> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://nordenergy.co/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Hormuz Note, Four Months On - URL: https://nordenergy.co/the-hormuz-note-four-months-on/ - Published: 2026-09-14T09:56:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-14T10:07:58.000Z - Description: Five predictions from the April 2026 note, scored against sourced outcomes to 13 September 2026. Aggregate 0.64 out of 1.00, with the spread call recorded as incorrect. - Author: NordEnergy - Tags: Oil *An accuracy assessment of "The Strait That Tilts the Balance", published 28 April 2026, scored against observed outcomes to 13 September 2026.* **In brief** - The note's five predictions score 0.64 out of 1.00: two confirmed, one understated, one too early, one incorrect. The incorrect one is the spread call, and it fails on the note's own classifier, not on ours. - Two of the five tracked indicators sit in the normalisation band. Crude through the strait is running at roughly 14 mb/d against a threshold of 12, and the Urals–Brent spread at $21/bbl sits in the $20–25 the note assigned to Scenario A, not the $8–15 it assigned to its base case. - The note provided for exactly this. Its dashboard says Scenarios A and B can coexist when the monetary indicators diverge from the supply side, and the divergence has turned out to be inside the monetary pair, not across it. - Every claim here, on both sides of every scored line, is quoted from a named source with a locator. That was not true of the first three drafts of this assessment. Section V is the account of what changed when it was enforced, and it is the most useful section in the document. --- ## I. Why this exists Research notes make dated, falsifiable claims and are then rarely revisited. The incentive runs one way: a note that ages badly is quietly superseded by the next one, and the reader has no way to know whether the analyst has been right before. NORD scores its own notes against what happened, on a fixed schedule, with the same vocabulary each time. The framework is narrow by design. Six verdicts and no others: confirmed, confirmed exceeded, partial, understated, incorrect, too early. Direction and magnitude are tracked separately, because a prediction can be right about where a variable goes and wrong about how far, and collapsing the two into correct-or-incorrect destroys the information that matters for the next note. Both sides of a scored line carry a source. The observation cites a named organisation, a publication, a locator, an access date and a verbatim quotation. So does the prediction, quoted from the April note with a page number, because an assessment that cannot quote the claim it is scoring is scoring its own paraphrase. A program checks the file before publication: it refuses any figure it cannot trace to a quotation, any prediction that does not cite the note by page, and any passage this document puts in quotation marks that no stored source contains. Scored against observed outcomes to 13 September 2026, the five predictions aggregate to 0.64 out of 1.00. That aggregate is the least useful number here. It says the note was directionally sound in places and says nothing about where it failed, and the failures are what change the next note. Sections II and IV are the substance; the rest is bookkeeping. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/be/7b/be7be4de-8091-4f47-85b0-523e1e3ed8dd/content/images/2026/09/fig_scorecard-1.png) Five explicit predictions of the April 2026 note, scored against observed outcomes to 13 September 2026\. Every bar carries a line stating what the score covers and on what basis, because a verdict that rests on part of a prediction should not be read as covering all of it. Aggregate 0.64 out of 1.00. ## II. What was predicted, and what happened ### P01\. Urals-Brent spread - Incorrect (0.00) The note held, under Scenario B, that "the Urals-Brent spread stabilises in the $8-15 band, anchored on the $7.3/bbl average documented by Incorrys for the seven months immediately preceding the crisis" (p. 23). Observed: in July the discount held flat at 26% of Brent, or USD 21 per barrel (CREA, July 2026). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/be/7b/be7be4de-8091-4f47-85b0-523e1e3ed8dd/content/images/2026/09/fig_spread_bands.png) The July discount against the three bands the April note drew for it. At $21/bbl the reading sits inside the $20–25 the note assigned to Scenario A, above the $8–15 of its own base case, and at the lower edge of the 2022–2024 band it said Scenario B would hold above. Bands from Figure 15 of the note. The spread did stabilise, and it stabilised outside the band. There is a case for partial: the verb of the prediction is stabilises, and the reading is flat. The case does not survive the note's own classifier. Its indicator dashboard reads $20–25 as Scenario A and $8–15 as Scenario B (p. 24), which places the observation in the branch the note rejected. When a framework's own instrument says the wrong branch was picked, partly right is not on the menu. This verdict was carried as partial until the final review. Scoring it that way required an argument about direction that does not discriminate: Scenarios A and B both entail widening from the $7.3/bbl anchor, so "it widened" separates the outcome from neither. ### P02\. Yuan settlement architecture - Too early (0.50) The note held, under Scenario B, that "the yuan-denominated settlement architecture, validated under operational stress in March, becomes a normalised channel for sanctioned barrels rather than an exception" (p. 23). There is no observation. The one figure available is a single-day print of 1.22 trillion yuan, roughly 178.5 billion US dollars, across nearly 42,000 transactions (Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center data, via *Disruption Banking*, April 2026), and it is dated four weeks before the note published, in a month the note had already recorded at $134bn/day (p. 29). A March reading cannot evidence a development predicted for the period after April. That leaves nothing to score. Earlier drafts scored this figure as confirmation, then as partial confirmation, without noticing that the evidence predated the claim. Nothing postdating publication was located, and nothing located at any date separates sanctioned-barrel settlement from aggregate flow, and that was the prediction. A second correction belongs here. Those drafts also scored the prediction against a band of $130–150bn per day. The note makes no such prediction: that figure is its Scenario B classification threshold, and a threshold says where a reading places the market, not where the reading will go. ### P03\. OPEC+ tacit acceptance - Confirmed (1.00) The note held, under Scenario B, that "OPEC+ operates with a tacit acceptance of Russian over-quota production", the Saudi threat being "geographically harder to mobilise after a demonstrated Hormuz vulnerability" (p. 23). Observed: the group approved a 188,000 barrel-per-day increase for September, ending the phased rollback of the 1.65 million bpd voluntary cut first put in place in 2023 (*Energies Media*, 6 August 2026), then held October at September levels (OPEC Secretariat, 6 September 2026). The note operationalised this claim itself. Its dashboard sets the Scenario B reading for OPEC+ as "Continued silence on RU", against "Differentiated compliance push" under Scenario A (p. 24). No compliance push materialised, the voluntary tranche was unwound in full, and the group then paused. Using a threshold this way needs a rule, because the previous section refuses to score one. The rule is that a threshold can confirm or falsify a claim and cannot be scored as a forecast in its own right. P02's threshold measures aggregate CIPS volume, which is not the sanctioned-barrel claim it would have to test, so it cannot do the job. P03's threshold is a direct restatement of the claim: silence on Russia is what tacit acceptance looks like from outside. The instrument is the same; whether it tests the thing predicted is not. ### P04\. Turkey's institutional role - Confirmed (1.00) The note held that "Turkey emerges from the crisis as a more consequential intermediary than its pre-crisis profile suggested", positioned as "a cross-cutting node in both the hydrocarbon transit architecture and the G7-parallel-market interface" (p. 25). Observed: on 1 August, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said the transit arrangement with Iraq guarantees a minimum export capacity of 750,000 barrels per day (Al Jazeera, 1 August 2026). A guaranteed floor of that size puts Ankara where the note said it would be. It is a one-year arrangement, which is why this is confirmed and not exceeded: twelve months is a weaker institutional position than the durable role the note described, and an earlier draft scored it as exceeded by omitting the term. The barrels have not followed, and that is carried on indicator five, not scored here. The note made no throughput prediction: the 650 kb/d in its dashboard is the Iraqi oil ministry's target, which the note reports and attributes (p. 30). An earlier draft scored a Ceyhan throughput prediction the note never made, and it has been withdrawn. ### P05\. Russia's asymmetric constraint - Understated (0.70) The note applied "a conservative lower-bound volume haircut of 15-20% from Ukrainian drone strikes" to a 4.8 mb/d export baseline, reducing an annual windfall "to $42-44 billion" (p. 9). Observed: refineries processed an estimated 3.6 million barrels of crude per day in July, the lowest level since May 2002, roughly one-third below the seasonal norm, with eighteen Russian refineries targeted in the month (EA Analytics via Bloomberg, reported by *The Moscow Times*, 3 August 2026). The mechanism was identified and its weight was not. A lower bound of 15–20% has been overtaken by runs a third below normal at a twenty-four-year low. One limit belongs on the record, because it cuts against the verdict. The haircut was applied to export volumes and the evidence measures refining runs. Damaged refining can raise the crude available for export as readily as lower it, so this figure is not a direct reading of the quantity the note predicted. Understated is right about the mechanism; the export-volume claim remains unmeasured here. ## III. What the note did not see Three developments fell outside the note's frame. They are recorded because what a note misses constrains its conclusions as much as what it gets right. **The UAE's withdrawal from OPEC**, announced for 1 May (Atlantic Council). The UAE produced an average of 3.4 million b/d of crude in 2025 against OPEC's 28.0 million b/d, roughly 12% of the group's output, and its exit takes OPEC's share of world crude production from 35% to 31% (EIA, *Today in Energy*, 23 June 2026). The note's OPEC+ argument is framed on a Riyadh–Moscow bilateral, and that framing is incomplete once a producer of this size competes outside the quota system. **The collapse of the June ceasefire.