The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Global Energy Stressors: Can Anybody Help || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Are there any countries that might be able to ease the global energy stress?Saudi Arabia might be able to ramp up output, but Houthi attacks could take that away in an instant. Producers like Guyana, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada, and Angola can only add small, incremental volumes, but most major expansion projects are years away.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4hSheOj

I guess I have a 3.5. This is the backside of that crown. Let's talk about who might be putting other little volumes in. It's not a lot. First of all, secondary peak of bison. Most spare capacity in the world comes from OPEC, specifically from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates before it left OPEC this year. They're the only ones who really maintain fields that can turn off. With that in mind, these are all countries that are constrained. what they need do now. The Saudis would probably be the ones with the best bet, but now that they have to export everything through the Red Sea and the Qutis are regularly attacking ships,

most notably tankers, we should actually expect more Saudi crude to go offline rather than come online. In the Western Hemisphere, we've got Guyana, which is a new producer, but their big boost was over the last three years. It's, again, only incremental gains, 100,000 here and there, maybe. Venezuela, in the best case scenario, now that Maduro's gone, might have gotten a fresh million. But now because of the earthquake, if they get half that, it'll be a really good day, really good year. Brazil, no, incremental again. Who am I forgetting? Canada. Canada has audacious plans to massively expand their export capacity, but these plans will not happen this year, next year, or the year after.

reduction. The heavy oil sands of Alberta take years, if not decades to bring online as well. So the pipeline is only one part of the project. But the only thing that we might see earlier is that Keystone is being resurrected and it probably will be built this time, but not this year and probably not next year either. So that's an issue for 2008 where we might see a half a million to a million fresh barrels. That's not going to help this summer. The only other other thing is that Angola is all offshore, it's all deep, and it is failing. So actually, the incremental gains that we get out of the Western Hemisphere this year might be enough to compensate for losses out of Angola, but really not much else. It all adds up to a pretty bleak picture for energy

markets. I would love to give you pricing advice. That's a lie. I have no intention of giving you pricing advice, because what's going on in the markets right now makes very little sense. Keep in mind that oil traders take their price cues from data. And the data sucks. Iran doesn't tell us what they're producing or what they're shipping. We've got the shadow fleet out of Russia. The Russians aren't even generating data anymore that you can then look at. And of course, the Chinese are a bit of a black hole. We know they've had a little demand of destruction. We know they've had a little fuel switching. But mostly they just don't publish anything anymore. And it's unclear if they're even collecting the data. About the only thing we can tell is that they have reduced their exports of refined oil product, which has impacted everybody in the Pacific Rim. And that's really the end of what we know. best guess is that the shortage of 10 to 12 million barrels per day is going to go up over the next three months for the reasons I've already talked about, plus, of course, the Houthis. So the world has significantly less of a buffer now than it did a month ago or three months ago or five months ago. And at some point, that's going to lead to some sort of market reaction. And when that happens, then we get some of the biggest demand destruction that we've seen at least since the press.

spikes of 2007 to 2009 so something to look forward to