Marketplace - Will Chevron-Iraq deal solve oil woes?

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

The short answer is no, the Chevron-Iraq deal won’t solve the problem. So why did the U.S.-based energy company sign a vague, preliminary deal to negotiate a pipeline that circumvents the Strait of Hormuz? It’s another sign that energy firms expect the war with Iran to drag on. Also in this episode: Talent managers represent more social media influencers as sponsored content spending grows, a food critic delivers the history of iconic Las Vegas buffets, and the U.S. experiences a fun shortage.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.Read the stories in today’s episode:Inflation is softening. Can it last with war and tariffs?Chevron seeks new route to transport oil from IraqThe professionals behind that sponcon on your feedThe economics behind America’s fun shortageThe Las Vegas buffet, from 1946 to today

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More than 7,000 employees across 30 offices support over 1,000 organizations worldwide. GEP combines agenic AI with three decades of procurement and supply chain data and expertise. Learn more at gEP.com. On the program this Friday, that Friday thing that we do, we'll do a little social media, too. And then, Vegas, baby, from American Public Media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. It is Friday.

Today, this one is the 17th of July. It is always to have you along, everybody. We are in the interests of time. Just going to jump right in. Catherine Rampel is at MS. Now and the bulwark as well. Anna Swanson is at the New York Times. Hey, you two.

Hey, Kai. Okay. Catherine, you get to go first. the six letters with which we will start are CPI and PPI. When you got those inflation numbers, what was the first thing you thought of? Almost who cares? Not who cares, really, but it's like they're just so dated at this point. This is the problem.

These numbers are always very backward-looking, you know, not by design, but just like... Well, yeah, I mean, kind of by design, right? Well, they're not intended to be backward-looking. It's just that's the... only option we have, I guess. But they are especially backward-looking right now because, you know, they just, the sort of erratic policymaking and the on again, off again, on again, off again, war with Iran just makes any data imprint extremely perishable, right? That these snapshots are from a point in time that in some ways is in no way relevant.

to the point in time today, much less in the coming months. So great that the numbers were softer than expected, you know, that inflation was cooler than expected, not as bad as expected. But, you know, since those metrics were calculated, a lot has changed and the war is back on again. So it's really hard to get too excited by a couple of soft imprints. So, Anna, the thing I've been I've been sort of harping all week is that this is a moment in time. They are blips. One or two data points do not a trend make. And in fact, Beth Hammock, the president of Cleveland Fed, came out on LinkedIn and statement either yesterday today and said, you know what? People in my district, the Cleveland Fed District, are saying inflation is broad-based and they're really getting squeezed by it.

And I guess my question to you is there is inflation yet to come, especially now because, as Catherine said, the war is back on in oil is again pricing. Yes, no, I think that's true. I mean, there was some encouraging signs on this in the inflation data, though, which is, you know, not just that consumer prices were down due to oil prices, but also that core inflation, which strips out, you know, more volatile things like food and energy was flat month on month. So, you know, I mean, it's, it's definitely a mixed picture. I mean, things are not great, but I do think that there are. are signs here that if the war were to go away, we would be on, you know, a fairly good footing as an economy. The issue is that we just don't seem to know how to make this pesky war go away, right? The ceasefire was over almost as quickly as it started. It just seems to be ballooning, cascading. So we need to see a lot more stability. Yeah. The if was doing a lot of work there.

Catherine. Yeah. Our new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, on the hill for his Humphrey Hawkins testimony this week. The guy is consistent, if nothing else, right? Not only not offering forward guidance, but also not saying anything about how he's committed to getting inflation back to its 2% target. I thought that was worth a note or two.

Yeah. Look, he has, as you point out, has been consistent for, I think, over a decade now about not wanting to telegraph, not thinking that the Fed should be telegraphing what it plans to do, which also happens to be a somewhat convenient stance right now, whether maybe otherwise some political pressure for the Fed to do things that it is not inclined to do. So why, you know, telegraph that in particular, by which I mean, you know, not cutting rates. So, yeah, I think that he's very hard to get information out of. But that's that's his goal, right? I mean, and that's usually the goal of shares that they don't want to spook markets. They don't want to move markets. But he is particularly

committed to releasing no information at all, whether that means not really answering questions at a press conference other than we'll have a task force for that or otherwise defuncts, deflection questions on the hill. Yeah. Honest Watson, speaking of on again, off again, on again, off again. Tariffs are back in the news. Hello. There was Brazil, I guess, yesterday or two days ago, new tariffs on them.

