And I wanted to ask you, how are you thinking about the effect of this ongoing conflict on energy markets?

One of the things that we're seeing, especially over the past month, so even before this latest flare up, is that crude oil markets, I think, are starting to look different from refined product markets and from natural gas markets.

It's incredible to see the amount of flexibility we saw in crude in particular.

with China oil imports down just about 5 million barrels a day, year on year in the month of June, which was just extraordinary to see.

But I think on the product side, it's a little bit trickier because in addition to refining capacity damage that we still have in the Middle East, We have the issue of the Ukraine drone attacks on Russian refining capacity.

So Russian refining capacity is also down by over 3 million barrels a day.

And this is a market where infrastructure was already being pushed to the limit.

And I was curious, as you talk with investors, are they becoming much more interested, again, in commodities as an asset class for inflation protection in this environment?

What's it look like now?

Yeah, so the last time we had a flare up, we had a decline in, in the crossings through the strait.

We're very likely to see that again now.

But we have to also remember when we saw the MOU being announced, we couldn't expect going from zero to 100 directly.

I think right now we shouldn't also extrapolate that this is gonna go to zero and stop altogether.

So let's give it a couple of days.

The president also said that negotiations continue, that he thinks it's a waste of time, but they continue.

If someone, uh, were in the markets and listening to you, you could forgive them for thinking, "So you're saying I can ignore this?" Are you saying that this potentially is not as disruptive of a development as it would've been treated, say, three months ago?

Is there something more that we're missing?

I think you hit on a lot of very key points.

In addition to that, we did have a lot of headline management.

Every weekend it was, okay, the deal is closer, it's getting here.

And this certainly had an impact into how willing market participants were to put risk on.

But I think, especially when we look at the fundamentals, especially what you mentioned about China, is a huge factor.

Even today, when we look at how much crude China is importing, it's still going down sequentially.

How big of an impact is what's going on with OPEC right now? There were headlines this morning that Iraq was considering leaving because it wasn't accommodating enough to what it wanted to see with production.

What makes natural gas markets fundamentally different in how they respond to geopolitical shocks?

Yeah, I think the main difference is the seasonality of demand, the fact that you need so much of it in the winter.

And maybe we should take a step back and think, "What do we use this thing for?" And there are three main uses.

The first one you can think of is electricity generation.

Just you have a lot of utilities.

They have, in the same way they have nuclear plants and coal plants, they have natural gas-run power plants.

You also have, uh, a lot of use of natural gas for industrial applications.

So what are you expecting now in terms of thinking about supply losses going forward?

Can we explore that a little bit further? What would happen if they actually introduced that policy?

So if you're blocking exports, I think the main risk, for example, especially product exports that everybody's talking about, the main risk is that the refineries in the Gulf Coast will lose those high margins they are seeing in the market right now, and they may choose, "Okay, I don't have the same incentive to produce that I did just a minute ago.

I might reduce my production." So it's not obvious what the net impact will be in terms of product prices, uh, to the rest of the US also because we don't know if other countries might retaliate.

At the moment, if you look at the northeast of the US, it has to net import products.

Same thing with the West Coast that Anne-Marie mentioned earlier.

So y- i- it's not that easy to, to balance everything.

On the...

Actually hitting energy infrastructure and long-term damage, already long-term, how long for this all to be rebuilt and the supply chains to get back to normal when actually the product itself is getting hit?

When it comes to some of that misinformation that we're seeing, how does it make it that much harder for traders, for the market to position?

It, it creates a lot of volatility.

The past two days are a perfect illustration of that because again, I, I, I think the uncertainty on duration makes such a big difference.

If this is a one-month shock and we know ahead of time it's a one-month shock, okay, we get the release, we offset most if not all of it.

Um, India can, uh, access some of the sanctioned barrels from Russia as well.

We're actually okay by the end of the year.

There's no panic, there's no demand destruction needed.

So I- I guess how are people saying if this resolves in the next week, there won't be a prolonged increase, risk premium on oil prices? I guess can we just say that from here on out we can average $80 a barrel or $85 a barrel for the rest of the year if it ends in a week, let alone longer?