By Avi Salzman
The world is grappling with the largest energy supply shock ever as the Iran war heads toward a fourth month. Asian countries are rationing fuel, governments are emptying their crude-oil stockpiles, airlines are canceling thousands of flights, and Middle East alliances are fracturing.
Barron's convened an all-star panel of energy experts on May 8 to discuss the ramifications for the global economy and investors. This year's energy roundtable panelists, who met on Zoom, included Lloyd Byrne, head of North American energy research at Jefferies; Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets; Seth Kirkham, chief investment officer for global equities at Galvanize Climate Solutions; and Dan Pickering, founder and chief investment officer of Pickering Energy Partners.
An edited version of the conversation follows, including a discussion of the panelists' favorite stocks.
Barron's: Thank you, everyone, for joining us at such a fraught and busy time. Helima, you've spent many years analyzing energy production in the Middle East. What stage of the war are we in, and has the full impact been felt yet in energy prices?
Helima Croft: We are in a ceasefire-with-no-oil purgatory. We don't seem to have material movement toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz [the key energy transportation waterway from the Persian Gulf]. The Trump administration is probably weighing exit strategies and mostly just [planning to stay] the course for a few more months in the hope it can induce Iran to make significant concessions at the negotiating table. But none of the options -- negotiation, escalation, or just cutting its losses and getting out -- is a path to a quick resolution of the energy bottleneck.
The best-case scenario, which I don't think we are close to achieving, would be some type of resolution with the Iranians whereby they agree to basically disband the Tehran tollbooth and allow free access to the strait. Even then, it's going to be a protracted process to bring back oil production. Just de-bottlenecking the strait is going to take a couple of months.
Also, the national oil companies in the region shut down oilfields. Certain countries will be faster to bring back production in a benign scenario. The Saudis will be a three- or four-month story, but the Iraqis have serious physical infrastructure challenges. It could be six months before we start seeing real recovery in Iraqi production. And that is if we get a negotiated opening now.
So, why haven't oil prices risen more? Crude oil is still trading around $100 a barrel, which isn't extraordinary from a historical perspective.
Croft: The White House has been exceptional at managing sentiment. It has managed sentiment from the start that this will be a short war. If you had told most market participants on Feb. 28 that we would be talking about a multimonth disruption, with 12.5 million to 13 million barrels of crude lost on any given day, they would have had a much higher price forecast. Now the market is essentially a broken barometer. It's in no way indicating the degree of risk in the system.
When will prices reflect the truth?
Croft: When we get to summer, it's going to be harder to paper over the degree of the supply shock. Right now, we are still working off of the 400 million-barrel strategic-stockpile release.
Dan, what is the view from Houston? Do you agree that we haven't seen the worst?
Dan Pickering: The amount of complacency around the path we are on is way, way, way too high. What Helima laid out was months and months of continued challenges. We are going to tank bottoms on inventories if that is the case. The price implications are only going to get more obvious over time, and by the time it hits people in the face, it is going to be too late to do much about it.
American energy firms have made a lot of money because of the war. Do they mostly see it as a chance to make a windfall, or are they unsettled because of the volatility in the market and the fact that their end customers are suffering?
Pickering: The unsettling piece for the folks in the industry is that we may have high enough prices that they make a lot of money, but they could have a real demand problem. We could be turning off three million, five million, or even eight million barrels a day of demand. That will be cyclical for a while, but the risk is it could be structural. Do you want to have $80 oil for five years? Or do you want to have $140 oil for a year?
I think the industry would prefer duration. The challenge is that this is the train wreck you can see coming. Frankly, the price signal in the intermediate term isn't particularly dramatic -- it is low-$70s, high-$60s oil, nothing that's going to spur a huge amount of incremental spending activity [by oil companies]. So, the industry is sitting on its hands.
The other piece that domestic oil companies are worried about is being viewed as profiteers and becoming scapegoats for what is happening, when the reality is that they aren't getting signals from their investors, from the price, from the marketplace, or the commodity markets to really do much other than see how this plays out.
Will U.S. gasoline prices go above $5 a gallon?
Pickering: How does it not happen? If the globe is short 10 million or 12 million barrels a day of supply, how do you not see higher prices? It is somewhat inevitable. Managing sentiment can be done for a while, but you can't manage the physical market forever. U.S. prices are somewhat insulated right now, but they are headed higher.
