The PDB Situation Report | June 27th, 2026: Confidence Returning To The Strait Of Hormuz?

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Welcome to The PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, from Your Eyes And Ears, on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, oil tankers are returning to the Strait of Hormuz, well, huzzah. And with them, confidence is slowly returning to global energy markets. Daniel Turner, Executive Director of Power The Future, joins us to discuss.
Later in the show, China is quietly surrounding Taiwan, uh-oh, turning what were once military drills into a near constant naval presence around the island. We'll be joined by Steve Yates. You know him. He's a friend of the show. He's also with the Heritage Foundation. We'll have more insight from Steve on what China's intentions are. But first, today's Situation Report Spotlight.
For the first time in weeks, oil tankers are beginning to flow back through the Strait of Hormuz, and the energy markets are taking notice. The crude prices have fallen dramatically from their wartime highs, shipping traffic is slowly recovering, and fears of a prolonged supply shock are beginning to ease. But is the market reading this situation correctly? And what should consumers and investors be watching as the world's most important energy choke point gradually comes back to life?
Well, joining us now is Daniel Turner, Executive Director of Power The Future. Daniel, thank you very much, man, for coming back on The PDB Situation Report.

**Daniel Turner** (2:33)
Great to be back on with you. Thanks for having me back.

**Mike Baker** (2:37)
Absolutely. Listen, let's start from the very top. What do we got moving through the Strait of Hormuz at this point?

**Daniel Turner** (2:49)
There's a lot of conflicting answers, but I tend to think that oil markets know a lot of things that we don't. It's why Adam Smith, if you go back a couple of hundred years, he marveled at markets and called them this invisible hand.
Oil right now, as we're talking, is just above $70 a barrel. So even though I've seen reports saying there's been some aggressive activity from Iran, there have been ships turned back, markets are pretty comfortable that things are happening. So I'm going to say that we have a pretty open straits just based upon oil prices.

**Mike Baker** (3:26)
Okay. Now, I will say this. One of the things, and I've talked about this on the PDB, one of the things I've been surprised by for the past two or three months, frankly, is, and maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I've used words like fickle or their willingness to kind of cling to or grasp on to any positive comment or statement from the White House, social media, whatever it may be.
Over the course of this time, it seems like, as soon as President Trump or anyone in the White House or Secretary of State Rubio makes some allusion to it, here we are, things are looking good. Negotiations are going well, or yeah, we're getting the Strait open. Bam, you would see it drop in oil prices, despite what you would think is sort of a pragmatic approach because they know what this regime is like, they know how difficult these discussions are, they know how complex the problem is.

**Daniel Turner** (4:28)
Yeah, I agree with that, and oil markets are future thinking, right? So if you are an oil trader and you hear good news, that means, okay, tomorrow things are going to get better, so we can actually start to buy and sell now because the future is bright. So that definitely has a huge impact on it. I was not surprised when President Trump made an announcement a couple, maybe like a week and a half ago. He said, actually, this whole time, a lot of oil was getting through. We just didn't tell anybody, we kept it clandestine. And people were like, he's full of BS, Trump, he always makes stuff up. I was not surprised at that. I believe that is true. Again, just looking at oil prices. Oil, for one moment hit like 125 when pure panic kicked in. But oil has been around $100 a barrel for a month and a half.