On February 28, U.S. and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury, killing Iran's Supreme Leader and triggering a military response that has effectively shut down the world's most critical energy corridor.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil supply and 30% of seaborne LNG flows every single day, is, for all practical purposes, closed.

Brent crude is now sitting above $100…

Qatar declared force majeure on its LNG exports,  wiping out roughly 20% of global LNG supply in a single announcement…

Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery and export terminal has shut down….

And more than 200 vessels are anchored outside the Strait, unable to move.

So where's the money going?

If you're reading this and thinking about buying Big Oil or Lockheed, it's already too late:

Northrop Grumman is up nearly 7% in just a few weeks.

Shell is up over 12% since mid-February.

Lockheed Martin hit an all-time high of $676.

The first wave of buying opportunities has already happened. And now, we’re entering the second wave.

Not oil majors. Not defense primes.

Here we’re looking at the specific, physical bottlenecks this war created that most investors haven't fully priced yet: energy, tanker routes, a rare gas the semiconductor industry can't function without, a rare earth supply chain the Pentagon urgently needs, and the metal inside every missile and data centre being built right now.

Venture Global (NASDAQ: VG) 

Venture Global (VG) might just be the definition of ‘right place, right time.’

On March 2, VG reported Q4 2025 earnings: revenue up 192.8% year-over-year to $4.45 billion, EPS of $0.41 against a consensus of $0.35, adjusted EBITDA up 191% to $2 billion.

Strong numbers. But the stock didn't move on earnings. Or after signing a binding five-year offtake deal with commodity trading giant Trafigura for 0.5 million tonnes per year starting in 2026.

It moved because, on the same morning, Qatar shut down Ras Laffan.

VG jumped nearly 17% in a single session, then another 9% on March 11 when QatarEnergy confirmed that the Ras Laffan shutdown would be indefinite, causing global gas prices to spike again and further increasing the value of VG’s uncontracted supply.

While Qatar is offline and spot LNG prices are at historic premiums, every cargo from Plaquemines is generating maximum margin.

Morningstar noted this mirrors exactly what happened when VG's Calcasieu Pass facility came online during the Ukraine war… the company has a habit of timing its startups with global supply crises.

The balance sheet is leveraged, with a debt-to-equity of 5.95, and VG has spent part of its short-listed life fighting legal battles with customers who felt it prioritized spot sales over long-term contracts.

None of that changes the setup: a US LNG exporter with zero Hormuz exposure, running hot on spot rates, at the exact moment the world's largest LNG hub goes dark.

The risks are real. So is the upside.

REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) 

Every Tomahawk fired in Operation Epic Fury contains rare earth permanent magnets.

Same for every Patriot interceptor, every F-35 engine.

These aren't optional components; there's no substitute, and roughly 90% of the global capacity to process rare earth ore into the finished metals those weapons require sits inside China.

That was a known problem before the war. Now it's an emergency, and the clock has a specific date on it.

REalloys (ALOY) operates the heavy rare earth metallization facility in North America, located in Euclid, Ohio.

As co-founder Tim Johnston has put it, magnet factories don't run on ore, they run on metals.

And the past two weeks have been remarkable for the company.

On March 10, REalloys announced plans to build the largest heavy rare earth metallization facility outside of China, fully financed, in partnership with the Saskatchewan Research Council.

A day earlier, the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency awarded a contract to Terves LLC, where this technology is now part of the REalloys platform, for the production of samarium and gadolinium, the rare earth metals inside the military's most critical systems.

And the story gets even more compelling when you consider that the new DFARS procurement rules, which legally bar Chinese-sourced magnets from the U.S. military system, take effect on January 1, 2027.

With Operation Epic Fury actively depleting interceptor stockpiles in real time, the Pentagon's scramble for DFARS-compliant supply has already begun.

The $200 million Letter of Interest from the Export-Import Bank under the China and Transformational Exports Program is already in place. The SRC partnership has 80% of its output already under long-term offtake.

This is a small-cap stock. It’s possible the market cap has not yet priced in what is now a full national emergency for the materials it processes.

Frontline (NYSE: FRO)

When the Strait of Hormuz closes, ships don't stop. They reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10 to 15 days to every voyage.

When every voyage takes 15 days longer, the effective global supply of available tankers drops sharply, while the demand for their cargo does not.

Day rates go parabolic. It happened during the Red Sea crisis. It happened during the Tanker War in the 1980s. It's happening again, and this time the disruption is deeper.

Frontline (FRO) is one of the world's largest tanker operators, running a fleet of 81 vessels, including 41 Very Large Crude Carriers, the supertankers that carry up to 2 million barrels per load.

VLCC day rates have surged past $200,000 as the scarcity of 'safe' tonnage drives charter costs to record levels.

Frontline's CEO Lars Barstad said on the Q4 2025 earnings call: "Periods of volatility tend to create opportunities, and Frontline has moved decisively... as we enter what may prove to be an unprecedented period for the tanker industry."

In January, Frontline announced a strategic fleet renewal and expansion, before any of this started. That decision looks prescient now. The company has also just announced a cash dividend of $1.03 per share with an ex-date of March 12, 2026, today.

