The US military and Gulf nations have begun escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz in the daytime, the first such escorts since the short-lived Operation Project Freedom in May.
Page F3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 16 September 2026
Saudi Arabia downs a drone near Mecca; the invoice lands in Guatemala City at $6 a gallon.
As it ran on the front
The receipts came in this order, and ruth checked them against the calendar first, because the calendar always talks first in this business.
In April 2018 a Houthi missile came in over Riyadh, the same year Saudi air defense shot down two Houthi drones near the border. In June 2019 that same air defense shot down a drone near Abha. On September 8 of this year, Houthi strikes on southern Saudi Arabia injured seventy-three civilians and Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Energy logged fires at its facilities; the kingdom promised to retaliate. Eight days later, on September 16, a Houthi drone came down outside Mecca. The line item repeats. Only the zip code changes.…
…(cont) What's new is the escort. The US Navy and Gulf allies resumed daytime transits through the Strait of Hormuz this week — the first such runs since Operation Project Freedom folded back in May. Daytime is doing the work in that sentence, hon: somebody priced out what the tankers cost after dark and decided the sun is a line item too.
The invoice is not a separate story running alongside this one — it's the same page. Diesel hit $6.06 a gallon on Friday's count, fourteen percent higher than a month ago, sixty-four percent higher than a year ago, and the analyst logging it called it "not slowing down." Run that against the six-month US-Iran war roiling the very shipping lanes the drone flew over, and the ledger closes itself: the war gets priced by the barrel, the barrel gets priced by the gallon, and the gallon gets priced at whoever's pump is closest.
That turns out to be Jakarta. It turns out to be Guatemala City. Protests and blackouts over fuel prices are running from Indonesia to Guatemala to Syria this week — nowhere near Hormuz, nowhere near Mecca, exactly where the invoice landed. Nobody in this file says who is covering the daylight escort bill. Defense budgets do not fund themselves, and the filing does not say whose column that entry sits in. It never does.
Run the tape back: drone down, tanker escorted, diesel up, city in the street. Four line items, one route, and every stop on it takes a dollar out of somebody who was never in the room where the drone was aimed.
“You wanna know who pays for the Navy showing up to hold hands with an oil tanker in broad daylight? Not the oil company. The guy in Jakarta paying six bucks for diesel just to get to his shift, that's who's covering it, one gallon at a time. They shoot down a drone outside Mecca and somehow the bill lands on people who never once heard of the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Daylight escorts are just prudent risk management, standard protocol, nothing alarmist about protecting global energy infrastructure — though I'll admit, why only in daylight, that's a fair question, forget I brought up the schedule. Look, if diesel costs more that's the market doing its job, that's not on anybody in particular, that's not — did I say "not on anybody"? I don't even work for the Navy.”
The receipts
The attacks on Saudi Arabia have shocked global energy markets roiled by the six-month US-Iran war, which has slowed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to a trickle.
From Indonesia to Guatemala to Syria, shortages and price increases are leading to protests and blackouts.
The price of diesel fuel hit another record high on Friday, thanks in large part to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran. New data released by the American Automobile Association showed the average price of diesel in the US increasing to $6.06, a 14% increase over the average price one month ago and a 64% increase from the…
Without its oil revenues, an Iranian financial crisis is imminent — so Tehran, through its terror proxies, seeks to open a new front in the energy war.
· Yemen-based Houthi forces launch drone strikes on Jizan Regional Airport and Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi Arabian-led coalition spokesperson says a Houthi drone has been shot do from the morgue, 15 Jun 2019
· The Royal Saudi Air Defense intercepts a ballistic missile fired from Yemen over the Saudi capital Riyadh that caused panic among residents. Houthis say they fired several Burkan-2 missiles at targets from the morgue, 11 Apr 2018
· Houthi Strikes on Southern Saudi Arabia Injure Dozens, Saudi Officials Say from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Saudi Arabia promises response to Houthi attacks from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.