Fertilizer Producers Capture Margin As Geopolitics Squeeze Global Supply #
CF Industries Chief Executive Officer Chris Bohn sat on a Thursday earnings call studying a deeply fractured market. A global maritime blockade had stranded millions of tons of dry granular urea in Middle Eastern silos. For buyers, the locked shipping lanes and spiralling ocean freight premiums represented an inflationary disaster. For North American producers, it was an unearned structural dividend. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz effectively trapped thirty percent of the world's urea nitrogen supply. Prices instantly gapped…