FRO is up over 51% year-to-date, and the underlying trade is still very much in play.

The risk is real: tanker rates are cyclical, and a ceasefire or diplomatic breakthrough would unwind some of these gains quickly.

But with Iran actively mining the Strait and U.S. forces still engaged, there's no obvious near-term resolution in sight.

Linde (NASDAQ: LIN)

Most Iran war coverage has focused on oil and gas. Very few people are talking about helium. They should be.

Qatar accounts for approximately one-third of global helium supply, producing it as a byproduct of LNG processing at Ras Laffan.

When QatarEnergy shut down Ras Laffan, the helium stopped too. All three of Qatar's helium production facilities are now offline.

Global helium consultant Phil Kornbluth, president of Kornbluth Helium Consulting, said it is 'hard to imagine' supply will not be disrupted for a minimum of three months, and potentially four to six months before the supply chain fully normalises.

"The world can't compensate for the loss of a third of its helium supply," he said.

Why does this matter? Helium is irreplaceable.

It cools the superconducting magnets in MRI machines. It's used in semiconductor fabrication, and Qatar is home to one of only two plants that produce semiconductor-grade helium, which is used to etch silicon wafers.

South Korean officials have already warned of potential impacts on chip production at Samsung and SK Hynix.

The Semiconductor Industry Association warned in 2023 that a helium supply disruption would cause "shocks to the global semiconductor manufacturing industry."

That warning is now live.

Linde (LIN) is the world's largest industrial gas company, with a market cap north of $220 billion and one of the widest distribution networks for helium on the planet.

As one of the three primary distributors of Qatari helium globally, alongside Air Liquide and Iwatani, Linde sits at the exact centre of the coming shortage.

Major industrial gas suppliers has already begun assessing customers a helium surcharge. When supply is constrained, and Linde controls distribution, pricing power follows.

This is not the most explosive pick in the list. Linde is a $220 billion company; it doesn't double in a month. But it's the one that will show up in the next wave of coverage as journalists start connecting the helium shortage to the semiconductor story.

VAALCO Energy (NYSE: EGY) 

The oil market right now isn't really about price. It's about geography. Gulf crude is trapped.

Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura, the world's largest crude export terminal,  shut down after Iranian strikes. 

Buyers who depend on Middle Eastern barrels are scrambling for alternatives. The premium now is for oil that doesn't require a naval escort, carries no war-risk insurance surcharge, and can actually reach a refinery.

VAALCO Energy (NYSE: EGY) produces oil in Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, and Egypt.

Every one of those assets is thousands of miles from the Strait of Hormuz, priced off Brent, and completely insulated from the current conflict zone.

These are exactly the barrels the market wants right now.

What elevates VAALCO beyond a simple 'safe barrels' story is a production ramp already underway before the war started.

On February 24, the company confirmed a 60% operator interest in the Kossipo field offshore Côte d'Ivoire, a discovery with an estimated 293 million barrels of oil equivalent in place.

Management is projecting 225% organic production growth this year.

The Baobab FPSO, which has been in dry dock refurbishment, is on track to return to the field in late March, with development drilling beginning in Q2.

A Gabon exploration well has already stabilised at 2,000 BOPD.

The stock trades at 2.8x EV/EBITDA with a 6.5% dividend yield,  a fraction of what comparable US Permian producers command.

At $90-plus Brent, the cash flow math on a 225% production ramp looks very different to what was modelled when management set those targets.

Bonus Pick: Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) 

Copper is in every missile, every warship, every data centre, every electric vehicle, and every power grid upgrade on earth.

There is no substitute for it either.

And the Iran war has created a simultaneous demand shock, more military hardware needed, now, on top of a supply squeeze that was already developing before the first strike.

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is the world's largest publicly traded copper producer, with $25.9 billion in 2025 revenue and primary assets in the Americas and Indonesia, all well clear of the conflict zone.

Copper prices have surged to near $6 per pound, with LME prices recently crossing $13,000 per tonne as the Strait of Hormuz closure cut off roughly 40,000 tonnes of copper cathode shipments per month that would normally transit the waterway.

FCX is up approximately 62% year-over-year, and analysts at Bank of America maintained a Buy rating as recently as February 26.

There's a caveat worth naming.

FCX's flagship Grasberg mine in Indonesia suffered a mudslide in 2025, and the planned 2026 phased restart has introduced some production uncertainty.

Unit costs jumped roughly 59% quarter-over-quarter in Q4 2025, and Q1 2026 costs are expected to be even higher before normalising.

It's not a perfect story operationally. But at $6.00 copper, operational headwinds matter a lot less.

The Iran war has added a new demand layer, military procurement, infrastructure hardening, faster defence buildout across NATO, on top of the AI data centre and electrification demand that was already pushing prices higher.

By. Tom Kool

The AI boom is triggering an unexpected and unprecedented bull run in natural gas and power  stocks. If you aren't paying attention to the energy demands of data centers, you will miss the biggest energy story of the decade. The smart money is already quietly moving into the few companies prepared to power the trillion-dollar AI machine.

Oilprice Intelligence brings you the inside view on where the next gains will come from, breaking down the market's biggest growth driver with analysis from veteran oilmen and experts. Click here to get this crucial intel for free

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