Transcription
So, a few weeks ago, I built a god's eye view of the Iran strikes, a full 4D reconstruction of Operation Epic Fury using satellite, aerial, vessel tracking, and social media data, all visualized on a 3D globe, and you all went crazy.
Since then, the crisis has moved to the water, and the world's eyes are on this 21 m wide choke point. This is the Straight of Hormuz. Normally, hundreds of ships pass through here every day, carrying a fifth of the world's oil supply, and right now almost nothing is getting through. Iran has effectively shut down the most important waterway on Earth.
To give you a real operational picture of what's going on, I've updated God's Eye View to collect a whole lot more data and added ship tracking, dark vessel detection, pipeline routes, and of course, the ongoing bombing campaigns. This situation is probably more dire than you think. So, let me show you what's going on.
This is real ship tracking data. Every arrow is a vessel. Some of these ships are longer than the Empire State Building is tall and they're all squeezing through this one tiny choke point, the Straight of Hormos. So, I've recorded all the vessel tracking data from February 25th to present day. So, before the straight was closed down, this is what traffic looked like. All these ships would go through this narrow passageway. And let me tell you, the traffic was robust. As you can see over here, we've got hundreds of crossing events every single day. And then Operation Epic Fury goes down. And suddenly, we're down to just a handful. And it's some days, none at all. And after everything shut down, you can see a bunch of ships parked in the ocean over here. Literally like parking structures in the middle of the ocean, waiting for their moment to get out of dodge.
Now, we're playing back this scene at 6 hours per second. As you can see, most of these ships are just waiting for their moment to get through this choke point. Let me show you what else we can do over here. I've got a bunch of different layers, but on the left here, you see the overall drop in inbound and outbound shipments as it's taking place. So, blue is inbound and yellow is outbound. Check out that drop over there synchronized to what you're seeing on the right hand side. That is a precipitous drop. Literally down 92.2% 2% with a pre-day average based on my data about 130 down to a post-day average of about 10. That is going to have an impact on oil prices.
Down over here, you can see global oil futures. So, we've got global brands over here. Watch what happens with the synced timeline view. Prices go up from 70 bucks a barrel very quickly to almost a 100 and then well past 100. And right next to it here, you can see US West Texas Intermediate. This is basically a proxy for oil prices in the US and even the US despite mobilizing strategic oil reserves which obviously has prevented this number from going up drastically is like still going up.
But now you may be wondering while this number did go down drastically there are ships getting through. As you can see before the closure of the straight of Hormuz all the ships were going through this path over here. Like this is actually a really narrow waterway right and and the deepest part of the straight is here in the middle. So, a bunch of these like big ass vessels, I'm talking like the size of the Empire State again, that's how they used to make the transit. But if you jump ahead to today, the ships that are actually going through are going far closer to Iran up top over here. So, if I isolate this particular ship, this is a Liberia flagged bulk carrier, Panama flagged bulk carrier, Bolivia, a bunch of these countries are extremely dependent on the oil that come through this region.
So, what's being reported now is that effectively Iran has set up a new toll booth. Basically, they're like, "Hey, make a deal with us. We'll let you through and then you'll get like IRGC escort." So, for here are a bunch of ships that we should take a look at. If I click on them over here, I can see this is Pine Gas, India flagged LPG tanker. And look, this is an important point because like essentially crude oil is important for obvious reasons, energy, but a bunch of these byproducts like of petrochemicals effectively are responsible for, you know, fertilizer production, which can have an huge impact on the food supply of a country. So effectively, you've got Iran opening up this tool booth and they're charging for it too. Like I don't know if India is paying this rate, but some of the numbers that are being reported in the press are like $1 to $2 per barrel and effectively these big ass tankers have like 2 to three million uh barrels on their ship, right? So we're talking 2 to 3 mil USD is the toll charge that countries are paying Iran because they're just so dependent on petrochemicals. I mean, gosh, if we put on a bit of a visualization of the amount of money that Iran must be making on top as some of these ships get let through. I mean, they're formalizing this process. And of course, this is also where the US is really, really annoyed because they're like, dude, this is totally against like international law. Like, you can't block passage through open waterways. And that's exactly what's happening right now.
But there's also a global conflict. So, you can probably imagine the arguments on both sides. And honestly, this is where countries like India are kind of screwed if they don't cut a deal with Iran. Like they import like 60 plus% like a majority of their oil is imported. A bunch of countries in East Asia as well, like I'm talking like South Korea, Japan, the list goes on, are also extremely dependent and they're like burning into their reserves right now. So yeah, basically moved everything from like this beautiful passageway that we had over here to now going through their very narrow toll booth that they've set up up top.
