Anas Alhajji
Founder, Energy Outlook Advisors · Independent energy-market economist
aka Dr. Anas Alhajji, Anas Al Haji
“about 6 million barrels of oil basically passes through Bab el Mandeb, mostly Russian and Saudi oil... can they close Babel Mandeb? No, the Iran cannot close the hormones strait and cannot close the Babel Mandeb. But they can cause enough trouble to raise prices oil prices significantly and raise insurance.”
“The fear is not the Houthis blocking Babel Mandel. The fear is that few guys basically launching an attack on couple of oil tankers. And as a result the insurance companies of Europe, mostly UK will literally cancel the insurance, especially the water insurance the same way they did with Hermus. And if they do that, then Saudi Arabia in particular cannot send its oil... we will lose more than 4 million barrels a day of Saudi crude as a result... losing that basically will force prices way above $100.”
“the reason why shipping stopped simply because insurance companies canceled the war coverage... the EU instituted laws to prevent the solvency of the insurance companies... So immediately, if there is a crisis based on that formula, they have to transfer money... An insurance company said, there's no way we cannot cover all these ships throughout this period. So we are going to take advantage of the law and we are going to cancel all policies as stated in the law within seven days... this seven day law basically locked up most of the tankers in the area without even a military action.”
“you cannot make computer chips and semiconductors without helium. And 75% of the helium going to South Korea and Taiwan is coming from Qatar. And it just happened that at the beginning of the war, the plant that make the LNG and helium in Qatar was destroyed. Among all the plants, all the factories, all the refineries in the Gulf in all those countries, that particular plant that produces the helium was hit and destroyed. So now Asia is without helium. They have storage. But if this crisis is going to continue, of course that storage is going to run out.”
“if you look at today's numbers, refineries, right now, some refineries are running above 100% of their capacity. And on average, for the U.S. refining sector, we are running at 96, 97%. So where refineries are running at almost full capacity, even if there is massive demand for gasoline and diesel, if you cannot process the crude, then you are not going to demand the crude. And if you don't demand the crude, there is no reason for its prices to go up.”
“the biggest criticism to the idea of energy dominance that whoever crafted this policy, they focused on upstream and they forgot the downstream. So for the Trump administration... You need to expand U.S. refining capacity substantially if you want to use energy dominance in the coming years and coming decades in the world.”
“Those releases are loans, they are not sales. And this is very important to the balances of the market... when companies borrowed the oil at 120, it was extremely attractive for them to borrow because they need to return this oil later on with some interest in kind... they borrowed the oil at 120 and later on when they return it, they will return it when oil is 60 or 70 or 80... So the idea here is when they refill, they are not going to refill at a higher price, they are going to refill at a lower price.”
“we have asymmetry between the releases and the injection. For example, we released at certain days, we release 1.9 million barrels a day. We did that. But we cannot refill that amount because technically speaking, at the current situation, we cannot inject more than 400,000 barrels a day... Yes, it supports prices, it creates a floor, but it's not going to raise prices substantially.”
“Most of the decrease was in strategic petroleum reserves, not in commercial inventories. And the impact here is different because when commercial inventories decline, oil prices go up. But when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve decline, prices go down. Why? Because they are intended for that... So most of the decrease in global oil inventories was in Strategic Petroleum reserves. And they kept telling us global oil inventories declined this much. That is a lie.”
“we do have two publications... we published that demand destruction starts at 160. And we've seen that. So the idea here is whatever the permeables basically were looking for, it already happened and it already passed them. And they still look at Brent and WTI and they think it should happen here. It happened, but it happened in the different price in a different area.”
“prices of medium sour crude went up above 170 with some reports basically Talking about some shipments being sold for $200 or close to 200... What striked me, until today, we have analysts who are not even aware of the fact that oil prices exceeded 170. And that is a big problem... Brent is not the price in Asia, it's for Europe. WTI is the price for the United States or North America.”
“China, basically the Chinese decided to reduce their imports. They reduced their Import by about 6 million barrels a day. And that led to that demand decline that reduced prices from the 90s to the 70s... this behavior basically is consistent what they've been doing for the last 10 years... the Chinese basically buy low and sell high. And when they sell high, basically they reduce their imports.”
“what we did here is we created a monster that no one can slain, period... Any terrorist group or militia in the region who wants attention, they know they get the attention by going to Hormuz... anyone can play the news. So... the ghost of Hermes basically will stay with us forever, even if we reached a final resolution to the crisis.”
“the winner among all energy sources is natural gas and lng. So investing in LNG basically, especially LNG names, especially the United States names, is a big one. So the LNG is going to be a very big winner out of this, not only because of the hermit crisis, but also because of the demand for power, for electricity coming from data centers and AI. So you combine HERMES with data centers and AI and you can see the massive demand as a result of this.”
“The other one is coal. And the reason why coal becomes very attractive here, not only because it's cheap, it is a domestic source in most of the consuming countries that been affected by Hormuz... coal companies basically are going to do extremely well because linking those sources to energy security is going to benefit all the sources, not only solar and wind.”
