Whatever the outcome of the war with Iran, it has already delivered a lesson the world cannot afford to ignore. A single regime has decided to exert control over a 21-mile passage, and as a result, we are living through the worst energy crisis the world has ever seen.
The near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz has removed 9 million to 10 million barrels of crude oil from global markets each day, but that is only the beginning of the economic damage. The present crisis is worse than the Arab oil embargo of 1973, and broader than the Russian gas cutoff that followed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily supply of liquefied natural gas is gone. Five million barrels a day of refined products—the diesel that moves goods, the jet fuel that keeps aircraft flying—are missing. So are the fertilizers on which farmers rely to feed billions, the helium used to manufacture semiconductors and run hospital MRI machines, and the petrochemical feedstocks that underpin modern manufacturing.
Leave a Reply