The inevitability of what is happening seems pretty clear for folks in the energy community, because of the timing of all this. If there is a solution to the war soon, then it will take time to bring supply back on. That's months. The broad market expects a light switch to be turned on. The real shock comes when you try to turn the light switch on and nothing happens.
Lloyd Byrne: I have a question. There is no pressure on the Trump administration [to end the war] because oil prices aren't going up, right? But if gasoline tops $5 or $6 a gallon and the 10-year [Treasury yield] starts moving higher, won't there be a forced resolution? Is that what this situation needs?
Croft: I love this question. I don't know what the pain point for the administration would be, but how do you get out? Do you do a unilateral exit? Then, do you say to countries that depend on the Strait of Hormuz, "You solve this," and Iran has tollbooth rights? The U.S. unilaterally leaving won't get us back to Feb. 27.
Are we going to try to force Iran to stop controlling the Strait of Hormuz? That's what some of our regional allies are saying: "Finish the job." Are we going to have a massive military deployment? Are we going to try to change the government in Iran? I don't see a fantastic set of options.
Lloyd, do you agree that the oil price is a broken barometer and the market is irrational?
Byrne: I agree with Helima. I don't think the proper signals are coming to the market. Prices aren't high enough yet to hurt demand, but the back of the curve [longer-dated energy futures] just isn't high enough to incentivize a short-cycle [production] response.
Seth Kirkham: Don't we have to ask ourselves why the signals aren't materializing? It's usually wrong to stand in your ivory tower shouting out the window that a broad swath of people in the market are mistaken. In my 30 years' experience in markets -- less discreetly focused on oil markets than some of the others here -- that has been a dangerous tactic.
My perception is that things are different this time. During the oil-price shocks in the 1970s and '80s we had limited alternatives, but still saw high-cost and geopolitically unstable [energy sources] getting kicked off the [price] curve. We used to have oil burners at power plants in the '70s and '80s. There were almost none left in developed markets four or five years after the oil-price shocks.
Now we have alternatives. We didn't need that price signal for Vietnam to cancel a gas-fired power-station project just two weeks after the war started and replace it with a renewable-energy project. We didn't need that price signal to see significant shifts in the near-term demand for electric vehicles versus internal-combustion-engine vehicles. We are in a different paradigm. Perhaps we were already on the road to substantially lower long-end oil pricing. We have peak oil [demand] in China. China is now importing less oil sequentially year on year.
In the short term, there is the risk of energy price spikes and even curtailments because of the lack of availability. But isn't this longer-curve price reaction telling us something? We shouldn't assume the market is wrong.
Is it telling us that the world is going to move off of fossil fuels a little faster because of this?
Kirkham: Precisely.
Pickering: I understand what Seth is saying, but those shifts feel like they will happen over longer periods of time, not as soon as 2027 or '28. I spend a ton of time worried that I'm in an echo chamber and the market is smarter than me. I hear the bear case -- that we are going to be swamped with supply as soon as this war ends. I just don't know that the [energy] substitution process will happen in the next few years.
Seth, should investors in more-traditional types of energy become more flexible about alternative-energy investments, understanding that there is a shelf life in oil and gas?
Kirkham: That is an inevitability. Oil and gas aren't going to go away. Most assumptions I have seen for a net-zero type world assume somewhere between 20 million and 50 million barrels a day of traditional energy consumption. But there are good returns on investment in shifting your choice of powertrain from internal combustion engine to batteries, and it's happening at an accelerating rate. China will consume less oil this year than last year.
I remember "peak oil" conversations 20 years ago. That never materialized. The cost curve of internal-combustion-engine vehicles came down, emerging markets developed more rapidly than people expected, and the penetration of vehicles in very large markets such as India and China got to a point that people didn't expect. Now, both of those markets are going in the other direction.
Lloyd, when you read oil company earnings releases and listen to company conference calls, do you detect management anxiety about the companies' core business models, or do you hear the same confidence as in the past?
Byrne: The industry is surprised by the commodity reaction to the war. I listen to what Seth is saying, and I expect the transition to alternative energy sources to accelerate globally. It will probably be faster than any focus on ESG [environmental, social, and governance factors] could have achieved.
