When Israel and the United States launched their air war on Iran in February, it was the start of not one but two major offensives: a long-planned, deliberate attack on Iran’s military and government infrastructure, and an apparently unintended assault on the global energy system.

For many countries that depend on imports, in Asia and elsewhere, the sudden loss of Gulf oil and gas supplies has resulted in shortages of fuel for transportation and power generation, and a sharp rise in prices. In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has declared a ‘national energy emergency’ and ordered government agencies to move to a four-day week. Other states have closed schools or shortened their working weeks, and some, like South Korea, have capped fuel prices to calm discontented consumers. Even the US, which relies very little on imports (see Strategic and commercial oil reserves graphic, in this issue), has not been spared, with rising fuel prices at the pump causing hardship for both poor and middle-income Americans.

Though Donald Trump did not anticipate a global energy crisis, that does not mean he is unaware of its long-term economic and geopolitical implications – or that he is likely to eschew opportunities to exploit it for personal and national advantage. He has already encouraged countries ‘that can’t get jet fuel because of the [closure of the] Strait of Hormuz’ to ‘buy from the US’ as ‘we have plenty’ (Truth Social, 31 March). His administration has also extolled the US as a major supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries seeing a diminished supply from the Gulf. ‘We need to sell energy to our friends and allies, so they don’t have to buy from adversaries,’ US interior secretary Doug Burgum said on 15 March in Tokyo, when announcing $57bn in new energy deals with Japan and other friendly countries (Washington Post, 23 March).

The central role of the Gulf states in the global energy equation is due to (…)

Full article: 1 928 words.

Michael T Klare

Michael T Klare is professor emeritus at Hampshire College, Amherst (Massachusetts), and the author, most recently, of All Hell Breaking Loose: the Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, Metropolitan, New York, 2019.

(3) BP, ‘Statistical Review of World Energy 2021’.

(5) Ibid.

(7) BP and Energy Institute op cit.

(10) International Energy Agency (IEA), ‘World Energy Outlook 2025’.