Counterfactuals are hard to estimate but had the US and Britain not engineered a coup in 1953 to grab their oil they might have had friendly relations with US and its allies today.
Don't discount that the US foisted Saddam Hussein and his chemical weapons on Iran's population. They lost some 20 to 30 thousand civilians to chemical weapons attacks. Yet never once counterattacked with chemical weapons.
The assassinated Khamenei even had a fatwa declaring weapons of mass destruction to be un-Islamic.
No one is innocent in this world, but I can certainly understand why Iran feels the way it does and I find it justified, in the sense had I been born there I probably would feel the same way.
Recall Iran was the only middle-eastern country that supported the UN resolution forming the state of Israel.
US interference left them with a bad taste in their mouth. No wonder they do not like the US and their partners in geopolitical resource grabs.
What is your source for saying they are funding attacks? I know people on HN aren't stupid enough to fully believe everything Isreali and American media tells them so what's your source?
If he was serious about tracing the roots of terrorism he would have landed up with Saudi money and Pakistani training. Those two are the major powerhouses of terrorism.
Citizens of the US and its vassal states are quick to ignore that. Most are too lazy to exercise critical thinking.
Ras Laffan LNG complex in Qatar
Ras Tanura oil refinery in Saudi
drone attacks on Saudi oil fields
Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi
Shah gas field in Abu Dhabi
port of Fujairah
Bapco oil refinery in Bahrain
Which part?
The last time that the IAEA inspected Iran’s nuclear stockpile was in 2025.
As for “death to Israel” slogan there’s a Wikipedia page about it..
Pakistan effectively doesn't have nukes. Pakistan's nukes are kept in a de-mated state and it takes hours if not days to get them ready for launch. They're too close to terrorist groups in the Middle East (geographically and otherwise) to have nukes that are a button-press away.
This gives them enough deterrence against a total invasion (because of the "what if" factor) but not against random airstrikes.
There is no point talking with these people. It's hard to explain how much the overton window shifted for Israeli-Khaleeji cooperation after the past few weeks, and after the strikes that have been hitting the Gulf.
The tone has shifted significantly that even KSA is now saturating WhatsApp, Snap, and other Gulf heavy media with anti-Iran and pro-Military Intervention ad campaigns [0][1][2], with a tone I've been noticing is similar what I saw in Israel right before 2014.
Anti-Iran sentiment was already prominent after the Houthis and the insurgency in the Eastern Province a decade ago, but the sentiment has now become extremely hardened.
The tone shift is similar to what happened to Saddam way back in the 90s and 2000s. MbS is trying to position himself the same way King Abdullah did during the Gulf War and Iraq War.
Some airlines are cancelling flights left and right, others are jacking up the prices. If the war keeps going on into the summer, there's going to be some very obvious consumer-facing issues. From gas prices, very expensive travel, price hikes in logistics, you name it.
I think the timeline is much shorter than that. These oil-producing nations have not invested in a lot of storage, because they usually ship everything out immediately. Once you no longer have anywhere to put the oil, you have to start shutting down production, and it is not easy to restart. We'll be at that point in maybe another week and a half.
Is there anyone here with a deeper understanding of oilfield geology and engineering? Given that:
- storage facilities in the region are limited and in some cases almost full
- mature oil fields need constant water injections to pump out the remaining crude
How likely is it that stopping crude extraction (and therefore the water injections) will permanently damage the oil reservoirs?
And based on that is it possible that countries with this type of mature oil fields would consider simply dumping the excess crude that can't be stored anymore in the desert or in the Gulf of Persia?
There is one way that production could resume, of course: a public peace that is both real and accompanied by Iranian broadcast of orders to their coastal troops to stand down.
Given the ongoing campaign to assassinate Iranian diplomats who may be willing to negotiate peace whilst leaving hardliners alive, the only question is what kind of inducements will be necessary to get them to agree?
I don't think anything short of the US completely cutting ties with Israel would make Iran consider backing down at this point. And even then, I expect they'll continue directly attacking Israel.
Not exactly a recent change. Since the '79 revolution Iran has had a pretty hostile position against Israel and the US. A big part of that hostility was because the US and the UK overthrew their democracy to install a puppet dictator in '53.
Having anything a rich person in the US wants is a curse. We've overthrown governments for bananas and sugar. We tried to overthrow a government for cigars.