When we look at the market, we try to think about the major themes, and where wealth is being transferred. It's going into artificial intelligence, power, and electrification. Themes include geopolitical conflict, reshoring, and deglobalization. A lot of opportunities are being created for some energy companies, and for others, things are changing. Companies face many questions. Do they spend more on the business? Do they return more to shareholders? The opportunities and answers will be different across all the different parts of the energy complex.
Helima, how should investors think about the United Arab Emirates dropping out of OPEC? Is this the end of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries?
Croft: I don't think it's the end of OPEC. People have been writing the OPEC obituary for years. Once Adnoc [the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company] made the decision to invest $150 billion in expanding spare capacity, there was a significant question mark over how long they wanted to remain in OPEC and have production restraints.
Leaving OPEC was primarily a commercial decision. The UAE has been consistently producing at fairly elevated levels. It reflects the desire of the UAE to monetize that investment in spare capacity.
Will there be a market-share war after the war ends, with the UAE and Saudi both trying to ramp up production to high levels?
Croft: Since the UAE exit, both sides have been trying to take the temperature down. Their comments have been instructive; they aren't looking to flood the market with oil. In the immediate aftermath of the war, countries are going to have to build back infrastructure. They are going to have to get their fields up and producing, so overproduction isn't an issue we will be dealing with for some six months postwar. I am not worried about a market-share war on day one after the war ends.
So, we shouldn't be concerned about a massive oversupply after the war ends?
Croft: OPEC had little spare capacity when this war began. Most of the producers except Saudi were maxed out. There wasn't a lot of production restraint. What happens next will be largely a Saudi decision. What is Saudi's appetite to manage the market?
Pickering: Remember that the other dynamic that will play out postwar is that everyone will be rebuilding their oil inventories. The U.S. strategic reserve was at 60% going into this conflict, and we are pulling it down from there. Around the world, reserves are going to go to full and then maybe expand from there. For a time, people will want every barrel they can get. It will be a while before we are worried about OPEC members having to manage the market again.
Kirkham: What happens in a "right tail" [unexpected] event? I hate to be cynical about American politics, but President Donald Trump's goal is to get mortgage rates and energy prices down ahead of the midterm elections. The window is getting tight.
Iran is under pressure, as well. It's struggling to generate hard currency right now. The risk for the Iranian government is that inflation gets out of control. They have to keep producing local currency to pay the army.
So, let's assume there is a right-tail event where there is a solution to the Strait of Hormuz, and simultaneously, some sort of solution to the war in Ukraine. The short-term upward pressure on oil prices will be substantial, and it will be necessary to bring back as much production as possible. But what does it mean for prices in 2028, '29, and '30 if in the next three months both of those scenarios prevail? That supply coming back could actually put further downward pressure on prices.
Croft: I wouldn't put high odds on that, but it's worth playing it out. If the clock starts the moment there is a deal, you have to get ships back to the Persian Gulf and figure out how to get fields operational. It becomes a logistics issue as opposed to a policy problem. Even in that perfect scenario, it will take months to resolve the issue. It would be amazing if that were the end state, but how close are we to that?
The Iranians have endured a lot of economic pain before. The key indicator to look for is any splits in the country's security services. If the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] maintains a monopoly on the use of force, it can withstand a lot more economic pain than people realize. Concessions would start to come if there is a split in the security services and internal control starts to dissipate.
I expect the war to stretch into the summer. It won't end in the next couple of weeks, if you are banking on the Iranians throwing in the towel. It's more important to look at what Trump can offer to get this over, as opposed to waiting for the Iranians to break.
We haven't talked yet about the other big geopolitical oil story of the year: Venezuela. Helima, how is the Venezuela situation different from Iran, and do you expect Venezuela to be ramping up energy production soon?
Croft: In Venezuela, the U.S. administration made the decision not to push heavily initially for elections or install opposition leader [Maria Corina] Machado, but to do a deal with the existing authorities. The U.S. has privileged stability over social and political transformation. The hope is that you can achieve an economic transformation and improve the operating environment there.
In a best-case scenario, we should see a couple of hundred thousand additional barrels of oil coming out of Venezuela in the near term. It isn't going to be a rush to a million barrels overnight.
What does this discussion mean for energy stocks? Lloyd, tell us which stocks you favor.
Byrne: In commodities markets, the emphasis is shifting from speed and efficiency -- "just-in-time" supplies -- to making sure you have security of supply. That's an important change for oilfield-services companies. I expect a Saudi spending cycle, and an emphasis on global gas away from the strait. That means more offshore and deepwater drilling. International shale drilling is one of the more interesting plays.
