🇮🇷⚔️🚢 Shipping in the Gulf remains dangerous. Confirmed ship strikes in Iran-adjacent waterways remain highly elevated: the 7-day total stands at 8 confirmed hits on October 9th, down from a peak of 11 but higher than any other week except the war’s opening days.

Some caveats apply: UKMTO relies on voluntary reporting and often publishes warnings days late, so recent strikes (and reported/unreported turn-backs) are likely undercounted. A confirmed hit also doesn’t necessarily disable or sink a vessel, let alone “mission-kill” it

Oil flows are down significantly already: Rory Johnston of the excellent Commodity Context estimates 7-day average Hormuz oil flows have fallen to 12–13 MMbpd over the past two weeks, from a peak of 16.2 MMbpd on September 24.

It remains an open question how long shippers and insurers can sustain this pace of attrition. The tanker fleet is large, and mariners are willing to undertake dangers if sufficiently compensated for the risk.

Still, I estimate that somewhere between 5-15% of tanker transits in the SoH are suffering strikes (yes, the error bands are large). Furthermore, Iran appears to be widening its campaign beyond the Strait. All in all, dangerous time for shipping oil.

🔗 Joe Webster

🇺🇦⚔️🇷🇺 Russian diesel/gasoil shipments sink to lowest levels in more than a decade

📝 Anon: 1. The Ukrainians finally managed, after multiple years of drone campaigns against Russian refineries, to take out the majority of Russia's refining capacity and force them to restrict exports

2. The Russians saw this situation coming, restricted exports for a few months to build up a stockpile and drive diesel prices higher, and now they're going to sell off that stockpile at sky high prices, sanctions free.

The answer could also be somewhere in the middle of course.

The signal that it's more likely to be the latter than the former, three weeks ago the Russian government extended its export restrictions to the end of October. Earlier today they abruptly cancelled the restrictions at the same moment Trump announced he was lifting sanctions.

If they were actually constrained by domestic needs, this wouldn't make sense.

@CIG_telegram

🇪🇹⚔️🇪🇹🇪🇷 The ENDF and allied TPF are gaining ground in Tigray from south-eastern and north-western flanks, and are likely to advance towards Axum from both directions in the coming days.

The key question now is how long they can hold these gains once the TDF begins wearing them down.

🔗 AfriMEOSINT

🌀 🇺🇸 🛢 71.51% of oil and 58.84% of gas production is now offline in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

📎 OilPrice.com

🌀 🇺🇸 🛰 Category 3 Hurricane Isaias is barreling toward the Florida Panhandle with sustained winds of 115 mph and gusts up to 150 mph.

📎 Colin McCarthy

📍 🇾🇪 🇾🇪 2026 Houthi Offensive map by John Yamnaya

Operation "And Allah is More Severe in Power and More Severe in Punishment'

Source for movements: SuriyakMaps

📎 John Yamnaya

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 Trump on Venezuela:

To the victor belong the spoils, right? We’re taking out billions and billions of dollars a day.

We deserve it.

📎 Clash Report

🇪🇺🤝🇨🇳China agrees to half hybrid vehicle exports as EU secures tariff savings but there's a catch

What China apparently agreed to is to halve exports of hybrid cars measured against the EU's projections of future exports.

That's according to Maroš Šefčovič himself at his press conference in Beijing: "According to the projection we have, that’s more than halving of the exports of hybrids and plug-in hybrids into the European Union under no change scenario"

In other words, what that almost certainly means in practice is that Chinese exports of hybrid cars to Europe will keep growing, but at a slower pace than the EU projected.

The numbers confirm this: last year China exported roughly 500,000 hybrid cars to the EU Šefčovič said that his deal to halve hybrid exports corresponded to "several million cars over four years" mathematically, for this to happen, the EU's "no change scenario" must assume something like 4 to 6 million Chinese hybrids over four years - that's 1 to 1.5 million a year, two to three times last year's level.

Lastly, small reminder that, unlike the US, the EU largely welcomes Chinese carmakers building factories on its soil, and cars made there aren't covered by this deal at all. That's in fact the EU's stated hope: that limiting exports pushes Chinese brands to produce in Europe.

Europe played the same game with Japan in 1991: an export restraint that lasted until 1999 and ended with Toyota and Nissan building factories in Europe.

Chinese brands are already on that path, with Chery reviving the old Nissan plant in Barcelona.

🔗 https://euperspectives.eu/2026/10/china-eu-hybrid-exports-tariff-deal/

📎 Arnaud Bertrand

🇺🇦❌🇷🇺 — Ukrainian drones struck the Samara oil pumping station in Russia's Samara region overnight, setting it ablaze.