** The United States lifted its naval blockade on 18 June under the memorandum of understanding with Iran, and reimplemented it less than one month into the ceasefire (US Naval Institute News, 13 July 2026). The memorandum, signed on 17 June with a 60-day period for talks, expired on 17 August (Al Jazeera, 17 August 2026). The note made Scenario A conditional on "a durable ceasefire and a lifting of the US blockade, neither of which is in place at the time of writing" (p. 23). A ceasefire was agreed and the blockade was lifted; neither lasted a month, so the durability the condition asks for has still never been tested. **The Iranian leadership transition of 28 February 2026** was not addressed, and it is an omission, not a surprise: it predates the note by two months. RAND commentary by Michael Stephens and John Kennedy, published 3 March 2026, records that "The death of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in a U.S. airstrike on Tehran on February 28 marks the most consequential rupture in the Islamic Republic's political system since 1989". The note treated Iranian decision-making as institutional and therefore broadly modellable. A transition of this kind removes that assumption, and with it much of the confidence attached to any judgement about Iranian policy response inside the three scenarios. ## IV. Where the indicators sit now The note set five indicators with explicit scenario thresholds (p. 24), so a reader could place the market on the map without waiting for an assessment. Read against those thresholds, in the units the note used, they do not agree. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/be/7b/be7be4de-8091-4f47-85b0-523e1e3ed8dd/content/images/2026/09/fig_indicator_panel-1.png) The five indicators the April note set, read against the thresholds it set for them, in the units it used. Two sit in the normalisation band, one in the structural-shift band, and two sit outside every band, Ceyhan below all three and CIPS on a print that predates the note. **Two sit in Scenario A.** Crude through the strait is running at "about two-thirds to three-fourths of pre-war levels" (US Naval Institute News, 4 September 2026, quoting Sal Mercogliano of Campbell University), which against the note's 20 mb/d pre-crisis baseline is 13.3 to 15.0 mb/d, above the threshold of 12 mb/d for the third quarter. And the Urals–Brent spread at $21/bbl sits in the $20–25 band, not the $8–15 of the base case. **One sits in Scenario B.** OPEC+ signals show continued silence on Russia and no compliance push. **Two sit nowhere.** Ceyhan at 170,000 bpd is below the 350–450 kb/d of Scenario B, is not moving toward the 650 kb/d of Scenario A, and shows no Federal–KRG collapse. It is also below the 250 kb/d the note recorded in April, so the corridor has gone backwards while its legal framework was being strengthened. And CIPS has no post-publication reading at all, for the reason given under P02. Three caveats belong on the Hormuz reading before anyone leans on it, and they are larger than any attached elsewhere in this assessment. The note specifies weekly tanker tracking from Vortexa and Kpler; what is used here is one academic's verbal estimate in a news report. That estimate is a share of pre-war levels, converted against a baseline the speaker never invoked. And it is a single date read against a threshold written for the quarter. The same substitution applies to two other indicators: the note specifies a daily Argus or Platts assessment for the spread and gets a CREA monthly average, and specifies the Iraqi oil ministry and Argus for Ceyhan and gets a news report. Three of five indicators are read off instruments the note did not choose, and that is a limitation of this assessment, not a finding about the market. The note provided for a split dashboard. It says that "Scenarios A and B can coexist with the same Hormuz throughput trajectory if the CIPS and Urals-Brent indicators diverge from the supply-side picture", and warns against "over-weighting the supply-side variables (1 and 5) and under-weighting the monetary architecture variables (2 and 3)" (p. 24). That is close to what has happened and not quite it. The note expected the monetary pair to diverge from the supply side. Instead the spread, which the note counts as monetary, has moved with the supply side into Scenario A, and CIPS has no reading. The tie-breaker attached to the figure — "a fragmentation signal on indicators 2 and 3 can outweigh a normalization signal on indicators 1 and 5" — cannot be applied, because one of those two indicators is now a normalisation signal and the other is silent. So the honest composite is that the base case is carried by one indicator of five, the physical market sits in the normalisation band, and the monetary architecture is unobserved on the note's own terms. Restoring an observable series for the settlement variable is the first task of the next assessment, because without it the framework's central claim cannot be tested at all. ## V. What this changes in the method Six corrections follow, and they apply to every note that comes after. **Relative predictions get expressed as ratios when the denominator is the volatile term.