Continental Resources is looking to expand in Argentina and Turkey. EOG Resources is exploring in the Emirates. From a company perspective, the developing capital cycle, coupled with security-of-supply concerns, leaves Baker Hughes well positioned, given that it's basically a global gas industrial. If you apply an average oilfield-services multiple, the remaining Industrial & Energy Technology, or IET, division trades at about 11.5 times two-year forward enterprise value to Ebitda [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization]. That's well below pure-play industrials.
Investors have been worried about the duration of the IET backlog because Baker historically has been an LNG [liquefied natural gas] company. But it has as much power [segment] backlog as IET backlog. It is going into a service part of LNG, which will be a far more profitable part of the LNG business. Also, geothermal is becoming increasingly important for the company, and so are small modular nuclear reactors.
Baker's industrial and energy peers -- Caterpillar, Siemens, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Emerson Electric, and companies like that -- trade at about 17 times two-year forward Ebitda. We are only assuming a multiple of 14 times in arriving at our price target for the company. When you start talking about using a 14 multiple to get to your price target, $80, that's of interest to the generalist investor.
What other companies fit the security-of-supply theme?
Byrne: Services company SLB is still in a good position. It's more international and offshore. SLB, the former Schlumberger, is levered to the Middle East. It is levered to Saudi and offshore cycles. The stock has moved higher, but people are waiting to see the earnings inflect. That inflection would come postwar with spending by the Saudis. Then, there will be an offshore cycle as people look for security of supply. We're probably going to have an offshore gas cycle, which is much more service-intensive than oil.
What else looks interesting today?
Byrne: Mid-cap E&P [exploration and production] stocks are compelling. We upgraded Devon Energy this morning as the company closed its transaction with [fellow producer] Coterra Energy. As most of you probably know, stocks tend to underperform in a merger situation because investors worry about the resource quality; they are unsure about the pro forma guidance, and stock buybacks stop. Once a deal closes, management provides clarity, and importantly, buybacks restart.
Devon has an 18% free-cash-flow yield with oil at about $68 a barrel on the forward curve. If it does nothing and oil falls from $94 to $68, it still can buy back the company in a little over five years.
If the oil price moves higher, the free-cash yield rises to almost 25%. The relative valuation looks good; the absolute valuation looks good. There are a lot of catalysts for Devon, but the stock looks attractive even with the free cash flow you'll get at $68 a share.
Ovintiv is another producer I like. The story is similar. It has a 20% free-cash-flow yield, with a management team that has done a good job. The company has two core energy-producing assets -- in the best part of the Permian Basin and in the Montney Formation in Canada. This is one of the best assets in Canada. The team is committed to returning free cash flow. I expect Ovintiv to continue to buy back stock and reduce the share count. We have a price target of $80.
One more thing: If you apply the valuation that Shell recently paid for ARC Resources, a Montney player, to Ovintiv, the price target would rise to $110.
Some of these companies, such as Devon, depend on natural gas, which hasn't performed well. It recently traded down to an annual low. Do you see a brighter future for gas prices and demand?
Byrne: People are worried about North American natural gas, and their worries are tied to the future cost curve. If you go back to 2010, the U.S. was producing 60 billion cubic feet a day and the 12-month forward gas price was $3.40 per million British thermal units. The gas market is at 110 BCF a day today, and the gas price on the 12-month forward curve is $3.40. So, you've almost doubled production and the gas price hasn't moved anywhere.
The interesting case about gas isn't the price, though. You have a power-demand cycle coming. People pooh-pooh the amount of power in the baseload [power plants] that you're going to run in North America, but it could be 60% higher than today in the next three, four, five years. And, we have another seven BCF a day in LNG offtake coming out of the U.S. So, you have this demand-pull coming.
We like EQT. The argument for owning EQT is that it benefits from that demand growth. At the forward curve, it's trading at a 12.5% free-cash-yield. If the company can add two BCF a day of demand -- it's a little over six BCF today -- each BCF would be about $750 million of free cash flow. Thus, you would have a company with a 12.5% free-cash-flow yield adding a 3% free-cash-flow yield through production growth in the future.
What's your price target on EQT?
Byrne: We're at $77 a share, implying 37% upside.
Dan, are you similarly optimistic about natural gas? What are you looking at now?
