伊朗战争暴露美军持久战局限

Joining us now to break this all down. We've got Jen Judson. She's Bloomberg News defense reporter. And Chris Kennedy, he's our economic state craft lead for Bloomberg Economics. Chris, I wanna start with you because there's been a lot of contradictory claims six months on about how much oil is in the Persian Gulf and how much is actually exiting The Gulf and what I have called Schrodinger straight, whether this sucker is actually open or closed.

Where are we at? So we are seeing a substantial amount of oil exiting the Persian Gulf now. It looks like primarily through this southern route along the coast of Oman. The latest numbers we're seeing from about two days ago, which is about as accurate as we can get once we get in the more recent days subject to a lot of uncertainty around transponders, etcetera. But that's about seven and a half million barrels a day.

So if we're thinking about that in terms of prewar levels of about 20,000,000 barrels a day, we're at about 40% of where we were. We are still seeing a significant amount of oil exiting out through the Red Sea and through the Fujairah Bypass route, part of The UAE's oil export capacity. But we're still below those prewar levels. Fortunately, for the global oil market, you know, we've seen some tick up uptick in production and exports from The US.

And, you know, we went into this conflict with substantial commercial and other reserves to draw on. Those are continue to be drawn down. We're definitely not out of the woods, and there are risks to certain subsets of the market. And the longer this conflict goes on and oil continues to be throttled through the Strait Of Hormuz, the the more the risk grows and the the less likely we're gonna see a substantial drop in oil prices and more importantly, refined fuel products prices, for The US and other consumers around the world.

And, Jen, we've heard a lot about mines or the lack thereof. What's the latest on the state of of mines in the strait and whether or not they're there and also what's going on with the blockade? I mean, we've heard claims that there are no more mines in the strait, but I think clearing mines is is really a critical step. You know, it's we hear about it a lot, but it's it's not the same thing as making The Strait commercially safe.

You need sustained mine clearing operations. You need surveillance and protection for ships. You need, you know, ultimately confidence from the shipping companies and insurers that vessels are going to not be attacked. And the bigger lesson for the Pentagon, I think, is keeping a critical water open. You know, that can consume an enormous amount of military capacity, and the war is showing that you know, munitions productions, industrial capacity aren't just about replacing weapons after the war.

They're part of the military's ability to really sustain the war in the first place. So it's it's all about being able to sustain this for long term. Well, and speaking of, we have the the USS Abraham Lincoln finally making port. They're going to Thailand after two hundred and fifty days at sea. Alix Mark Cutter, Al Jazeera, said a friend said to him it's either the best or worst idea to give a 20 year old with nine months pay, a day in Thailand, and frankly, he might join them.

But, like, jokes aside, these ships are running on fumes. They do need repairs. Jen, what did six months tell us about The US readiness for sustained conflicts? There's this report in The Guardian saying that reporters obtained a memo that there are now shortfalls in navy payroll accounts because they're being rated to pay for combat operations. Yeah. So I'll address the first big question on the six months and what what is this really kind of exposed about the limits of military power.

And I think, you know, the biggest lesson is that The United States has has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to project power and sustain a very intense air and missile defense campaign. But this war has also exposed the limits of endurance. You know, we've seen that with sailors on the Lincoln. The question isn't whether The US can really defeat a particular Iranian target set either. It's it's whether it can really sustain a level of operations while still preserving enough weapons and platforms and trained personnel to deter.

And the longer they're out there, the longer it's gonna be in maintenance, and it's just gonna have sort of a cascading effect, across the force. You know? The Guardian report on not having enough money to pay personnel. You know, there's more than, I think, 27,000 sailors, 24 plus ships, have supported operations. The chief of naval operations said, I believe, yesterday or or pretty recently, said the navy needs roughly 6 to 8,000,000,000 above what was budgeted in this fiscal year, to be whole insolvent.

And, you know, largely, that's, you know, Hormuz mine clearing combat operations. Blockade personnel costs are all going towards this. So there's clearly a cash flow and readiness problem inside the navy after six months of war, but I think it's really important to distinguish between the navy literally running out of money and kind of the much bigger issue, which is that the war has really forced the service to pull resources.

It had planned for maintenance or for modernization or for training and readiness. You know? And these ships and and these people on them are getting a serious dose of wear and tear as you noted. And, you know, look at what happened on the Lincoln after nine months of deployment, you know, going well over two hundred days without a port visit. Yeah. And, Chris, yesterday when I was winding down getting ready to wake up early to hang out with Christina So excited.

He was so excited. Pretty stoked. We saw we saw posts and headlines crossing about The US set to take control of a major portion of Venezuela and oil wealth. What does that actually mean? Is that something that can come online quickly? Walk us through what was updated, from the president yesterday evening and how this actually can impact not only The US but Venezuela going forward. The short answer is there's little prospect for these 17 or so oil fields that The US is purportedly taking a stake in coming online and increasing production global production anytime in the immediate future.

Right now, Venezuela is producing just under 1,200,000 barrels a day. That's substantially down from peak production a decade or more ago. And by all estimates, it will take at least, you know, thirty six months, probably longer to really substantially increase that output. So the impact on the global oil market's not really significant. I think the bigger issue here is what does this actually signal about the viability of Venezuela as an investment, you know, location for major oil companies?

Prior to this announcement, we saw x r Chevron rather announcing that it was expanding its operations in Venezuela. But now you have the president coming in and announcing that he's made a deal with what is supposed to be an interim government for a hundred year lease on oil fields in Venezuela. This harkens back to nineteen o one to the Anglo Persian oil company, now BP, said getting a stake in oil fields in Iran, a sixty year lease.

This is very colonial in its feeling. And I think that there's a real risk that a move like this is seen exactly as that, this new form of colonialism, which in turn should give companies pause. What happens when there is an eventual democratic transition in Venezuela? Will a new democratically elected government honor such a deal made a hundred year lease with The US? What does that signal to oil companies that are considering investing in Venezuela?

Our personal view our our our view rather at Bloomberg economics is that this is a a bad signal for long term investment. It raises the political salience, likely Democrats if they take control of congress and and if they take control of the White House in 2029 are going