The tariffs that the president imposed after the Supreme Court shot down his April-a-year-ago tariffs, they expire on Friday next, I think. Jameson Greer, the trade representative, told David Gurra at Bloomberg that, you know, they're working on new stuff. So here we go again. Yes, absolutely. So I know people have gotten really jaded with all the different tariffs. It's hard to keep them straight. But I do think it's worth paying attention to this one because it's a really big deal, both economically, historically. So when this 10% tariff expires, they're going to introduce new tariffs, basically trying to recreate what they had before the Supreme Court case. One is a tariff that's related to forced labor that they're going to introduce new tariffs, basically trying to recreate what they had before the Supreme Court case. One is a tariff that's related to forced labor that they're, imposing on more than 80 countries of roughly 10%. And then they have another one that's going to follow from another trade investigation that's basically unfair manufacturing practices, and that's on more than 40 countries. So, I mean, these are huge measures, again, just totally remaking the global trading system.

And, you know, ones that they think are going to be a lot more durable. You know, this law that they're using has been challenged in court numerous times. but it hasn't been used in this way, this incredibly broad way. So, you know, I guess we'll see. We're kind of on unprecedented ground in terms of tariffs and in terms of the court cases that are challenging them as well. Just what we need, more unprecedented ground. Anna Swanson at the New York Times on this Friday, Katha N. Bell at MS. Now, thanks you too.

Thanks, thanks, Guy. Have a great weekend. Wall Street on this Friday. I mean, you know, things could have been better. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. So, oil, both benchmarks up another four, four and a half percent. Today, Brent North Sea is at almost $88 a barrel. You all know why big oil knows why, too. So some of the oil majors, as they're called, Chevron most specifically is reported to be working on a deal.

They're looking for ways to get oil to market that don't include putting it on a ship and going through the straight of Hormuz. Big, long oil pipelines from well-head to water. It would be a big change in how things are done and it would be tricky to get done. Marketplace's Kristen Schwab has more. Right now, the details of this deal between Chevron and Iraq are vague. It's just a pre-deal deal of sorts, a commitment to exploring an actual deal. Alan Gelder is Senior Vice President of Refining Chemicals and Oil Markets at Wood McKenzie. The vagueness kind of answers it all, really.

The vagueness gives you an indication of the complexity. The complexity of involving multiple governments, of operating in a politically unstable region, of deciding who's going to pick up the tab. There's interest in doing this, but these things are just not quick. What could be relatively quick is construction. Hugh Daigle is a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. A pipeline is, you know, not a particularly complicated thing to install. Plus, one through Syria already exists, though it needs repair. It's been offline since 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Dagle says if all goes well, the pipeline could be running in a handful of years, though it won't totally solve the oil logistics problem. 20 million barrels pass through the Strait of Hormuz each day when it's fully open. Dagle says this pipeline might carry 2 million. Which is not nothing, but you would take a lot more of these pipelines to make up for the disruption that we've seen. Diggle says the big takeaway here, even if this project doesn't happen, is what it signals about where oil companies and producers think the war is heading. The market is starting to see that this might be a prolonged conflict that might have more or less permanent changes in how oil flows out of that part of the world. Chevron seems to think the threat is high enough to consider making a multi-billion dollar bet.

I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. How much of the average person's social media feed do you think is sponsored, bought and paid for by a brand? I'm going to go ahead and say a lot because the industry we're talking about here, influencer marketing for the insiders, is a $37 billion a year operation. And for that kind of money, you better believe there's a growing class of social media professionals making everything work behind the scenes. Marketplace is Maria Hollenhorst. How's that one? Jobs in influencer marketing are like a lot of jobs. I'm always in my own books.

That's Sophia Perez, one of 73 employees at the Sociable Society, a creator management agency based in Southern California. Their business is managing the business of about 300 creators, a lot of lifestyle and beauty influencers. Sophia's job title is creator coordinator. That day, she was uploading draft videos to Google Drive, making sure a couple of influencers had the info they needed to get to an event the next day, and coordinating revisions on a makeup tutorial. The brand requested some, like, edits. The brand in question is Armani Beauty. Part of their advertising budget is going towards this makeup tutorial,

featuring a specific foundation. They just wanted more focus on the actual foundation rather than the entire makeup routine. Because that's what a lot of advertising looks like in 2026. It's not a huge endorsement deal with a major celebrity in a TV commercial, but a tutorial, posted by someone who's a show with a couple hundred thousand followers backed by a creator agency. Sophia is 26 years old and got this job after finishing an MBA and leaving a full-time job

at a bank. My parents thought I was crazy. Because, sure, uploading revisions of makeup tutorials might seem like a step down from working in finance, but this industry is growing. The sociable society is just one small agency, but big companies are getting in on creator management too. CAA, one of Hollywood's biggest talent agencies, recently formed a $250 million holding company to focus on creators, and Accenture, the Global Professional Services firm, acquired another influencer marketing agency called Whaler for an undisclosed sum. People still think that this is like, oh, 20-year-olds just having fun and posting videos. It's not. It's a full business model.

