SmarterMarkets · Nov 7, 2026 · 36m · 28m saved
With Sean Evers, Founder and Managing Partner of Gulf Intelligence
Brent futures were trading around $110 a barrel, but a physical barrel shipped from the Gulf to China costs closer to $200 once shipping and insurance are paid. Sean Evers, founder and managing partner of Gulf Intelligence, told SmarterMarkets that those costs, along with refining, are driving energy prices more than any shortage of crude.
"The Brent futures contract today is trading at about $110 a barrel. But if you wanted to buy a physical barrel... send it to China... the real price is about $200 a barrel because shipping costs and insurance costs are at about a multiple of 20." — Sean Evers
Sean founded Gulf Intelligence in 2009 after two decades in journalism, including at Bloomberg and the Financial Times, and he describes the Gulf conflict as a fracture the region will heal from, not a collapse.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 36 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
The world is short of refining capacity, not crude: about 5 million barrels of it sits inside the Strait of Hormuz
Shipping and insurance costs are running about 20x their pre-conflict levels, and Sean expects them to stay high into 2027
The effective price of a barrel of refined product is near $300, yet rich economies are paying it with little cut in demand
UK underground gas storage is at 30% of normal, which a cold winter could turn into a reason for Europe to call Putin
LNG above $25/mmBtu means the rest of the world pays about 10x the US price for gas
Saudi Aramco, ADNOC and QatarEnergy are becoming global oil majors on the model of ExxonMobil
Asia's demand held up through the crisis, with the IMF still projecting 4.8% growth for the region this year
1. A Fracture, Not a Crisis
Sean resisted calling the conflict in the Gulf a crisis and preferred the word fracture.
Sean says the region will heal from the conflict the way a broken bone does
"It's certainly a fracture of significant consequence and... the equation of what was before this and what will be are very two different things." — Sean Evers
A broken arm or leg heals and changes things, Sean said: "you may not play baseball again, but you can throw softball." He noted more people are hurt and killed daily in New York City than across the Middle East, and that Europe and the South China Sea have fractures of their own. Gulf oil revenue this year will also be far higher than projected in January.
"If your income has doubled, that's a crisis of sorts. What do you do with the money?" — Sean Evers
