WORLD'S OIL JUGULAR REOPENED VIA WHAT IS BASICALLY A TOLL BOOTH DISPUTE
Negotiators near a deal on the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway barely wider than a large lake, as the global economy holds its breath.
Diplomats from Iran, Oman, and the United States are reportedly closing in on a draft agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel that has spent the last several weeks functioning as the world's most expensive game of chicken. The deal, described by sources as 'mostly done except for the parts that matter,' would restore commercial passage through a waterway roughly the width of a large lake, provided nobody seizes any more tankers before lunch.
Oil markets, which have spent the crisis lurching between panic and euphoria based on the tone of a single diplomat's press availability, are treating the negotiations with the gravity normally reserved for a moon landing. The draft agreement reportedly includes a side-letter with an actual checkbox labeled 'please stop seizing tankers,' which negotiators say represents significant progress from the previous draft, which did not have a checkbox at all. 'We're basically running the planet's most stressful E-ZPass renewal,' said Omani intermediary Faris Al-Najjar, adding that the lane has been down for maintenance roughly forty times longer than any toll booth should be allowed to stay down.
Former President Trump, asked to characterize the state of talks, teased that the world should expect either 'a deal, or something bigger,' declining to specify what bigger might entail, whether that's a bigger deal, a bigger something, or simply a bigger tease. Oil traders, for their part, have reportedly taken to refreshing their phones with the same intensity usually reserved for Black Friday doorbusters, hoping to be first in line when the world's most important shipping lane reopens for business as usual, which is to say, mildly terrifying but technically passable.