** P01 was written in dollars against a benchmark that moved. Spread calls will be stated as a share of the benchmark, with any absolute band given as an illustration at a stated benchmark level. **Predictions and thresholds are different objects.** A prediction says where a variable will go; a threshold says what a reading means. A threshold can confirm or falsify a prediction and is never itself scored as one. Two drafts of this assessment scored a CIPS threshold as though the note had forecast it. **An observation must postdate the claim it tests.** P02 was scored twice against a print from the month before publication. The tracking file now records an observation date against a publication date, and an observation that precedes the note is not evidence about it. **Institutional milestones and physical flows get scored separately, and the term of an instrument is part of the milestone.** P04 was right about Ankara's role and is a one-year deal; Ceyhan throughput is down by a third over the same period. One verdict cannot carry all of that. **Anything labelled an offset is a candidate primary variable.** P05 put Ukrainian strikes in a subordinate clause of a section about gains, and they are now the dominant constraint on Russian refining. If an offset can plausibly exceed the effect it offsets, it is not an offset. **A prediction names the instrument that will measure it.** Three of the five indicators here were read off sources the note did not specify, because the specified ones are subscription services. A note that sets a threshold in Vortexa tanker data and is then assessed on a news interview is not being assessed on its own terms. Future notes will set thresholds only on series NORD can actually obtain. # VI. Next assessment The six-month mark falls on 28 October 2026\. The next score card publishes then, against the same five predictions, with the same vocabulary and the same source discipline, and with a sustained CIPS series in place of a print that predates the note. One prediction is left unscored by that discipline rather than by the market, and that is the point of recording it. P02 will stay unscored until a settlement series exists that postdates the note and separates sanctioned barrels from aggregate flow. Three items are open and are recorded without being resolved. The twelve external sources are verified at their access dates and are not archived, so they are exposed to link rot. Three of five indicators are read off instruments the note did not specify. And the April note carries an internal inconsistency found in the course of this work: its body text gives the next JMMC meeting as 7 June 2026 while Figure 15 on the same page gives 3 May 2026. The tracking framework is a small Python toolkit built for reuse: the predictions, observations and verdicts live in a structured file, the scoring and charts are generated from it, and the source check runs against it before anything is built. It will be applied to every NORD note from here. The original research note, The Strait That Tilts the Balance (28 April 2026, 30 pages), is available as a PDF on request. ### Source appendix Every observation scored in this assessment, with the passage relied upon. Bold references are the observations scored. Indented rows are what each verdict leans on. Assessment date 2026-09-13\. Note reference NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ. | P01 | Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)[July 2026 Monthly Analysis of Russian Fossil Fuel Exports and Sanctions](https://energyandcleanair.org/july-2026-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/?ref=nordenergy.co) accessed 2026-09-13 In July, the price discount of Urals-grade crude oil relative to the global benchmark Brent remained flat at 26%, or USD 21 per barrel. | | --- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | the claim scored NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 23 accessed 2026-09-13 The Urals-Brent spread stabilises in the $8-15 band, anchored on the $7.3/bbl average documented by Incorrys for the seven months immediately preceding the crisis. | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 23 accessed 2026-09-13 The Urals-Brent spread re-widens toward the $20-30 band observed across 2022-2024. | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 29 accessed 2026-09-13 The Urals-Brent spread baselines for each scenario are anchored on the $7.3/bbl seven-month pre-crisis average documented by Incorrys and on the historical 2022-2024 sanctions-era band ($20-30/bbl). | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 Urals-Brent spread. Scenario A: $20-25 in 6m. Scenario B: $8-15 stable. Scenario C: < $8 or inversion. | | P02 | Disruption Banking, reporting Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center data[China's SWIFT Challenger Breaks Records as the Collapse of the Petrodollar Looms](https://www.disruptionbanking.com/2026/04/14/chinas-swift-challenger-breaks-records-as-petrodollar-looms/?