The Energy Crisis Will Long Outlast the Iran War
Key takeaways
- The lingering challenges for the oil and natural gas markets (and a host of other commodities, from helium to fertilizer) boil down to three main issues: flows, stocks, and production.
- In practical terms, that likely means that oil and gas prices will continue to increase over the summer—not suddenly plummet as the Trump administration has predicted.
- “Navigating this process [of opening the Strait of Hormuz] will take months if everything goes smoothly.
Regardless of how close the United States and Iran really are to a durable peace agreement, or what the exact conditions of it will be, the war’s disruptions to global energy markets are all but guaranteed to persist for months, likely into next year.
The lingering challenges for the oil and natural gas markets (and a host of other commodities, from helium to fertilizer) boil down to three main issues: flows, stocks, and production. The region won’t produce as much energy as it did before the war. It will take ages to get what oil and gas is there to start flowing to global markets again. And the sheer size of the cumulative disruption to energy markets has baked in months of continued pain, no matter what kind of near-term agreement is reached.
Regardless of how close the United States and Iran really are to a durable peace agreement, or what the exact conditions of it will be, the war’s disruptions to global energy markets are all but guaranteed to persist for months, likely into next year.