Basically the only reason Norway escaped this curse was they were next door to the USSR and the US knew fucking around there could easily land it in the USSR potentially also taking Sweden with it.
Is this not the heart of the problem? Israel has been killing Iranians for years. Nobody can guarantee that Israel would not break a cease fire when they feel like it.
I fear that both sides are acting completely rational: Israel wants to wipe out Iran and Iran is doing whatever they can to survive.
A few critical items beyond oil are also now in short supply:
Fertilizer, which is kind of important right now since it's springtime and farmers are planting crops around the world.
Plastic, without which modern hospitals can't operate.
Aluminum.
The list goes on, this was the dumbest war in our lifetimes but it's the culmination of a lot of previous stupidity that made it all possible.
The people who started this war are authoritarians and, let's be honest, straight up criminals, who did it to entrench their grip on their own domestic politics.
The sentiment I see is more like, "Are war crimes, mass deaths, a global depression, and maybe WWIII really worth keeping the earlier crimes of Trump and Netanyahu out of the headlines?"
Even if there's plenty of supply, this is still a major supply chain disruption that will have ripple effects. Combine this with all the other major supply chain disruptions.
This might only raise costs a few percent. Yet for some firms that were just barely keeping their heads above water with the tightened monetary policy, and the tariffs, and now spikes in energy prices, this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I agree this is a major disruption, but I don't agree it's the plastic portion to worry about.
Oil, fertilizer, helium. These are the things I'm most worried about especially for their knock-on effects. Fertilizer is going to have a long tail. Like, don't expect a food spike this year, but expect prices on food to go wild next year. That alone is going to majorly effect everything worldwide.
It's not price, it's availability. You construction will slam to a halt. Plumber neighbour is now hiring security dogs for his supply yard as they now have to deal with theft of pvc and PE pipe, in addition to tweakers going after copper.
I don't get why the prices jumped so much - looks like panic and hoarding because:
- The Middle East produces roughly 30% of the world's oil
- But about 20% of total global oil consumption flows through this strait (less than 30% because of of domestic consumption and some pipelines avoiding strait)
I would understand if prices increases e.g. 50% but like more than 100% seems like a panic or manipulation
Oil demand is mostly inelastic. No matter how much or how little is produced, those who need it NEED it, so they'll compete with all others who similarly need it. The richest ones from among them get the oil first, and the poorest get nothing. The end price ends up being a function of how much oil is available versus how much the richest countries' absolutely irreducibly need for oil is versus how much wealth those countries can throw at the problem not to be left without before someone else with deeper pockets gets it.
Also, a third order effect of oil inelasticity is that if it cost too much , it decrease production and trade (might be less true now, but it was absolutely true in 2010), it lowers global demand, so the prices go down. Which is why markets can't predict oil prices, not really.
It would make sense if there was mostly inelastic demand for 80% of current production. I'm not sure if that is the case, but it might be. There is a lot of usage with no good substitute.
This is the exact reason that prices for U.S. benchmarks (e.g. WTI) are diverging from international ones (e.g. Brent). The spread between the two is the largest since 2011 and widening. There is only so much export capacity in the U.S., so there will be a glut compared to the rest of the world as a whole.
U.S. prices are up, but international prices are up even more.
If you break the rig on a mature oil deposit, there is a chance you will make the remaining petroleum/gas unreachable for the foreseeable future (at least at an acceptable price point). So you reduce the total oil quantity humanity will be able to extract.
Have seen social media chatter of isolated shortages in two countries already.
Hard to tell whether that’s just background noise that is just getting more airtime play thanks to Iran or whether it’s the first sign of bigger trouble.
It will probably go back up to about 5 grams of Gold per barrel, which was the past peak, and hold there.
More troubling if you're paid in dollars, the end of the Petrodollar is likely now on a very accelerated timeline. Based on history, I expect a 60-80% drop in our standard of living when that happens.
Stockpile (some) gasoline now because retail price shocks haven't hit yet because it takes time to ripple through the supply chain and commodity market-goods delivery price differential is in flux until supplies dry up. Supply impairments will last 1-2 years because around a dozen billion-dollar petrochem facilities have been physically destroyed and will need to be manufactured again in distant lands like Italy.