Pickering: Oil has sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Gas is kind of an embedded option in energy stocks today. I don't think investors are paying that much attention. It is arguably a better long-term story than the oil story, but the oil story has just captured so much attention.
I'll give you three ideas. Vista Energy is an oil-and-gas producer focused on Argentina. The stock is trading around $65, and the company has a $7 billion market cap. This is a growth story. The company is exploiting the Vaca Muerta play in Argentina, which to my mind is like the Permian Basin 15 years ago. It's a shale play benefiting from technology developed in the U.S.
Vista has a deep inventory of projects. A consortium of producers in Argentina has built an export pipeline, so there is now the ability to export crude. Exports are priced in Brent [the benchmark international crude price]. The company averaged about 115,000 barrels of production a day last year. We think they will produce 165,000 barrels daily this year, helped by acquisitions but also organic growth. Next year, we could be looking at 195,000 barrels a day, and their target in 2030 is 300,000-plus.
Vista is going to double production in an area where the government has gotten more friendly. It should throw off $1 billion a year of free cash flow in a couple of years. But the real story is that production growth. At $75 oil, the company's net asset value is probably $120 a share. We see three ways to win. The oil price might go higher. Production increases, and the cash flow goes up. And, they might be bought. Chevron or another U.S. player might be an interested buyer.
What is your second idea?
Pickering: My second name is Crescent Energy. This is the opposite of Vista. It has a $4 billion market cap and quite a bit of debt. It isn't a growth story. This is a grind-it-out, mostly production-oriented story. Crescent is about 40% oil, 60% gas. Free cash generation is going to bring the debt down quickly. Crescent has financial leverage and operational leverage to commodity prices. The stock is around $12, and the net asset value is in the low $20s, call it $25 a share.
Halliburton is my third name. You heard the argument for what will happen with oilfield activity internationally. Halliburton has leverage to U.S. activity, as well. It is a beat-and-raise [earnings estimates] story for the next few years. The stock is trading for 17 times expected 2026 earnings, and 14 times '27 estimates. My guess is that it probably trades at 20 times earnings of $3 or $3.25 a share at some point, which gives you a $39 stock that goes to $60. The free-cash-flow yield is 7%.
I like the thematic around Halliburton: the dual U.S. and international exposure. It may take a little longer for the oilfield-services story to play out than the upstream names, but I like the exposure.
Will North American oil producers start ramping up output? Diamondback Energy said it would add a rig, but most companies have been coy. A big ramp-up would help Halliburton.
Pickering: The writing is on the wall that U.S. energy companies are going to spend more money when the near-term volatility comes down. Will it be in a "big" way? I have a hard time seeing the U.S. move the needle much between here and year end -- maybe by 100,000 barrels a day. Remember, we are at 13.8 million barrels a day.
Seth, what are some stocks you like?
Kirkham: The energy transition is happening faster than we anticipated for a variety of reasons. It's no longer a moral imperative. It is an economic rationale. Geopolitical supply issues are driving this. My first name, CATL, or Contemporary Amperex Technology, is one of the most important companies in the world. It is a Hong Kong-- and Shanghai-listed battery manufacturer. CATL has a 40% market share globally and that is after having essentially exited the U.S. market because of "Liberation Day" tariff effects. Therefore, it could be a beneficiary of the trade talks between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Trump.
CATL accounts for 60% of the global research-and-development spend on batteries. It has a 20% Ebitda margin. It is currently building 45% of its existing production capacity in new facilities all over the world. It's building in Hungary and Spain, and with Ford Motor in North America. The inflection point for batteries came when pack prices dropped below $100 per kilowatt-hour. At that point, storage is an option for renewables to solve the intermittency issue.
We think battery markets in the aggregate can grow north of 30% a year through the end of the decade. These technologies are using batteries: electric vehicles, energy generation, and grid storage. This is an example where cheaper, faster, better is now the mantra. Electric vehicles have a lower cost of ownership, both because of maintenance and because electricity in most markets is cheaper than the fuel equivalent. The cost of purchase now is equal to or lower than an internal combustion engine. EVs are faster, more fun to drive, and quieter. The product is better.
What else are you looking at?
Kirkham: My second name is a good example of what Lloyd mentioned earlier. If you can find the pinch point in fast-growing markets, there are exciting opportunities. The U.S. is seeing an incredible AI revolution. AI is putting huge demands on not just generation but also the grid. Transmission and distribution has been a difficult market in the U.S. for a few years.
