Goehring & Rozencwajg Natural Resource Market Q4 2025 Commentary

2026-03-16 08:00:00 ET

When the Strait Closed

Table of Contents

When the Strait Closed

The Commodity Bull Market Has Barely Begun

Fourth Quarter 2025 Market Commentary

Surging Uranium Demand Meets a Fragile Supply Base

Silver's Sell Signal

Copper: Slowing Chinese Demand Meets Rising Supply

The outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf has already reverberated through global oil markets with remarkable speed. Rather than attempt a full survey of supply-and-demand trends in both oil and natural gas—topics we will return to in a future letter—we will focus here on the more immediate consequences arising from the effective closure of the Straits of Hormuz. In our next quarterly commentary we intend to revisit the broader fundamentals: production trends, depletion dynamics, balancing items, and inventory behavior in both the global oil market and U.S. natural gas.

As we go to press on March 11, 2026, the Straits of Hormuz remain effectively closed, disrupting the transport of roughly 20 percent of global oil production and a similar share of seaborne LNG supply. In absolute terms, this represents approximately 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and about 10 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas. By the metric that ultimately matters most to energy markets—daily physical volume—the disruption may already rank as the largest shock the industry has ever experienced. The consequences have been immediate: refiners around the world have begun scrambling for alternative crude supplies, often at sharply higher prices.

BY THE METRIC THAT ULTIMATELY MATTERS MOST TO ENERGY MARKETS—DAILY PHYSICAL VOLUME—THE DISRUPTION MAY ALREADY RANK AS THE LARGEST SHOCK THE INDUSTRY HAS EVER EXPERIENCED.

China responded quickly by imposing export restrictions on refined petroleum products on March 11 ^th , seeking to safeguard its own domestic supply. As rising U.S. shale production has dramatically reduced American reliance on imported oil, China has emerged as the world’s dominant crude importer by a considerable margin. Much of these imports originate in the Persian Gulf and, increasingly, from Iran itself. Indeed, in many strategic war-game scenarios involving a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, analysts have long assumed that one of the earliest moves by adversaries would be an effort to choke off oil shipments to China through the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits of Malacca. In a sense, a version of that scenario is unfolding today....

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