It seems highly unlikely that the US will magically have trains and more walk-able living because gas is unaffordable. Especially if it was a drastic and sudden shock of supply. Myself as much as anyone is not in favor of the reliance the US has on cars and non-renewable energy, but causing chaos is not the way to do it.
The people in the US chose chaos. Maybe we need a harsh lesson not to do that. If we are permitted to vote this November, we'll get an indication whether or not we've learned anything.
This is an interesting point. Supposing this sudden shock happens, wouldn't American towns, counties, and the like, run to buy buses and start providing emergency bus services all around to all those suburban areas where people couldn't afford gas anymore? Or at least, this is how I imagine a sane response would be.
There'd be a shortage of buses at first, but I also suppose it'd relatively easy to adapt current North American car manufacturing plants to start manufacturing buses.
But that's just an uninformed guess. Am I too much off base in this?
I went to school for industrial engineering and have worked in manufacturing the last decade or so.
Bus production would be an entire refactoring of an auto factory. Tons of equipment would need to move around, electrical conduit would need to be re-run to different places, much of the existing equipment would be too small. The equipment would need to be ordered from suppliers who already have the next couple months to years of business booked, new suppliers sourced and contracts signed, etc. On an American timeline, I can't imagine it being done in under a year if you threw money at every problem aggressively.
We did change some auto plants to manufacturing airplanes and airplane components for WWII, but there was a lot more human labor involved, manufacturing tolerances were more loose, and we had widespread support of the American public to do what we needed to make things happen. It'd be incredible to see the War Powers Act implemented to publicly fund bus transportation, but I cannot fathom that occurring with this administration.
You were right in broad strokes, but buses are too much like collective action for the taste of Americans. The most optimistic outcome I can think of is that people start buying large quantities of E bikes and pressure their towns to use all that space in their stroads to accommodate bike lanes.
i think they're saying the situation then would be such that americans won't be able to eat so much. that might shock your sensibilities, but remember that thousands of iranian civilians have been indiscriminately murdered these last couple weeks, by america.
The buried lede: Israel did an unprovoked attack on Pars and Iran immediately retaliated by attacking QatarEnergy, which has major LNG partnerships with US oil companies.
And it's important to not that until that point, both the US and Israel had not been attacking any of the Iranian production and export infrastructure, only some depots (and refineries?) for domestic use.
A basic chronological analysis makes it abundantly clear who is provoking and who is retaliating in each of these situations (none of which are located in Israel, by the way).
Even if they could I don't think they would. It is not in their interest. Their target selection does make sense from their point of view and it has been a restrained and capability constrained tit for tat.
For now all they seem to want is to have a financially viable future as an independent country, not as anybody's vassal, not as a country for other superpowers to play games for geopolitical reasons. Essentially to control their own destiny.
That was scuttled in 1953. Their civilian aircraft was shot down without apology. Saddam Hussein was foisted against them. They pulled through 8 years of wars that saw attacks with chemical weapons to which they lost several tens of thousands lives.
If they do not like the people who have messed with them, I cannot say that their feelings are unjustified.
1) It is not clear that the people of Iran actually want to blow up refineries in general right now, but living in an autocracy they don't have much of a choice.
2) Because there is a pretty big ocean between them and most American civilians/infrastructure (this also enabled past colonial powers to wage war very pretty cost effectively and at their convenience). I'd like to argue that the prospect of retribution on home soil is important to stem aggressive wars, but at least for medieval Europe this apparently did not work that well either.
They could stage a "Operation Spiderweb" inspired attack [0], but this seems highly unlikely with the current powerful surveillance state of the USA. I once read a wild theory that some Mexican cartels might be able to, since they have access to military hardware too nowadays.
If they really are trying to provoke a revolt in Iran this was about the stupidest thing you could do.
Over 800 million Iranians rely on gas for cooking and heating. Before you joke about heating in a desert. Sand radiates heat incredibly fast, nights can get below freezing in some parts of Iran.
“Oil and gas prices jump after US-proxy Israel attacks Iranian gasfield infrastructure, and after Iran responds in kind after having promised to do so.”
is a headline that reflects reality and doesn't finesse the details -- I should really become a headline writer, I'm clearly better than whoever is employed by The Guardian.
At the very least it should be "Oil and gas prices jump after Israel and then Iran attack gasfields"
Putting Iran first might lead some to believe this was Iran-initiated, which of course is probably the intention.