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-04-14 · accessed 2026-09-13 On a single day, the SWIFT challenger processed a staggering 1.22 trillion yuan, roughly 178.5 billion US dollars, across nearly 42,000 transactions. | | | the claim scored NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 23 accessed 2026-09-13 The yuan-denominated settlement architecture, validated under operational stress in March, becomes a normalised channel for sanctioned barrels rather than an exception. | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 29 accessed 2026-09-13 CIPS daily transaction baseline ($85-105bn range) and March 2026 surge ($134bn/day) | | P03 | Energies Media[OPEC+ approves final September output increase, completing rollback of 1.65 million bpd voluntary cut](https://energiesmedia.com/opec-september-output-increase-energies/?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-08-06 · accessed 2026-09-13 OPEC+ approved a 188,000 barrel-per-day production quota increase for September 2026\. It marks the end of a phased rollback of the 1.65 million bpd cut the group first put in place in 2023. | | | the claim scored NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 23 accessed 2026-09-13 OPEC+ operates with a tacit acceptance of Russian over-quota production. The credible Saudi threat is geographically harder to mobilise after a demonstrated Hormuz vulnerability, and Riyadh has limited incentive to expend political capital pushing for compliance reform when its own swing-producer lever has been publicly exposed as conditional. | | | supporting OPEC Secretariat[OPEC+ statement, 6 September 2026](https://www.opec.org/pr-detail/1835613-6-september-2026.html?ref=nordenergy.co) accessed 2026-09-13 decided to maintain September 2026 required production for October 2026 as detailed in the table below. | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 Continued silence on RU | | P04 | Al Jazeera[Turkiye and Iraq sign one-year oil pipeline deal amid global shift](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/1/turkiye-and-iraq-sign-one-year-oil-pipeline-deal-amid-global-shift?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-08-01 · accessed 2026-09-13 Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said the transit arrangement guarantees a minimum export capacity of 750,000 barrels per day. | | | the claim scored NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 25 accessed 2026-09-13 Turkey emerges from the crisis as a more consequential intermediary than its pre-crisis profile suggested. The reactivation of the Ceyhan corridor, combined with TurkStream's enhanced role in European gas security during oil-price stress, positions Ankara as a cross-cutting node in both the hydrocarbon transit architecture and the G7-parallel-market interface. | | P05 | EA Analytics via Bloomberg, reported by The Moscow Times[Russian Oil Refining Falls to 24-Year Low After Ukrainian Drone Strikes](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/03/russian-oil-refining-falls-to-24-year-low-after-ukrainian-drone-strikes-bloomberg-a93404?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-08-03 · accessed 2026-09-13 Refineries processed an estimated 3.6 million barrels of crude per day last month, the lowest level since May 2002\. Eighteen Russian refineries were targeted in July. That was roughly one-third below the seasonal norm. | | | the claim scored NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 9 accessed 2026-09-13 First, it is an annualized figure based on a 4.8 mb/d export baseline. But Russia's export disruptions mean effective volumes are materially below that baseline. Applying a conservative lower-bound volume haircut of 15-20% from Ukrainian drone strikes (well below the 33-40% peak capacity loss documented by Carnegie Endowment and Reuters, which represents a temporary peak rather than a sustained annual average) reduces the annual windfall to $42-44 billion. | | U01 | U.S. Energy Information Administration[UAE's exit from OPEC+ reduced the group's share of crude oil production and capacity](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67804&ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-06-23 · accessed 2026-09-13 The UAE produced an average of 3.4 million b/d of crude oil and held an estimated 4.2 million b/d of effective production capacity in 2025\. OPEC (including the UAE) produced an estimated 28.0 million b/d of crude oil in 2025, 35% of total world crude oil production that year. Without the UAE's contribution, the group's share of world total crude oil production would have been 31% in 2025. | | | supporting Atlantic Council[A long time coming: How to understand the UAE's decision to leave OPEC](https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/a-long-time-coming-how-to-understand-the-uaes-decision-to-leave-opec/?ref=nordenergy.co) accessed 2026-09-13 the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that it will exit the OPEC oil cartel on May 1. | | U02 | US Naval Institute News[U.S. Reinstates Naval Blockade in Strait of Hormuz](https://news.usni.org/2026/07/13/u-s-reinstates-naval-blockade-in-strait-of-hormuz?