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The oil market is tight. Demand for oil exceeds supply coming from oil fields. Were it not for the release of oil reserves from the SPR and OECD inventories and lockdowns in China all year, oil prices would have traded higher this year.

President Biden noted that he plans to refill the SPR when oil prices get down to $75 per barrel. That plan is hard to reconcile with OPECt's price target near $100 per barrel. Yes, we are headed toward a recession, but unlike in 2008 or during Paul Volcker's reign, oil prices aren't collapsing as production capacity hasn't grown recently (shale is fantastic, but production is not growing shale was a sugar high and we are coming off the high, slowing on the margin) and so getting to $75 per barrel will be hard. So how will the U.S. refill the SPR?

To use Pippa Malmgren's terms, World War Ill already started, it's just that it is a hot war in cold places (in space, cyberspace, underwater, and Svalbard) and a cold war in hot places (militarizing islands in the Pacific and mines in Africa). Hot wars in cold places also involve corridors of power that determine who gets to use cutting-edge technologies (the U.S.'s technology blockade of China), who gets paid how much for commodities (the G7's price cap on Russian oil), and how commodity trades get settled (Moscow's demand to get paid in gold as an analogue to Moscow's demand this year to get paid in rubles for gas).