Maybe the Islamic Republic shouldn't have attacked civilian assets in portions of the Gulf that are have been pro-Iran such as Qatar's ONG infra (it is QatarEnergy that has been helping Iran productionize the South Pars field since the early 1990s), Kuwait's welfare office, and the ADNOC loading dock in the Emirate of Fujairah.
Sentiments have hardened amongst Khaleejis [0] who previously were open to an off-ramp.
Edit: can't reply
> haven't hit any schools
They did in Azerbaijan [1]
> apartment buildings full of civilians.
Already did in Saudi [2] and similar incidents have happened in the UAE and Kuwait.
> I'm confused how Qatar is pro-Iran and hosting CENTCOM, which is running the war on Iran
Becuase countries are fine compartmentalizing relations. You see this in US-Turkiye-Iran, US-Qatar-Iran, Israel-India-Iran, US-Armenia-Iran, Turkiye-Azerbaijan-Israel, and other relationships.
In Qatar's case, Al Udeid only opened in 1996, but it was Iran that averted a coup d'état in Qatar in 1996 [3], collaborated with Qatar on supporting Hamas [4] and the Houthis [5], and Qatar became Iran's primary financial conduit abroad via agreements in 2017 [6][7] and 2023 [8].
By allowing the US to base in Al Udeid from 1996 and working with ExxonMobil on LNG exports, Qatar was able to incentivize the US to allow it's continued relationship with Iran.
The world isn't a game of Civ where you are either an ally or an enemy. The reality is countries compartmentalize relations, and when compartmentalization is broken, trust is broken as well.
For Gulf states like Qatar, they took a massive gamble doubling down on building a relationship with Iran - heck, Saudi Arabia-UAE-Egypt almost invaded Qatar due to these ties until Rex Tillerson stopped them [9] becuase the QatarEnergy-Exxon deal was his baby.
Now that Iran is striking Qatar, decades of risk taking was essentially all for naught, and Sheikh Tamim entire foreign policy and economic strategy is now in question internally because he staked his entire legacy on Iran-Qatar normalization in order to carve strategic autonomy from Saudi or the UAE.
The Gulf is very small - it's all the same people who went to the same colleges, worked for the same companies, and now work for the same ministries, so once reputations stick, they really stick and your only choice is to leave.
I am sure iran have a reason to do that just like US and israel have no shortage of reasons to kill babies and unarmed innocent patients in the hospitals.
So they should just take it and accept a unilateral pounding? Like it or not disrupting gas prices might be the one chance they have of forcing Trump to the table on more favorable terms over domestic pressure.
The current price for crude oil does not correctly price in either:
- things end in the next 2-3 weeks and then get back to normal
- this goes on past 6-8 weeks, and stockpiles run out
The first would argue for a modest price increase, the second a somewhat unpredictable, but very severe price increase with hard to understand second order impacts.
So, the price is some weighted version of these two, based on traders estimates of what is most likely. And of course, these estimates can change quickly as events unfold, which is why the price can move so fast, despite no immediate impact to supply "on the ground".
IIRC the cost of gas during the Biden era were driven largely by factors outside of our control - the pandemic, supply issues, Russia invading Ukraine, etc. This is a war of choice directly caused by the very deliberate actions we took in the middle east. There is a very clear cause and effect to point to here, much like the Iraq war in the early 2000s raising gas prices.
> after Iran and Israel attack gasfields
After Israel attacked gasfields and Iran retaliated. Iran didn't start any of this.
Wish this comment could be pinned.
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Counterfactuals are hard to estimate but had the US and Britain not engineered a coup in 1953 to grab their oil they might have had friendly relations with US and its allies today.
Don't discount that the US foisted Saddam Hussein and his chemical weapons on Iran's population. They lost some 20 to 30 thousand civilians to chemical weapons attacks. Yet never once counterattacked with chemical weapons.
The assassinated Khamenei even had a fatwa declaring weapons of mass destruction to be un-Islamic.
No one is innocent in this world, but I can certainly understand why Iran feels the way it does and I find it justified, in the sense had I been born there I probably would feel the same way.
Recall Iran was the only middle-eastern country that supported the UN resolution forming the state of Israel.
US interference left them with a bad taste in their mouth. No wonder they do not like the US and their partners in geopolitical resource grabs.
