The Iran War’s First 90 Days Upended Energy Markets
Key takeaways
- More than 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude were wiped off global daily production volumes, a figure no increase in supply from other parts of the world could offset.
- LNG volumes from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were also trapped in addition to Qatar halting LNG production as early as March 2.
- Related: Supermajor Warns Oil Prices Could Hit $160 Within Weeks
Tsvetana Paraskova Mon, June 1, 2026 at 4:00 AM GMT+7 4 min read CL=F The Iran war suddenly turned what had started as a year of oversupply in global oil and LNG markets into the worst oil and gas supply disruption in history.
Three months after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, the world has already lost 1 billion barrels of crude oil supply, oil and gas prices have found a new, much higher floor, and whipsaw with violent volatility nearly every day, trade routes have shifted, and tanker rates have spiked. Actual supply shortages are emerging in Asia, while global crude and fuel inventories are crashing, suggesting the oil market could soon exhaust the buffers that kept prices from soaring to $150 and beyond during the worst supply crisis the world has ever seen.
As the Strait of Hormuz was de facto closed and traffic through the chokepoint, which handles 20% of global oil and LNG supply, collapsed by about 90%, Middle Eastern oil producers were quickly forced to curtail upstream output as storage spaces filled up. More than 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude were wiped off global daily production volumes, a figure no increase in supply from other parts of the world could offset.