That's Carolyn Suarez, Vice President of Finance and Operations at the Social Social Society. Her team is responsible for collecting payments on behalf of creators. They send out about 2,000 invoices a month, which can range from a few thousand dollars, to more than 100,000 each. This week, I have a couple of creator calls. Jess Golden is Director of Creator Management. Part of her job is managing posting schedules. In some of our contracts, there's 12-hour blackout periods

where they can't post any other sponsor content for a certain period of time. So yesterday was a lot of just juggling that and trying to make sure that everyone ended up happy and that we were still meeting our contractual obligations, but also that the creators weren't going insane and blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot in that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Each sponsored post has a contract that's reviewed by one of the agency's six lawyers.

When we first started, it was really, we lovingly called it the Wild Wild West. I mean, very few rule books to follow. That's Emily Fonda, one of the co-founders of the sociable society, which, like most agencies, is a commission-based business. She started this company 11 years ago with her partner, Jay Kent Hume. The biggest challenge that the space has now is the volume of the volume of, of business that is coming to the creator's way. It's about the back end side that nobody really sees or the non-sexy stuff. That non-sexy stuff like legal contracts and invoices and posting schedules

has put the sociable society on pace to grow another 40% this year and hire around eight more people. I'm Maria Hollenhorst for Marketplace. Coming up. You can get a fresh plate and start over. You can do this as many times as you want. Everything in moderation, gang. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's down 406 points today, about three quarters percent, finished at 52,146.

The NASDAQ gave up 361 points, about 1.4%. 25,500 and 20. A lot of fives and twos there again, I'm just saying. The SP 500 down 76 points, 1%, 74 and 57. For the week, the five days going by, the Dow down 9 tenths percent. The NASDAQ off 2.9 percent. S&P 5. 500 sank one and one half of one percent.

On this day in 1955, the world got his first look at Tomorrowland and Fantasyland when Disneyland debuted in Anaheim, California admission price back then. $1 for adults. That's $12.51 in today's money. Also in today's money, a single-day adult ticket, 104 American Somolians. Walt Disney, meanwhile, fell 2% on the day you're listening to Marketplace. This Marketplace podcast is presented by Tomorrow's Cure. If our health care coverage leaves you wanting to learn.

more about the innovations shaping medicine, tomorrow's cure is for you. It's the chart-topping 2025 Amby Award finalist podcast from Mayo Clinic. Back for a brand new season with new host award-winning journalist Lindsay Sievert, Tomorrow's Cure explores the innovations changing the healthcare landscape. Featuring conversations with leading physicians, researchers, and medical experts, the new season examines everything from AI-powered diagnostics and cutting-edge cancer therapies to surgical technologies improving patient care today. Not sure where to start? Listen to the season premiere featuring MD Anderson Radiation Physicist Dr. Page Taylor and Mayo Clinic Radiation Oncologist Dr. Adam Holtzman. They discuss why carbon ion therapy is generating excitement in the medical community and what it could mean for the future of precision cancer treatment.

So go ahead. Follow tomorrow's cure on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Marketplace. I'm Kyle Rizzol. I think we talked about the American time-use survey the other day. The Bureau of Labor Statistics runs it. The Census Bureau actually does the survey literally asking us how we spend our time. Turns out we spend about five hours a day doing things that aren't work or sleep. And of those five hours, we spend about 30 minutes talking to other people and more than two and a half hours watching TV. That's not great, but it kind of gets worse because as Ben Steaverman reported in Bloomberg the other day,

we're not spending a whole lot of time anymore having fun. Ben, thanks for coming on the program. Thanks for having me. I do not mind telling you that this is a depressing article, first of all. But let's get down to brass tax here. How much less fun are we having and why? If you look at how much time people are spending face-to-face, that has plunged over the last two decades.

And then if you ask people about their happiness, that is also plunged. That suggests we're having a lot less fun, especially the fun that really matters, which is not just scrolling on a phone, but actually getting out in the real world with other human beings and having shared experiences. All right, so let's dig in a little bit. Is it because all of that having experiences stuff is getting more expensive? Is it because we've got our noses buried in our phones? What's going on? Well, I think the common explanation is that it's all social media's fault. It's all the smart phones fault.

But if you compare the United States with other countries that are just as online as we are in Europe and Asia, we have become much more unhappy. So something unique must be happening here that is driving a decline in happiness and a decline in face-to-face interactions. Is it just to pick up on how you start this piece? Is it availability? I mean, we have some number of fewer golf courses and some number of fewer swimming pools. I forget the exact data. But there's just less places to go do this stuff, too. Yeah, I think it's a combination of a few things.