So here's another cluster of crossings that happened on the 15th. Let's take a look at which one these are. So we've got Karachi, a Karachi Pakistani flagged crude oil carrier. Makes a ton of sense. They are very chummy with Iran. Of course, you've got Liberia and sometimes you just have like HG flag unknown, unknown vessel. We just have no information whatsoever. What I started noticing, there's a bunch of trends where people actually don't turn their AIS on while they're transiting, aka they are considered a dark vessel. And turns out when you have all this data, of course you can detect the dark gaps as well.
So let me give you an example over here. This is a Indian flagged LPG carrier jog Vasant. And this is what on the 23rd this happened. Basically you'll see the ship kind of mosy on over. And then right as it's about to cross the straight, right, they turn off their AIS transponder, probably getting IRGC escort. And then when they complete their transit, right, they'll mosy on over and then finally you see them again right over here when they turn their AIS back on. So this seems to be a pretty common pattern and it makes sense. Maybe it's like for operational security. God knows what their reason is, but here, let me show you a bunch of other dark vessel events over here. So here's another great example. We got the Yaka 2 that's going to go dock in Iran. goes here, turns out that it's AIS, and it turns it back on when it's safely made it over to the Iran side. Here's another one. You see the ship kind of getting ready to make the transit, and then when it crosses, it turns on AIS. Again, by the way, this is where my other video on RF tracking and synthetic aperture radar data is super important because if you don't have AIS data, there are other ways that you can geollocate and track these ships. So, if you haven't seen that video, you can check it out over here.
So look, if you've got just a handful of vessels going through, obviously the countries that need to get oil out of this Gulf region need to find a way around it. And that's when pipelines come in. So the first one I want to talk about is this east to west crude oil pipeline. Essentially taking oil from over here to this very important port called Yanbu. And Yanboo is of course told by Saudi Aramco. And so for the most part, these prices haven't gone up as much as they would have if not for this pipeline. because essentially you get the oil over here and then you can suddenly like basically you know put it on vessels again and find your way around the straight of Hormuz. There's also another pipeline over here that the UAE made that's called a Bob Hubshan Fuji oil pipeline. Gosh, I probably butchered that but essentially they made this exactly with this in mind that if someday Iran holds this freaking straight hostage, they can essentially cut around it.
But if we take a look at where are some of the strikes that have been happening, turns out some of those strikes have been happening right on yonder. And Iran wants the UAE to know, homie, I got my eye on you. So if I zoom out and show you the real fast pipeline view, thank God these pipelines are in effect over here. And look, if things escalate further and even if you can get all the oil to Yanbu, if Iran mobilizes the Houthis, who they have an alliance with, and they start targeting ships on this side, oh my god, we are absolutely freaking screwed. And look, there's a bunch of critical infrastructure in and around this area. Like if I show you the desalination plants, like this is basically where like a bunch of these Gulf countries, the way they actually get their water is by like essentially desalinating ocean water. Those are areas that are getting targeted and could be even more targeted by Iran in the future. and we've got a bunch of other critical infrastructure that's basically at risk in this whole region. So, I mean like look, things can escalate quickly and if you see what's happening in terms of the actual kinetic warfare between Israel, the US and Iran and vice versa, Iran hitting like all of the US allies in the Middle East region, I mean, things can escalate far more quickly than you could possibly imagine.
And if I switch over to the photorealistic mode in God's Eye View, I can show you all the tankers that were impacted by projectiles, unmanned boats, all sorts of reports of actual kinetic attacks on these ships. So empty Skylight is one that got hit really hard. I mean, like you could see the smoke pluming. Around the second of March, we see another hit. This first US flagged vessel that's attacked hit by two missiles while docked in Bin. This is where things rapidly start escalating. And as March goes on, you start seeing the hits racking up. Bunch of vessels getting hit and like this is serious damage. Like look at this stuff. Mustafa the Namib and some of these were really serious like closer to the 11th over here. Watch what happens. Holy crap.
So even if we move away from the straight of Hermos and go by Kuwait over here as the USIsrael strikes on Iran continue, Iran doesn't take this lightly and is retaliating. Watch what happens over here. We see some serious explosions including people dying. Three crew missing, one killed in this Vishnu blaze. Zephus completely on fire. I mean like this is absolutely nuts.
So if we go back to March 1st, the start of the month, you can start seeing a bunch of the attacks that Israel and the US conduct on Iran and vice versa. The initial goal of these attacks was basically to take down the nuclear and then command and control capacity of Iran. If we jump to the next cluster of attacks around the 7th of March, you can see what happens. space center complex, airport compound, Israel and the US hit a bunch of military facilities. In this round of attacks is also when we saw some of these major oil refineries that were hit. Also, in this cluster of attacks by Israel on Iran, we can see the oil depot that was hit and the refinery. And my god, this was like absolutely dramatic. Like this is chilling footage.