People describe the U.S. electric grid as the biggest machine on the planet. There are half a million miles of transmission and distribution high-voltage grid in the U.S. In each of the past five years, on average, only 200 miles of new transmission and distribution lines have been erected. The Department of Energy thinks we need 7,500 miles of incremental grid by the end of this decade. We're talking about 7,500 miles of growth, at least, on an annualized basis in the amount of transmission and distribution that needs to be installed to meet the demands of AI.
One of the big opportunities is Valmont Industries, the largest supplier of poles, pylons, and substation hardware in the U.S. Valmont has a 40% market share of pylons and poles supplied to the companies behind electric grids. It installs grid infrastructure on behalf of utility customers. Wall Street expects approximately 10% growth in Valmont's infrastructure business, which is 70% of the company's revenue. [Analysts are] massively underestimating this opportunity. And yet, this stock trades at less than 20 times next year's expected earnings.
The last stock I'll talk about is an EPC, or engineering, procurement and construction company. It is called SOLV Energy. SOLV is focused on solar plus [battery] storage. It has installed 18 gigawatts of generation, making it the No. 2 EPC company for renewables in the U.S.
What is the bullish case?
SOLV is trying to deliver on the demand driven by new AI load growth. Human capital is one of the biggest constraint factors. The ability to have people on site to do the electronic connections, put the panels in place, even to install the footings for the frame that solar panels go on is a scarce resource. The companies that can provision these services are seeing rapid growth and substantial improvements in their contract terms, mostly resulting in improved gross margin.
There is a huge wave of cheap U.S. battery supply coming, and the solar market in the U.S. is huge. In the past two years, even under Trump's administration, the majority of the new generation installed in the U.S. grid was solar. One of the other attractive things is that we are now seeing a huge amount of automation come into the construction of solar fields. It is going to take about 30% out of the cost of installation, and massively increase the speed. In some use cases, the robots installing the panels and the humans doing the electrical connections can triple the speed of installation.
This is a business where growth is massively underestimated by the market. SOLV trades at half the multiple of the other EPC names listed in the U.S. and has the biggest upside relative to consensus estimates. It has the highest growth potential in front of it.
Thanks, Seth. Let's move to a lightning round of predictions, with the understanding that these might not be the official projections of your respective institutions. First question: At what price will Brent crude trade at the end of 2026?
Croft: That's an easy one. It depends on when this war ends. If the war goes on for another three months, the price will be $100 a barrel or above. If we get a cease-fire, it could be in the $80s or $90s. I don't think we are going back to $60 or $70 this year.
Byrne: I think the crisis is solved and we're looking at probably mid-$80s Brent.
Pickering: $95.
Kirkham: I'm the least well equipped for this, but I would say it is likely to be solved. And I expect oil will be sub-$100 a barrel. But it is possible the outer end of the curve may not have seen the lows of the year.
In what year will the U.S. start up its next nuclear reactor?
Byrne: 2030.
Pickering: 2033.
Kirkham: If we're talking about a traditional pressurized reactor, we're talking about the mid-2030s. It's possible that a few SMRs [small modular reactors] go into production before the end of the decade.
When will the last U.S. coal plant shut down -- if ever?
Kirkham: The back end of the 2030s.
Byrne: Never
Pickering: 2050.
Will Venezuela ever get back to three million barrels of daily oil production?
Croft: It is a long road back. Honestly, production is going to grow by a couple of hundred thousand barrels incrementally, but it will require a significant turnaround. The trajectory is positive in Venezuela, but three million barrels will take a protracted period.
Byrne: I spent a lot of time in Venezuela in my early life. Three million? No way. The country is at 1.1 million or so today.
Pickering: History says that when these things open up, you can go back to prior levels. So, I am going to say yes, but I'm glad you aren't forcing me to give a time frame.
Kirkham: Despite the fact that there are a number of refineries in America that need that heavy oil, I'm going to take the under. I'm going to say that production isn't needed.
Will Iran have some role in policing the Strait of Hormuz after the war ends?
Croft: Yes.
Byrne: Unfortunately, yes.
Pickering: No, because that's too complicated.
Kirkham: Yes, because it's the only route Trump has to finding a solution to this in the near term.
Thank you, all.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
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