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-07-13 · accessed 2026-09-13 The U.S. lifted its blockade on June 18 as part of the memorandum of understanding between the two countries. The blockade will be reimplemented on Tuesday - less than one month into the ceasefire. | | | supporting Al Jazeera[US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding expires: How and why it fell apart](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/17/us-iran-memorandum-of-understanding-expires-how-and-why-it-fell-apart?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-08-17 · accessed 2026-09-13 The June 17 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran ... a 60-day period for peace talks between the two sides ... expired on Monday | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 23 accessed 2026-09-13 It is conditional on a durable ceasefire and a lifting of the US blockade, neither of which is in place at the time of writing. | | U03 | RAND Corporation[Who - or What - Will Replace Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei? (Michael Stephens and John Kennedy)](https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2026/03/who-or-what-will-replace-irans-supreme-leader-ali-khamenei.html?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-03-03 · accessed 2026-09-13 The death of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in a U.S. airstrike on Tehran on February 28 marks the most consequential rupture in the Islamic Republic's political system since 1989. | | I01 | US Naval Institute News[U.S., Iran Trade Strikes in Strait of Hormuz as Both Battle on Social Media](https://news.usni.org/2026/09/04/u-s-iran-trade-strikes-in-strait-of-hormuz-as-both-battle-on-social-media?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-09-04 · accessed 2026-09-13 The crude oil getting through the strait is about two-thirds to three-fourths of pre-war levels, plus any Iranian oil that might have gotten past the U.S. naval blockade. (Sal Mercogliano, Campbell University) | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 Pre-crisis 20 mb/d -> Apr 2026: 3.8 mb/d | | | thresholds NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 Hormuz throughput. Scenario A: > 12 mb/d in Q3 2026\. Scenario B: 5-8 mb/d stable. Scenario C: < 5 mb/d sustained. | | I02 | Disruption Banking, reporting Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center data[China's SWIFT Challenger Breaks Records as the Collapse of the Petrodollar Looms](https://www.disruptionbanking.com/2026/04/14/chinas-swift-challenger-breaks-records-as-petrodollar-looms/?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-04-14 · accessed 2026-09-13 On a single day, the SWIFT challenger processed a staggering 1.22 trillion yuan, roughly 178.5 billion US dollars, across nearly 42,000 transactions. | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 29 accessed 2026-09-13 CIPS daily transaction baseline ($85-105bn range) and March 2026 surge ($134bn/day) | | | thresholds NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 CIPS daily volumes. Scenario A: < $110bn retreat. Scenario B: $130-150bn sustained. Scenario C: > $160bn escalation. | | I03 | Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)[July 2026 Monthly Analysis of Russian Fossil Fuel Exports and Sanctions](https://energyandcleanair.org/july-2026-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/?ref=nordenergy.co) accessed 2026-09-13 In July, the price discount of Urals-grade crude oil relative to the global benchmark Brent remained flat at 26%, or USD 21 per barrel. | | | thresholds NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 Urals-Brent spread. Scenario A: $20-25 in 6m. Scenario B: $8-15 stable. Scenario C: < $8 or inversion. | | I04 | OPEC Secretariat[OPEC+ statement, 6 September 2026](https://www.opec.org/pr-detail/1835613-6-september-2026.html?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-09-06 · accessed 2026-09-13 decided to maintain September 2026 required production for October 2026 as detailed in the table below. | | | thresholds NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 OPEC+ JMMC signals. Scenario A: Differentiated compliance push. Scenario B: Continued silence on RU. Scenario C: Public Gulf-RU divergence. | | I05 | Al Jazeera[Turkiye and Iraq sign one-year oil pipeline deal amid global shift](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/1/turkiye-and-iraq-sign-one-year-oil-pipeline-deal-amid-global-shift?ref=nordenergy.co) 2026-08-01 · accessed 2026-09-13 The Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline currently carries only about 170,000 bpd of its 1.5-million-bpd capacity | | | supporting NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 30 accessed 2026-09-13 Ceyhan throughput target (650 kb/d under blended routing): ministerial target reported by multiple sources - actual operational throughput as of Apr 2026 corroborated at the lower end of this range | | | thresholds NORD Energy, the April note · NORD-2026-04-ORMUZ, p. 24 accessed 2026-09-13 Iraqi Ceyhan throughput. Apr 2026: 250 kb/d -> 650 kb/d target. Scenario A: Toward 650 kb/d. Scenario B: 350-450 kb/d. Scenario C: Federal-KRG collapse. |