It's, first of all, the price of leaving the house has gone up. And you could look at gas prices, but you can also just look at concert tickets. There's so many more experiences that are premium experiences where, you know, if you just pay the base, basic rate, you're going to be having a much worse experience. You're going to be waiting in longer lines. So there's been both of a price problem where the prices have gone up, but also there's also less places to go. The population of the United States has increased substantially this century, and we have not kept pace in terms of beachfront resorts, in terms of golf courses. We've lost some of these categories quite a bit. Thousands of thousands of thousands of

fewer golf courses, thousands fewer bars and nightclubs. One hates to blame the ultra wealthy, but I'm going to because I just saw an article in New York Times the other day about how the wealthy are enjoying the World Cup. And I'm like, well, yes, that's a different world. But they are bidding up the price of a lot of things that many not incredibly wealthy folk want to do. The thing that I keep thinking about is beach towns. And so who ends up with those prime spots near the shore in those beach towns?

that we used to love to go when we were kids. It's wealthy people. And they can afford to pay twice as much as they did before the pandemic for a summer rental. Whereas if you're just still saving and you're living off your wages, you're really getting squeezed out. All right. End this thing on a high note for me. What's good out there in terms of having fun? I think that we have started to recognize the importance of creating real life.

interactions and you see cities trying to bring it back, bring back life. It could be issuing new liquor licenses to communities where there just aren't very many gathering spots anymore. There are efforts, I think, at the local level that I see to bring back some fun. Get out there and touch grass, gang. Ben Stevenman at Bloomberg. Ben, thanks a lot. Appreciate your time. My pleasure. We're going to do a 180 here to replace that nobody may be literally not ever has accused of having a fun shortage. Las Vegas, Nevada.

Tadro Rau is chief restaurant critic from the New York Times, where she wrote about that city's famous, infamous maybe, but also ever-changing buffet scene. It's not that the very first buffet was in Las Vegas or that Las Vegas invented the buffet, but this hotel called the El Rancho. They started this thing they called the Chuck Wagon Service in 1946. for the really late-night gamblers at the casino.

So from one to four, if you were there gambling, it was like, okay, keep gambling, keep spending your money, and we've got food for you. You don't even have to go to a restaurant and waste your time sitting and ordering and waiting. Just go grab something at the chuck wagon. And it was a really, really smart marketing move. And so it wasn't the very first buffet ever,

but it was this buffet that was widely imitated. across the strip afterwards. Before the pandemic, there were about 70, and I got an email earlier this year from someone who told me that there were only six or seven of those left. So I went to Las Vegas to visit some of the more iconic, extravagant buffets in the casinos on the strip. There was a part of me that just wanted to understand

and appreciate this thing. before it disappears, because it seems like it might. I consulted a lot of people who go to the buffets often, who love them, and they were like, the first thing you do is you walk around the room and you take it all in so that you can strategize. But the thing is, by the time I got to the end of looking at everything, my brain just sort of short-circuited, and I got a whole bunch of things I don't want. and a server said, you're at the buffet.

Like, you can just get a fresh plate and start over. You can do this as many times as you want. So I felt like she was allowing me to have a second chance, and I took it, but I really did lose my mind a little bit. I really loved observing the people around me and all their different strategies and the way different families have different ways of approaching the buffet. Some people do it all together as a group. It's so beautiful.

It's like multi-generational, multilingual. There are kids, there are grandparents. It's just every kind of person, every kind of family. It's a real delight. Dining culture in Las Vegas has changed a lot on the strip, and celebrity restaurants have become more of the focus. And then I think, you know, GLP-1s are maybe reshaping the way that we go out to eat. Although I just think, despite all these things,

that there's so much joy to be found in an hour and a half at an totally absurd and extravagant buffet. So I really hope they do not disappear completely. And they're part of like the magic of Las Vegas. Tejira Rao, you can read her in the New York time. This final note on the way out today, just because we were talking tariffs with Anna up at the top of the program, President Trump is apparently upset with Canada over the smoke drifting down from the wildfires up there. So today he said on his social media feed that, and this is a quote,

the costs of the pollution will of necessity be added to the tariffs Canada is currently paying. I know y'all know this, and I know I'm banging my head against the wall, but who is going to tell him that it's not Canada that is paying the tariffs? Anyone? Anyone? Our theme music was composed by B.J. Leiderman, Marketplace's executive producers, Nancy Fargolly. Joan Griffith is the chief Content Officer, Neil Scarborough is the Vice President and General Manager. I'm Kyle Risdell. Have yourselves a great weekend, everybody. We will see you back here on Monday, all right?

This is APM. Have you ever daydreamed about leaving your office job and starting life off the grid? I'm Rene McReis, host of This Is Uncomfortable. And this week on the show, I talk with one woman whose homesteading dream became a reality and then a nightmare. You're one disaster away from losing everything. And for us, that disaster happened really early on and we could never get on top of it. It was just this continuous cycle of poverty. Be sure to listen to This Is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.