What is your source for saying they are funding attacks? I know people on HN aren't stupid enough to fully believe everything Isreali and American media tells them so what's your source?
If he was serious about tracing the roots of terrorism he would have landed up with Saudi money and Pakistani training. Those two are the major powerhouses of terrorism.
Citizens of the US and its vassal states are quick to ignore that. Most are too lazy to exercise critical thinking.
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Didn't we see threats from other countries with nukes, like US, Russia, Israel
What do you mean? be specific
no, that isn't starting something.
Who's the source for this? Isreal or the Epstien government?
Netahyau has been claiming Iran will have a nuclear weapon "real soon" for thirty years.
https://www.news18.com/world/weeks-away-by-next-spring-video...
Which part? The last time that the IAEA inspected Iran’s nuclear stockpile was in 2025. As for “death to Israel” slogan there’s a Wikipedia page about it..
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They were attacked because they did not yet have a nuke. Countries with nukes are usually not pushed around much.
From what I see, Iran absolutely needs one to be left alone.
As for terrorism you should be looking at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
India attacked Pakistan regardless of nuke. It is not a given that nuke brings security.
Pakistan effectively doesn't have nukes. Pakistan's nukes are kept in a de-mated state and it takes hours if not days to get them ready for launch. They're too close to terrorist groups in the Middle East (geographically and otherwise) to have nukes that are a button-press away.
This gives them enough deterrence against a total invasion (because of the "what if" factor) but not against random airstrikes.
It doesn't guarantee of course, but one does not face external existential threats.
India will not dare to overrun Pakistan nor does it want to. (Few crackpots from both those countries aside)
i think everyone understands what the word "terrorist" means now.
They do now, but they used to too
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It is pretty clear Iran is only going up the escalation ladder when Israel does. Even Trump blamed Israel for the escalation: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x7leknlywo
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The justification I have heard is that crown prince okayed and assisted with the intelligence that helped with the assassination of Khamenei.
I have no way to know how far that is true, but I won't put that beyond crown prince.
>Israel hit Iran's South Pars - part of the world's largest natural gas field – and Tehran retaliated by striking an energy complex in Qatar.
I believe when lying doesn't help him. It doesn't matter if it is Qatar / Saudi if it still affects the US / Israel.
There is no point talking with these people. It's hard to explain how much the overton window shifted for Israeli-Khaleeji cooperation after the past few weeks, and after the strikes that have been hitting the Gulf.
The tone has shifted significantly that even KSA is now saturating WhatsApp, Snap, and other Gulf heavy media with anti-Iran and pro-Military Intervention ad campaigns [0][1][2], with a tone I've been noticing is similar what I saw in Israel right before 2014.
Anti-Iran sentiment was already prominent after the Houthis and the insurgency in the Eastern Province a decade ago, but the sentiment has now become extremely hardened.
The tone shift is similar to what happened to Saddam way back in the 90s and 2000s. MbS is trying to position himself the same way King Abdullah did during the Gulf War and Iraq War.
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-u2DYl0FQ-M&pp=0gcJCcUKAYcqIYz...
[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fujoYIjeS-I
[2] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LhdqEB4dKgc
Some airlines are cancelling flights left and right, others are jacking up the prices. If the war keeps going on into the summer, there's going to be some very obvious consumer-facing issues. From gas prices, very expensive travel, price hikes in logistics, you name it.
I think the timeline is much shorter than that. These oil-producing nations have not invested in a lot of storage, because they usually ship everything out immediately. Once you no longer have anywhere to put the oil, you have to start shutting down production, and it is not easy to restart. We'll be at that point in maybe another week and a half.
Is there anyone here with a deeper understanding of oilfield geology and engineering? Given that:
- storage facilities in the region are limited and in some cases almost full
- mature oil fields need constant water injections to pump out the remaining crude
How likely is it that stopping crude extraction (and therefore the water injections) will permanently damage the oil reservoirs?
And based on that is it possible that countries with this type of mature oil fields would consider simply dumping the excess crude that can't be stored anymore in the desert or in the Gulf of Persia?
Restarting Fieldwide Shutdown for Middle East Oil and Gas Producers is Not Easy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443238 - March 2026
is a resource I found helpful.
2021 all over again except now we don’t even get a new president.
