Barron's Live · Sep 29, 2026 · 44m · 26m saved
With Adam Rozencwajg, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Goehring & Rozencwajg
The Iran war has taken about 10 million barrels a day of Middle East oil production off the market for more than 200 days, and oil prices have stayed below $100 a barrel of late.
Most investors read that as proof the world has absorbed the shock. Adam Rozencwajg said the shock has been hidden in the refining system, and that the price spike comes after the Strait of Hormuz reopens, not before.
"I think as soon as you reopen the straits, everyone will likely sell off oil within that day or week, that's when the true extent of the damage comes through."
Adam Rozencwajg, co-founder and managing partner of natural resources investment firm Goehring & Rozencwajg, on Barron's Live, bought into oil in January, before the war began, and cut gold stocks from just under a third of his portfolio to 5% that same month, ahead of the metal's 20% fall.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 44 minutes of audio, 18 minutes of reading.
Here are the 14 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
The world lost refining capacity, not oil demand
About 6 million barrels a day of refining is offline in the Persian Gulf, China and Russia
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz could move the shortage from diesel into crude
He said crude could go to $200 a barrel, the price diesel already implies
US shale oil growth is close to zero year on year, which he called next year's story
He values oil sands producers Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources 60% to 100% above their share prices at $100 oil
Refiners are earning margins near $100 a barrel against a normal $20, and he would take profits
US natural gas at $3 is about 80% cheaper than anywhere else, and it is his pick to rise most over five years
Uranium near $100 a pound is still below the $150 to $160 a new mine needs
He cut gold stocks from about a third of his portfolio to 5% in January
Gold pullbacks of this kind have averaged about 40%, he said, and this one is at 20%
Copper inventories are at 20-year highs, which he said should not happen in a market in deficit
The two countries leading in AI, the US and China, both have cheap energy
1. Lost Refineries, Not Demand
The host opened with the Iran war. It has dragged on far longer than expected, she said, yet oil has stayed below $100 a barrel. She asked how the world had avoided an energy crisis.
He called that the market's biggest misconception
"But I think that's really the biggest misconception in the markets today is that we've somehow been able to navigate the crisis." — Adam Rozencwajg
Rozencwajg said that weeks into the war, his firm and many other analysts expected a severe crisis by summer, with 10 million barrels a day off the market. His models assumed a 100-day conflict. On the morning of the call it had lasted 211 days.
Crude supply and fuel demand are two different things
He said supply is crude oil out of the ground, while demand is refined products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Refiners sit between the two, so the terms are usually interchangeable.
"But one of the biggest dislocations we've seen since the war started is that we've lost a tremendous amount of refining capacity around the world." — Adam Rozencwajg
He put the losses at about 2 million barrels a day inside the Persian Gulf, about 2 million in China, where the government shut down refined-product exports and idled refiners, and about 2 million in Russia from Ukrainian attacks.
The data mistake a refinery outage for weak demand
Fields in the Middle East cut output by 10 million barrels a day, he said, but refiners' demand for crude fell by 6 million. Analysts usually measure consumption by how much crude refiners buy, so the drop looks like consumers using less.
"But today it's not a consumption problem, it's not a user problem, it is a refiner issue, and that is making the data very difficult to come by." — Adam Rozencwajg
