Day 40 of the Oil Blockage: New Paradigms

By Mark Davidson on April 9, 2026 • ( 0 )

(9 April 2026) It is now 10 pm MST April 9, or, 5 AM GMT, April 10. The Strait of Hormuz has now been blocked to the normal traffic of more than 100 tankers per day traveling in and out of the Persian Gulf, for 40 days now.

The idea of the Second Signpost having started March 2 is still in play.

New Paradigm for the Strait

For the time being, it looks like we are entering a new paradigm for the Strait of Hormuz. This Newsmax story reports that (to no one’s surprise) the regime is ignoring the spirit of the ceasefire which is to include opening the Strait of Hormuz, by keeping it closed. The exception is for 12 ships per day allowed to transit. Those ships either carry Iranian oil going to China, goods coming from China destined for Iran, and all of them are to pay the $2 million toll fee.

Twelve ships out of 100 or so is one-eighth of the original traffic. If 20 million barrels of oil was exported through the Strait, that brings us down to 2.5 million barrels per day. Most of that goes to China, and comes from Iran.

New Paradigm for Our Oil Blockage Watch

We don’t know how long this new paradigm will go for. It could end tomorrow, or go on for a year or two.

Therefore, Day 40 will be the last of the regular, daily watches. Yes, I will continue to watch and report developments and for now it will continue to be on a daily basis, but 40 days is enough time for a daily watch.

Also, planting season requires more time these days.

Gardening

Speaking of planting, if you have (1) at least a little land for a plot (even just one hundred square feet), (2) the resources to get garden tools, drip hoses, fertilizer (like Sheep and Peat), and seeds, and (3) good health and are able-bodied and can do some manual labor outside in the fresh air, and you haven’t started a garden, what are you waiting for?

Planting season is now through to June 1 in the northern hemisphere, and the global commercial fertilizer shortage is already “baked in”, in other words, it is not reversible for the growing season this year even if the Strait opened fully today. Therefore, there will be an accompanying crop shortage coming this autumn and winter. This isn’t rocket science.

US Petrodollar Dying Now

Every day the regime holds the Strait and charges the toll in Chinese Yuan, and receives payment for its oil in Yuan, is another day 20 million barrels aren’t sold in US dollars, which at recent prices would have come to $2 billion per day.

That was $2 billion in US dollars that didn’t buy US debt, wasn’t used for commerce, and wasn’t needed by nations for their foreign reserves. And now for 40 days we are looking at $80 billion. Yes, $80 billion is tiny compared to the trillion of dollars out there, but that debt not being bought means the Fed has to buy it, which means the Fed prints more dollars, which leads to more inflation, which leads to US dollar foreign reserves going down in value, which leads to more selling by those countries to dump assets losing value.

And around and around it goes.

Conclusion

If this is all part of the opening scenes of the Second Signpost, we should expect at some point for the regime to destroy much more of the Arab oil infrastructure making the loss of oil permanent (i.e., for at least a few years).

And then we should expect the IRGC and Basij to conquer the Muslim Middle East.

When will this next stage occur? We don’t know. It could be later today or it could be next year.

Just be ready.

Keep watch.