So, of course, Iran isn't going to take all this laying down. So, they hit back at Bahin. You'll see them getting hit over here. Citra refinery complex. I mean, this halted operations, right? Like this is absolutely nuts. Now, you probably heard about Car Island, which would be one of the places off the shore of Iran that Marines may actually go try and seize. Well, on March 13th, there were a bunch of attacks on Car Island. Like 90 military targets struck by the US. And this really does look like a battlefield map. I mean, look at this thing. And as I mentioned earlier, again, like critical infrastructure, that's where the pipeline connects. like Iran's just letting the UAE know, hey, we can send something over that'll disrupt your go around us move. On the 19th, we've got another attack right here in Iran by Israel. My goodness, this is another processing facility that was hit. And then right after that facility got hit, you can immediately see Iran clap back again. So Kuwait and Qar simultaneously get hit very soon after. And despite Israel's Iron Dome system, some of Iran's attack actually made it in like Hifa refinery got hit, right? This was reported on March 19th and like localized damage and fire. There's a whole other video we could make about the drone strategy that they've been using. And of course, heavily reported in Saudi Arabia was the Prince Sultan air base. And here we can see a bunch of these military assets that the US had were hit, including this really expensive spy plane. So you can see this is the airport over here. And this is the before and after satellite imagery.
So if I zoom out and just give you the global view, you can see how much of this is a tit for tat. And still both sides are showing remarkable restraint. Like they're not just outright bombing a freaking pipeline cuz that would escalate things way further. And by the way, while we're here, I just want to point out the terrain of Iran. Like this would not be an easy war to fight. As you may or may not know, even as these satellites are going over overhead, a bunch of the commercial providers have put in a 2 week period essentially for operational security purposes. So countries like Iran can't use let's say US commercial satellite imagery providers as their own surveillance apparatus. This is of course making things really hard for open source intelligence and journalists to do this kind of reporting too cuz before I mean like back when I worked on Google Maps we would task these satellites and get images very very quickly.
All right. So, when you zoom out and you see this battle playing out on the globe at this time-lapse speed, you can start seeing just how much is happening that you can't quite internalize when you're looking at the latest tweet or news report. And my god, if things continue to escalate, things could get really bad. Like, and we've talked about this, right? Like, if critical infrastructure and crude oil gets hit, we've talked about how important oil is. We could talk about green energy and all this other thing, but our civilization as it stands is exceedingly dependent on prochemicals and a bunch of countries are very dependent on importing all of their petrochemical. Like geographically, the US is extremely blessed, but the rest of the world not so much. So, while the UK is saying, "Hey, it's fine. Just like go into Easter like normal. Don't worry about it." The rest of these countries actually don't have much time left. Like Pakistan has 10 days of reserves. India 22. I mean, the United States is chilling with like a year plus. I mean, it can start getting bad very quickly. And the ripple effect is palpable. Like, the Philippines basically ordered a 4-day work week to cut fuel consumption. Egypt is closing shops by 9:00 p.m. How crazy is that? Bangladesh closed all their universities indefinitely. Like, think about that. You just close the university so students don't have to commute back and forth. Oh my god. And in the African subcontinent, you got fuel rationing going on. I mean like y'all like this can get very bad very quickly. And look even in the US prices are up and look when oil gets expensive so does everything else. The Department of Energy is projecting that things will not go back to normal till 2027. I mean even right now of like the chokepoint closures that you're seeing that stuff takes a little while to get reflected in actual prices. That's why we were looking at oil futures.
So where do things go from here? I guess nobody can really tell, but the mixed messaging has been insane. And I'm sure you've experienced this on both sides. We've got a bunch of Marines in the region. We got insane naval presence in the region right now from the United States. Let's see how these negotiations plan out. But regardless of what happens, I will be there every step of the way. And I mean, this shows you why spatial intelligence is so important. I mean, we are consuming so much information about the war, but you have to be able to combine all these sources and visualize it all at once to really understand the implications and just how interconnected we are.
Thank you all so much for reaching out. Like, the inbound has been crazy. So many more features to come. Right now, I'm focused on the TED conference. It's going to be April 13th to 17th in Vancouver, Canada. It's the last big TED in Vancouver. And I'm going to be one of the curators tech curating a bunch of cool stuff. We've got robots, drones, openclaw, Reddit, the list goes on. You're going to have some amazing people. So, can't wait to share that with you. But it's also what's keeping me busy. So, stay tuned for an update after this is done. Oh my god, my focus will be completely on making God's Eye View the most complete model of reality that you can actually get your hands on. All right, Bavo signing off and I'll see y'all in the next one. Cheers.