My head is full of grizzly mania, the Russian bear is trapped in Ukraine’s military bear trap and the black gold bears are laughing all the way to the bank as Brent tanks to $76 and West Texas settled at $71. Does this week define the new geopolitics of black gold for the rest of our lifetimes?

The G7 price cap and European embargo on Russian oil would have argued for the mother of all price spikes since the Kremlin threatened not to sell its oil to any country that complied with the humiliating price cap imposed on its Ural crude. Xi Jinping is on a state visit to Saudi Arabia, where MBS welcomed him with all the pomp denied to Joe Biden’s July fist-pump diplomacy.

The supply trauma in the wet barrel market went ballistic as the Bosphorus was clogged with a traffic jam of oil tankers laden with Russian/Kazakh crude unable to get through the Dardanelles, where Winston Churchill had once sent a generation of young ANZACs to fight and die on the beaches of Gallipoli.

India is now paying for its oil in rupees and Xi has gone to Riyad to request the Saudis, who supply 17% of the PRC’s imports, to accept payments in yuan. Will MBS agree to accumulate billions of yuan he does not need? Never. So why have oil prices fallen to new 2022 lows as Brent traded as high as 125 in June?