"Can you believe it, we're buying that tar and refining it Houston, and polluting the air, despite having the most oil under our feet than any other nation".

So, what changed?

It would appear one of the two VLCCs which Iran claims to have hit.. SIDR and Senegal Prosperity is spilling crude. SAR images on Sentinel/Copernicus just landed for the region.

According to early reports, he told the president the United States is losing the war with Iran and does not have enough equipment to continue it, as well as expressing frustration that it has prevented Pentagon budget from getting passed.

Also noteworthy, the army secretary was a personal friend of VP Vance and an expert on drone warfare. (Edit: as someone pointed out in the comments, more accurately he was The advocate for taking drone warfare seriously and Hegseth firing the real experts who work for him seems to have been one of the reasons he decided to actually resign)

The chief of staff of the army is also currently vacant, so this resignation renders the army without either senate-confirmed leader

could this have any meaningful impacts on the war in Iran, such as making it more difficult for the United States to maintain blockade or making it more difficult to convince others to trust the escort missions through the strait of Hormuz?

It's useful to include examples when confirmed by both western and Iranian media. I'm writing this as the cost of diesel and natural gas is soaring in the UK.

OPEC solved our energy crisis in the 80s ironic Trump kills it during another shock.

This seems to be going in the wrong direction, and no obvious trigger to reverse this trend; if anything, things are getting worse.

So I noticed in the last couple of days trump is attacking in the middle of week and he makes careless statements similar to the ones he used to make at the start of the war. could the latest deal with Venezuela, the d day sanctions, the somewhat manageable prices and the relative increase in oil volume through the strait gave Trump a renewed feel of self assurance and confidence to act in such a counter productive way or am I reading too much into this?

There are now about 43½ million barrels left of what was allotted for release earlier this year.

I saw a fox news article claiming at least one refinery is shutting down briefly. I'm sure some platforms have must be shutting down as well.

The U.S. has secured a deal to control 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. A debate has been sparked discussing if this is even legal. Experts say the deal is unlikely to lower U.S. gas prices in the short term.

Has this ever happened before?

It would appear five SAUDI oil/chemical tankers are on the move.

- VLCC SIDR is in ballast and was making a dark transit in, likely to a port in SA while it was hit in the Hormuz, by three projectiles from Iran (as reported by UKMTO.)

Right after, 4 SAUDI tankers were seen to make their way out of the GoO

- VLCC QASBA fully laden with 2 million barrels, is reportedly headed to Daxie #China
- VLCC QAMRAN, also fully laden with 2 million barrels, outbound - no destination mentioned
- Panamax YAQUT, had made PG run in/out dark between 23rd-27th, loaded up at Al Jubayl and is now headed for Hazaria in India
- Medium Range, NCC FAJR also made a PG run in/out dark 19th-26th and came back out laden from Al Jubayl, headed for Hazaria, India.