Episode V: The Persian Empire Strikes Back

[Rstewart]

In about 32 hours I fly to the Philippines.  From what I can read it's now high risk climate.  They are rioting in the streets because of no fuel and public transportation.  I'm sure my white ass from America will be warmly welcomed 😬

If you guys don't hear from me in a couple weeks, I'm probably missing a kidney and in a bathtub of ice 😄

Getting around should be quite the adventure...

[mowens]

You'll be lucky if they give you ice.

[Newbeeee™]

In about 32 hours I fly to the Philippines.

Here in Cyprus, "they" have decimated the early holiday crowds by "unsafe to travel warnings" leading to cancelling flights because we're "in a war zone" baaaalah blah blah.
Meanwhile, the reality v the BS is it's beautiful and everything is normal except a lot of restaurants and hotels are currently struggling.
Plus side, is there's more space for us....

Have a great holiday!

[CNCAppsJames]

A few times over the last few weeks pictures of a jam packed SLC airport show up in my "news" (CNN, ABC, NBC, etc...) feed. No notation of "stock images supplied". Just pure rage bait that was  presented as this is happening now. And all the unhinged loons are blaming #OrangeManBad "for the hours wating in line"... claiming to be happening on days I was actually in the SLC airport. My home airport.

And guess what? Normal or less than normal wait times. <10min TSA Pre-Check/CLEAR and <20min for general passengers.

Trust the "news" at your own peril.

I don't doubt that airports back east are/were having trouble. The overwhelming majority of delays or cancellations for me in my 1m+ air miles traveled life have originated/been routed through DEN, ATL, or ORD first. Be it weather, personnel, computer failures, etc... and I've pretty much seen it all. Seems to me the east coast bears the brunt of many of the air travel challenges travelers in the US face.

JM2CFWIW 

 

[mowens]

I'll be going through Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I won't have to deal with going through security though.

[Newbeeee™]

Trust the "news" at your own peril.

Preach!!!!

[Incogneeto]

I'll be going through Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I won't have to deal with going through security though.

"White Privilege".   

[CNCAppsJames]

"White Privilege".   

#Reported!

 

[Rstewart]

Here in Cyprus, "they" have decimated the early holiday crowds by "unsafe to travel warnings" leading to cancelling flights because we're "in a war zone" baaaalah blah blah.
Meanwhile, the reality v the BS is it's beautiful and everything is normal except a lot of restaurants and hotels are currently struggling.
Plus side, is there's more space for us....

Have a great holiday!

Brother, this definitely isn't a "holiday" lol
I get fully read in on what's happening on the ground.  Should be quite the pain in the ass.

[gcode]

from X

Ida Turan 🇮🇷 ایده توران
@iranidaturan
·
7h
I don't think most Americans have any real sense of just how sophisticated and massive this whole operation against the Islamic regime has been. Even a lot of Trump supporters, probably picture it as some straightforward military thing. But for those of us who have lived under this system, it's on another level entirely.

However, we are understandably exhausted and hyper-focused, worrying about basic safety that it's hard for us to step back and appreciate the bigger picture. We don't talk much, but it doesn't mean we don't see it.

We Iranians know war. My mother's generation lived for 8 horrific years in the shadow of Saddam, a madman even crazier and more brutal than this regime in many ways. They endured constant bombings, cities turned to rubble, chemical attacks, families ripped apart, and massive displacement. For my generation, those years left childhood nightmares that never fully went away. We know amputated fathers, martyred neighbors, streets full of mourning, endless death, and helplessness. We know what real war is.

This operation was nothing like that. Unlike the Iran-Iraq war, where civilians were deliberately targeted to create maximum death, suffering, and destruction, this was meticulously designed to separate the regime and its military machine from the Iranian people.

It was remarkably successful in that regard. The vast majority of the hardship ordinary Iranians faced didn't come from the strikes themselves. It came from the regime's own incompetence, sabotage, and desperation. They cut the internet for days to control the narrative abroad, wrecked businesses and the economy with their chaotic responses, and kept their own people in the dark. That part was all them.

There is another thing, we Iranians know this regime like the back of our hand. It's not some abstract evil.

It's like stage-four cancer: incompetent at actually running a country, ugly and corrupt to its core, yet incredibly strong in spreading fear, hatred, and pulling out the worst in human nature.

Removing something this entrenched, in a country as vast and regionally complicated as Iran, required an intelligence and planning effort that is honestly mind-blowing.

What blows my mind is the Israeli intelligence work. We're not talking just names and addresses. They've mapped behaviors, personalities, decision-making patterns, the whole human side of that rotten system. It's like they know it inside out.

The planning was deeply coordinated with US, with Israel leading on the technical, intelligence, and precision execution level, while the U.S. directed the overall strategy and brought the power and coordination to make it happen. The precision was unreal: cutting-edge, top-notch technology, the best specialists in the world, and targeting that actually feels more like a surgical rescue mission than old-school war.

From where I sit, Trump directed the overall strategy and brought the raw power: choking off the regime's money, isolating it internationally, cutting the lifelines from Europe and some Arab states. That created the conditions for this to actually land.

