Markets — As of September 14
WTI Crude: $103.21 — ▲ 3.15%
Brent: $106.91 — ▲ 2.20%
Henry Hub: $2.88 — ▲ 1.97%
U.S. Rig Count: 588 — Unchanged
Saudi Arabia's Last Workaround Just Went Offline
Drone strikes launched from Iraq forced the shutdown of the East-West pipeline on Friday. It was the one route Saudi exports had left with the Strait of Hormuz still closed.
SAUDI ARABIA SHUT its East-West crude pipeline on Friday after drones struck it from Iraq's Maysan province, damaging equipment and halting a line that normally moves four to five million barrels a day, roughly four to five percent of global supply by Reuters' count. No group has claimed responsibility.
The timing is what makes it serious. The Strait of Hormuz has been largely closed to Saudi exports since March, and the East-West line was the workaround, the way barrels reached the Red Sea without transiting the strait. With both constrained at once, as one analyst put it, the buffers that carried the market through the last six months have been worn away.
Crude responded accordingly. WTI traded near $103 on Monday, a four-month high, after climbing more than nine percent last week. Brent sits near $107. Both benchmarks are up better than 55 percent from a year ago.
What It Means for a Working Interest
A direct interest is priced off the wellhead, so a move like this reaches you in a monthly distribution rather than a quarterly mark. The same mechanism passes through weakness just as directly, which is why the supply-side discipline below matters at least as much as the headline. Domestic barrels sit on the other side of a disruption that is, at root, about barrels that have to cross someone else's water.
Also This Week
Supply
Triple-Digit Crude, and the Rig Count Still Has Not Moved
Baker Hughes has the U.S. total at 588 rigs, unchanged for a third straight week and up 51 from 537 a year ago. In prior cycles, crude at this level pulled rigs into the field within a quarter or two, and the resulting supply eventually worked against price. That reflex has not fired this time.
Why it matters: Capital discipline of this kind has historically been supportive of barrels already in production. It is not a forecast, but if you are weighing an interest in producing wells rather than wells still to be drilled, this is the variable to watch.
Demand
The EIA Raised Its Power-Demand Call on Data Centers. Again.
The agency now projects record U.S. electricity consumption in both 2026 and 2027, with commercial sales near 1,528 billion kilowatt-hours this year. Dry gas production is forecast at 111.7 billion cubic feet per day in 2026, rising to 115.9 next year, against domestic consumption of 92.2 Bcf/d.
The largest regional growth in electricity sales is expected in the West South Central, meaning Texas and its neighbors.
Why it matters: Geopolitics sets this month's price, and demand structure sets the decade's. Compute load is the first genuinely new demand category domestic gas has picked up in years, and it lands on the associated-gas side of a well's revenue, the part that tends to get overlooked when oil is the headline.
The Week Ahead
Ongoing: Whether Aramco signals a restart timeline for the East-West line, the single biggest swing factor on price this week.
Wednesday: EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report: U.S. crude inventories and refinery runs.
Friday: Baker Hughes rig count. A fourth flat week would make the discipline story hard to argue with.
Bear Lake, LP Is in Its Final Weeks
Ten units remain in the current offering, with subscriptions targeted to close at the end of September. Participation is limited to accredited investors, minimum subscription $100,000.
Led by a CEO out of U.S. Special Operations and a Chief Investment Officer who came from Citigroup Global Markets. We operate in the Bakken and Three Forks, the DJ Basin, and the Gulf of America.
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Sources: Reuters and Al Jazeera reporting on the East-West pipeline shutdown, Sept. 11 and 12, 2026; Baker Hughes North America Rig Count; U.S. Energy Information Administration Short-Term Energy Outlook; Trading Economics benchmark pricing, Sept. 14, 2026.
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