Or even sooner if Iran intensifies striking of storages. The whole Gulf is starting to feel like a complete write off...
There is one way that production could resume, of course: a public peace that is both real and accompanied by Iranian broadcast of orders to their coastal troops to stand down.
Given the ongoing campaign to assassinate Iranian diplomats who may be willing to negotiate peace whilst leaving hardliners alive, the only question is what kind of inducements will be necessary to get them to agree?
I don't think anything short of the US completely cutting ties with Israel would make Iran consider backing down at this point. And even then, I expect they'll continue directly attacking Israel.
Such a change given Iran was one of the few Middle-Eastern countries to approve of the UN resolution calling for the formation of Israel.
Not exactly a recent change. Since the '79 revolution Iran has had a pretty hostile position against Israel and the US. A big part of that hostility was because the US and the UK overthrew their democracy to install a puppet dictator in '53.
Indeed. Having petroleum reserves is almost always a curse. Norway seems to be the only country to have escaped unmolested.
Having anything a rich person in the US wants is a curse. We've overthrown governments for bananas and sugar. We tried to overthrow a government for cigars.
Basically the only reason Norway escaped this curse was they were next door to the USSR and the US knew fucking around there could easily land it in the USSR potentially also taking Sweden with it.
Everyone Iranian leader who is killed is post-facto named 'moderate', with very little proof of being moderate while alive.
Is this not the heart of the problem? Israel has been killing Iranians for years. Nobody can guarantee that Israel would not break a cease fire when they feel like it.
I fear that both sides are acting completely rational: Israel wants to wipe out Iran and Iran is doing whatever they can to survive.
Especially so for the consumers living in the bombed areas
A few critical items beyond oil are also now in short supply:
Fertilizer, which is kind of important right now since it's springtime and farmers are planting crops around the world.
Plastic, without which modern hospitals can't operate.
Aluminum.
The list goes on, this was the dumbest war in our lifetimes but it's the culmination of a lot of previous stupidity that made it all possible.
The people who started this war are authoritarians and, let's be honest, straight up criminals, who did it to entrench their grip on their own domestic politics.
>the dumbest war in our lifetimes
While it is indeed foolish, it is worse than foolish, it is evil.
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holding US Embassy Staff hostage for 444 days
Vs
Bombing a school for girls
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I applaud Carter for trying to rescue our hostages in 1979.
So sad to see our military failed so badly. The plan seemed conceivable...
Yet outrageous. The distance to Tehran so far.
Sometimes you got to do something. Even if against all odds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw
The sentiment I see is more like, "Are war crimes, mass deaths, a global depression, and maybe WWIII really worth keeping the earlier crimes of Trump and Netanyahu out of the headlines?"
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> no to plastic,
"Dow CEO says up to 50% of polyethylene supply is offline, constrained or impacted amid Middle East disruptions - conf call" [1]
[1] https://www.marketscreener.com/news/dow-ceo-says-up-to-50-of...
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Even if there's plenty of supply, this is still a major supply chain disruption that will have ripple effects. Combine this with all the other major supply chain disruptions.
This might only raise costs a few percent. Yet for some firms that were just barely keeping their heads above water with the tightened monetary policy, and the tariffs, and now spikes in energy prices, this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I agree this is a major disruption, but I don't agree it's the plastic portion to worry about.
Oil, fertilizer, helium. These are the things I'm most worried about especially for their knock-on effects. Fertilizer is going to have a long tail. Like, don't expect a food spike this year, but expect prices on food to go wild next year. That alone is going to majorly effect everything worldwide.
Got it, I think we're on the same page generally. I was just rattling off a few things that I'd heard about today.
It's not price, it's availability. You construction will slam to a halt. Plumber neighbour is now hiring security dogs for his supply yard as they now have to deal with theft of pvc and PE pipe, in addition to tweakers going after copper.
Its a good thing. Good opportunity to push electrification of everything and ditch oil for good. I hope it keeps pushing oil prices up.