“how countries are going to react to the hermit crisis... countries and governments are going to adopt the Chinese model. What is the Chinese model is linking energy sources to national security. And once you do that, you can do a lot of things, and even in democratic countries. So what's going to happen right now is under the name of national security, you can pass many things to promote your domestic energy sources... So what we are going to see is companies benefiting from all those subsidies that the governments are going to allocate because of national security.”
“you can look at shale literally as the spr, because we can produce oil quickly from shale. Here's the problem. Crude quality. What we need for diesel basically is medium sour crude. What we produce from shale is light sweet crude. So we can produce a lot of gasoline from it, but we cannot produce a lot of diesel.”
“without the US Strategic Petroleum reserve releases, diesel prices in the United States probably would be in the range of $12 a gallon... So what the Trump administration did released massive amount of medium sour crude from the Strategic Petroleum reserves... those massive releases of spr, especially of the medium sour crude, saved the world.”
“for them together as a group, opec, to work with the consuming countries to build massive strategic petroleum reserves... the objective is to avoid any choke points, not only Hermuz, and to avoid any waterway... the cost of that is a fraction of the cost of pipelines, It's a fraction of of the cost of canals.”
“for a country to leave, it is not in the interest of the uae, for example, for prices to collapse. So they are going to act in a very responsible way, no matter what, to avoid that. And they want to avoid a price war under any circumstances. So the impact is limited. So OPEC will be intact no matter what.”
“from a security point of view, having more pipelines to the west or through Syria or Israel or any other country does not make sense at all because everything can be bombed right now... Those who wants to make to build pipelines, they have to do it the Emirati way... you have to make economic and financial sense out of them, not a security sense.”
Anas Alhajji
One-line summary: Independent oil-market economist (Energy Outlook Advisors); the vault's primary source on the war-risk-insurance chokepoint transmission mechanism, the refining-vs-crude bottleneck distinction, SPR releases-as-loans, and the Bab el-Mandeb risk.
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Brief factual context — fill in.
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Said
Speaker-attributed claims extracted from diarized sources. Each bullet mirrors one entry in quotes: frontmatter — keep them in sync.
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On war-risk-insurance-as-chokepoint-transmission, energy-shock-2026-vs-2022:
"about 6 million barrels of oil basically passes through Bab el Mandeb, mostly Russian and Saudi oil... can they close Babel Mandeb? No, the Iran cannot close the hormones strait and cannot close the Babel Mandeb. But they can cause enough trouble to raise prices oil prices significantly and raise insurance." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
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On war-risk-insurance-as-chokepoint-transmission, energy-shock-2026-vs-2022:
"The fear is not the Houthis blocking Babel Mandel. The fear is that few guys basically launching an attack on couple of oil tankers. And as a result the insurance companies of Europe, mostly UK will literally cancel the insurance, especially the water insurance the same way they did with Hermus. And if they do that, then Saudi Arabia in particular cannot send its oil... we will lose more than 4 million barrels a day of Saudi crude as a result... losing that basically will force prices way above $100." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
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On war-risk-insurance-as-chokepoint-transmission:
"the reason why shipping stopped simply because insurance companies canceled the war coverage... the EU instituted laws to prevent the solvency of the insurance companies... So immediately, if there is a crisis based on that formula, they have to transfer money... An insurance company said, there's no way we cannot cover all these ships throughout this period. So we are going to take advantage of the law and we are going to cancel all policies as stated in the law within seven days... this seven day law basically locked up most of the tankers in the area without even a military action." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
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On helium-supply-crisis-semicap, helium-cliff-to-hbm-supply-crunch:
"you cannot make computer chips and semiconductors without helium. And 75% of the helium going to South Korea and Taiwan is coming from Qatar. And it just happened that at the beginning of the war, the plant that make the LNG and helium in Qatar was destroyed. Among all the plants, all the factories, all the refineries in the Gulf in all those countries, that particular plant that produces the helium was hit and destroyed. So now Asia is without helium. They have storage. But if this crisis is going to continue, of course that storage is going to run out." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
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On refining-bottleneck-to-refiner-crack-capture:
"if you look at today's numbers, refineries, right now, some refineries are running above 100% of their capacity. And on average, for the U.S. refining sector, we are running at 96, 97%. So where refineries are running at almost full capacity, even if there is massive demand for gasoline and diesel, if you cannot process the crude, then you are not going to demand the crude. And if you don't demand the crude, there is no reason for its prices to go up." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On refining-bottleneck-to-refiner-crack-capture:
"the biggest criticism to the idea of energy dominance that whoever crafted this policy, they focused on upstream and they forgot the downstream. So for the Trump administration... You need to expand U.S. refining capacity substantially if you want to use energy dominance in the coming years and coming decades in the world." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On spr-releases-as-loans-not-sales:
"Those releases are loans, they are not sales. And this is very important to the balances of the market... when companies borrowed the oil at 120, it was extremely attractive for them to borrow because they need to return this oil later on with some interest in kind... they borrowed the oil at 120 and later on when they return it, they will return it when oil is 60 or 70 or 80... So the idea here is when they refill, they are not going to refill at a higher price, they are going to refill at a lower price." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On spr-releases-as-loans-not-sales:
"we have asymmetry between the releases and the injection. For example, we released at certain days, we release 1.9 million barrels a day. We did that. But we cannot refill that amount because technically speaking, at the current situation, we cannot inject more than 400,000 barrels a day... Yes, it supports prices, it creates a floor, but it's not going to raise prices substantially." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On spr-releases-as-loans-not-sales:
"Most of the decrease was in strategic petroleum reserves, not in commercial inventories. And the impact here is different because when commercial inventories decline, oil prices go up. But when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve decline, prices go down. Why? Because they are intended for that... So most of the decrease in global oil inventories was in Strategic Petroleum reserves. And they kept telling us global oil inventories declined this much. That is a lie." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On energy-shock-2026-vs-2022, iran-fuel-shock-consumer-bifurcation:
"we do have two publications... we published that demand destruction starts at 160. And we've seen that. So the idea here is whatever the permeables basically were looking for, it already happened and it already passed them. And they still look at Brent and WTI and they think it should happen here. It happened, but it happened in the different price in a different area." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
"prices of medium sour crude went up above 170 with some reports basically Talking about some shipments being sold for $200 or close to 200... What striked me, until today, we have analysts who are not even aware of the fact that oil prices exceeded 170. And that is a big problem... Brent is not the price in Asia, it's for Europe. WTI is the price for the United States or North America." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
"China, basically the Chinese decided to reduce their imports. They reduced their Import by about 6 million barrels a day. And that led to that demand decline that reduced prices from the 90s to the 70s... this behavior basically is consistent what they've been doing for the last 10 years... the Chinese basically buy low and sell high. And when they sell high, basically they reduce their imports." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On war-risk-insurance-as-chokepoint-transmission, energy-shock-2026-vs-2022:
"what we did here is we created a monster that no one can slain, period... Any terrorist group or militia in the region who wants attention, they know they get the attention by going to Hormuz... anyone can play the news. So... the ghost of Hermes basically will stay with us forever, even if we reached a final resolution to the crisis." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On nuclear-baseload-for-ai-data-centers, energy-shock-2026-vs-2022:
"the winner among all energy sources is natural gas and lng. So investing in LNG basically, especially LNG names, especially the United States names, is a big one. So the LNG is going to be a very big winner out of this, not only because of the hermit crisis, but also because of the demand for power, for electricity coming from data centers and AI. So you combine HERMES with data centers and AI and you can see the massive demand as a result of this." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
"The other one is coal. And the reason why coal becomes very attractive here, not only because it's cheap, it is a domestic source in most of the consuming countries that been affected by Hormuz... coal companies basically are going to do extremely well because linking those sources to energy security is going to benefit all the sources, not only solar and wind." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On us-industrial-policy-tariff-shield, energy-shock-2026-vs-2022:
"how countries are going to react to the hermit crisis... countries and governments are going to adopt the Chinese model. What is the Chinese model is linking energy sources to national security. And once you do that, you can do a lot of things, and even in democratic countries. So what's going to happen right now is under the name of national security, you can pass many things to promote your domestic energy sources... So what we are going to see is companies benefiting from all those subsidies that the governments are going to allocate because of national security." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On refining-bottleneck-to-refiner-crack-capture, spr-releases-as-loans-not-sales:
"you can look at shale literally as the spr, because we can produce oil quickly from shale. Here's the problem. Crude quality. What we need for diesel basically is medium sour crude. What we produce from shale is light sweet crude. So we can produce a lot of gasoline from it, but we cannot produce a lot of diesel." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On refining-bottleneck-to-refiner-crack-capture, spr-releases-as-loans-not-sales:
"without the US Strategic Petroleum reserve releases, diesel prices in the United States probably would be in the range of $12 a gallon... So what the Trump administration did released massive amount of medium sour crude from the Strategic Petroleum reserves... those massive releases of spr, especially of the medium sour crude, saved the world." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On uae-opec-exit-to-oil-market-share-war:
"for them together as a group, opec, to work with the consuming countries to build massive strategic petroleum reserves... the objective is to avoid any choke points, not only Hermuz, and to avoid any waterway... the cost of that is a fraction of the cost of pipelines, It's a fraction of of the cost of canals." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On uae-opec-exit-to-oil-market-share-war:
"for a country to leave, it is not in the interest of the uae, for example, for prices to collapse. So they are going to act in a very responsible way, no matter what, to avoid that. And they want to avoid a price war under any circumstances. So the impact is limited. So OPEC will be intact no matter what." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
-
On uae-opec-exit-to-oil-market-share-war:
"from a security point of view, having more pipelines to the west or through Syria or Israel or any other country does not make sense at all because everything can be bombed right now... Those who wants to make to build pipelines, they have to do it the Emirati way... you have to make economic and financial sense out of them, not a security sense." — 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the (2026-07-16)
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