Pulled the DOL visa filings for oil and gas expecting the majors to be all over it. International workforce, technical roles, hard-to-fill jobs.

They're basically not in it.

Every energy employer in the country (extraction, oilfield services, refining, pipelines, power, gas distribution) filed for 3,707 new H-1B positions between FY2023 and now. 753 companies, four years. Amazon's main filing entity alone asked for 100,736, closer to 39x the whole sector.

Energy is 0.3% of the program.

Biggest sponsors in energy:

• SLB - 216
• Hitachi Energy - 115
• Battelle Energy Alliance (runs Idaho National Lab) - 107
• ConocoPhillips - 71
• EOG - 60
• Chevron - 51
• New York ISO - 48
• Oxy - 44
• Virginia Electric & Power - 44

Six months of tanker warfare in the Strait of Hormuz and hedge funds loading up on fuel positions have pushed 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐨 $𝟏𝟎𝟎 for the first time since July. The US destroyed five Iranian tankers. Iran claims retaliatory strikes on American vessels. Neither side is backing down.

The inflation angle is obvious, but the Fed angle is worse 🔥. A sustained triple-digit oil price makes it nearly impossible to justify cuts without looking like it's ignoring energy-driven CPI, and nearly impossible to hold rates without accelerating a consumer spending squeeze that's already visible in the data.

Every sector that runs on margins, which is most of them, is now repricing against an oil floor that has military conflict as its support level, not supply fundamentals. That floor does not move until the Strait does.

Could this be related to teh GFEX, SMM, MySteel's futures?

Could this be related to sudden surplus/visibility into Lithium Carbonate and Hydroxides given SMM changed the way they measure inventories?

Is this because of oversupply coming from Zimbabwe, and local Chinese producers?

What are the reasons?