calculations have changed, in favour of solar (wind too, but the lead times are much longer).

   The IEA gives global production capacity of solar modules at 1,155 GW in 2023, about twice actual output, and it has grown since. The industry has plenty of spare capacity to meet the higher demand we can expect. Even on the most optimistic scenario of an end to the war in the coming fortnight, closed wells will take time to restart, and the assessment of risk has changed. Solar demand went pretty flat in 2025, admittedly at a high level. Is there any good reason why 2026 should not see 1 TW of installations? By the same logic, EV adoption everywhere should accelerate, and electric heat pumps in homes. Just possibly, the Iran war could become the shock that at long last drives the world to the fast energy transition the climate data are shouting for.