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The crisis is damaging two institutions: the transit authority that does not exist, and OPEC, which does. Iraq is threatening to leave after the UAE quit on 1 May, and the reopening’s flood of returning Iranian barrels makes restraint impossible just as the price falls. The connection: ungoverned chokepoints are centrifugal, teaching the states that depend on them self-reliance over cooperation. The same instinct that argues for a transit authority is dissolving the production cartel. This post reads both failures.

For the first time since the war began, Qatar sent empty LNG carriers back into the Gulf through Hormuz. An empty ship heading in is a confidence vote, and because LNG has no pipeline escape, Qatar is the purest test of whether the strait is becoming reliable. But the bet is small and hedged: four ships in, five staging off Oman, output at a fifth of normal, damaged trains years from recovery, and a startup explosion at Barzan this week. This post reads Qatar’s guarded verdict on the strait.

Goldman Sachs projects Hormuz traffic may recover only to about 70% of pre-war levels, roughly 13m bpd, and calls the shift structural, not temporary. A chokepoint that closes teaches its users to need it less, and a risk premium learned in crisis does not leave when the strait reopens into the same institutional vacuum. The franchise erodes because nothing institutional stands behind the strait to earn back the trust the crisis destroyed. This post reads the warning as one with a deadline.