On the psychological side and negotiations, it feels like Trump played the big-picture game, timing the pressure, the deterrence, and the right mix of fear and openings to get maximum results with as little unnecessary cost as possible.

I really hope Americans come to recognize the courage, professionalism, and skill of their military and the patriots in the administration in this. Right now, it feels like we're nowhere close to giving them the credit this level of work has earned.

For us Iranians who have suffered so long, this wasn't about destruction. It was about finally creating a chance for something better. We will be forever grateful.

[gcode]

Collapsing oil production

Cliff Notes for the folks to lazy or too indoctrinated to read

When a country with the world's third-largest oil reserves reactivates a thirty-year-old retired tanker to float on top of its main export terminal and buy forty-eight hours of time, the institutional systems designed to absorb shocks have already failed. The insurance market, the shadow fleet, the diplomatic channels, and the reservoir physics are all converging on the same conclusion at different speeds, and NASHA is the one that shows up on satellite.

The market is pricing a ceasefire.

The Pentagon is pricing six months of mine clearance.

Iran just pulled a corpse out of the Persian Gulf and asked it to buy two days.

That is not how a reversible crisis looks. That is how a regime tells you, operationally, that it has run out of options between the blockade and the shut-in. The reservoir does not negotiate.

UST IN: Iran just pulled a thirty-year-old empty supertanker out of retirement and began towing it toward Kharg Island. She is moving so slowly that a voyage that should take a day and a half is taking four days.

Her name is NASHA. IMO 9079107. Built 1996. A two-million-barrel very large crude carrier that has been anchored empty off Kharg for years. TankerTrackers confirmed her reactivation yesterday. Gulf News, Iran International, and Fox News all picked it up within hours.

The reason she is moving at all is that Iran is running out of places to put the oil.

Kharg Island handles roughly ninety percent of Iran's crude exports. Its onshore tanks had about thirteen million barrels of spare capacity when the US blockade began on April 13. Net inflow since has been running at one million to one point one million barrels per day because exports have collapsed to single digits of vessels while upstream production continues. The math is mechanical. Roughly twelve days of spare capacity. The calendar says that window closes this week.

NASHA is not a strategy. NASHA is what you do when you have run out of strategy.

A two-million-barrel floating storage vessel buys Iran approximately forty-eight hours of continued upstream production. After that, either the wells get shut in or the crude goes somewhere else. The parallel options being pursued, ship-to-ship transfers in the Riau Archipelago, AIS-dark transits, sanctioned VLCCs returning home through the blockade line, are not enough. Lloyd's List Intelligence has tracked roughly twenty-six Iran-linked vessels evading since April 13. That cannot absorb a million barrels a day.

The wells will shut in. The question is which wells, for how long, and whether they come back.

The Asmari and Bangestan carbonate formations that sit under most of Iran's giant southern fields are high-permeability, strong-water-drive systems. The Society of Petroleum Engineers literature on this specific reservoir class is unambiguous. Remove continuous pressure support for a prolonged shut-in and four damage mechanisms activate simultaneously: water coning upward through the fracture network, fines migration into pore throats, formation compaction under increased effective stress, and clay swelling under altered salinity and pH. The damage is not theoretical. It is documented. And it is measured in months to years of recoverable production capacity, not days.

Maleki and Gordon estimate three hundred to five hundred thousand barrels per day of permanent capacity loss if the current shut-in trajectory completes. That is a directional estimate, not a lab measurement, but the direction is not in dispute.

NASHA is the archaeological signature of the clock.

When a country with the world's third-largest oil reserves reactivates a thirty-year-old retired tanker to float on top of its main export terminal and buy forty-eight hours of time, the institutional systems designed to absorb shocks have already failed. The insurance market, the shadow fleet, the diplomatic channels, and the reservoir physics are all converging on the same conclusion at different speeds, and NASHA is the one that shows up on satellite.

The market is pricing a ceasefire.

The Pentagon is pricing six months of mine clearance.

Iran just pulled a corpse out of the Persian Gulf and asked it to buy two days.

That is not how a reversible crisis looks. That is how a regime tells you, operationally, that it has run out of options between the blockade and the shut-in. The reservoir does not negotiate.

[Newbeeee™]

Oil's so last Wednesday.
ChyNUH Windymills and PV Panels are the future.
They're meeting now to stop it all anyway....

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rq92yv4vo

[mowens]

Cliff Notes for the folks to lazy or too indoctrinated to read

How about for those who don't have twitter at work?

Or don't use twitter at all?

[Newbeeee™]

How about for those who don't have twitter at work?

Or don't use twitter at all?

Well.... YOU "should" be working....

[gcode]

How about for those who don't have twitter at work?

Or don't use twitter at all?

hit Expand... I postrd Cliff Notes followed by the entire post

The premise of the post is
1. Iran is being prevented from shipping oil.
2. Iran is out of storage space..and will have to shut down producing wells soon.
3. Shutting down wells can cause numerous issues with future production.

I am not a petroleum engineer, but I did grow up in the oil business and I know Item 3 is true.