Friendly reminder that every member of Trump's cabinet is a multi millionaire. This is just a game for them and there are no consequences for losing.
so much winning, you're gonna get sick of winning
I don't get why the prices jumped so much - looks like panic and hoarding because:
- The Middle East produces roughly 30% of the world's oil
- But about 20% of total global oil consumption flows through this strait (less than 30% because of of domestic consumption and some pipelines avoiding strait)
I would understand if prices increases e.g. 50% but like more than 100% seems like a panic or manipulation
Oil demand is mostly inelastic. No matter how much or how little is produced, those who need it NEED it, so they'll compete with all others who similarly need it. The richest ones from among them get the oil first, and the poorest get nothing. The end price ends up being a function of how much oil is available versus how much the richest countries' absolutely irreducibly need for oil is versus how much wealth those countries can throw at the problem not to be left without before someone else with deeper pockets gets it.
Also, a third order effect of oil inelasticity is that if it cost too much , it decrease production and trade (might be less true now, but it was absolutely true in 2010), it lowers global demand, so the prices go down. Which is why markets can't predict oil prices, not really.
It would make sense if there was mostly inelastic demand for 80% of current production. I'm not sure if that is the case, but it might be. There is a lot of usage with no good substitute.
I had this thought as well. But oil prices are set globally on the exchanges, even oil that never leaves the US is affected.
I agree. Why is domestic oil linked to global oil price?
We are energy independent? Big Oil is milking US.
This is the exact reason that prices for U.S. benchmarks (e.g. WTI) are diverging from international ones (e.g. Brent). The spread between the two is the largest since 2011 and widening. There is only so much export capacity in the U.S., so there will be a glut compared to the rest of the world as a whole.
U.S. prices are up, but international prices are up even more.
if someone wants to buy American oil for twice the price overseas then it’s not gonna go to your local gas station…
Surely there are some shipping expenses though? For Global Oil.
Versus the Colonial Pipeline that is prevalent on the Eastern Half of US.
The ME has very low cost to produce, shipping is negligible.
Uniting to fight gasfields might be just the common enemy that Iran and Israel need to finally mend this relationship.
If you had a secret agenda to reduce the world's carbon production, this is one way to go about it.
Except for all these burning gas and oil fields.
If you break the rig on a mature oil deposit, there is a chance you will make the remaining petroleum/gas unreachable for the foreseeable future (at least at an acceptable price point). So you reduce the total oil quantity humanity will be able to extract.
remember your paper straws to save the planet
Have seen social media chatter of isolated shortages in two countries already.
Hard to tell whether that’s just background noise that is just getting more airtime play thanks to Iran or whether it’s the first sign of bigger trouble.
It will probably go back up to about 5 grams of Gold per barrel, which was the past peak, and hold there.
More troubling if you're paid in dollars, the end of the Petrodollar is likely now on a very accelerated timeline. Based on history, I expect a 60-80% drop in our standard of living when that happens.
On top of the drop from the past 10 years?
Time to get out our “I did that” stickers, right?
I think about this every time I get gas. What was the claimed link between Biden and gas prices anyway? I feel like I missed something.
Nothing more than him being president when gas prices were high.
Stockpile (some) gasoline now because retail price shocks haven't hit yet because it takes time to ripple through the supply chain and commodity market-goods delivery price differential is in flux until supplies dry up. Supply impairments will last 1-2 years because around a dozen billion-dollar petrochem facilities have been physically destroyed and will need to be manufactured again in distant lands like Italy.
Good. I hope gas becomes so unaffordable the US economy collapses. Maybe they'll lose some weight and it'll improve the healthcare situation.
It seems highly unlikely that the US will magically have trains and more walk-able living because gas is unaffordable. Especially if it was a drastic and sudden shock of supply. Myself as much as anyone is not in favor of the reliance the US has on cars and non-renewable energy, but causing chaos is not the way to do it.
The people in the US chose chaos. Maybe we need a harsh lesson not to do that. If we are permitted to vote this November, we'll get an indication whether or not we've learned anything.
This is an interesting point. Supposing this sudden shock happens, wouldn't American towns, counties, and the like, run to buy buses and start providing emergency bus services all around to all those suburban areas where people couldn't afford gas anymore? Or at least, this is how I imagine a sane response would be.
There'd be a shortage of buses at first, but I also suppose it'd relatively easy to adapt current North American car manufacturing plants to start manufacturing buses.
But that's just an uninformed guess. Am I too much off base in this?
I went to school for industrial engineering and have worked in manufacturing the last decade or so.
Bus production would be an entire refactoring of an auto factory. Tons of equipment would need to move around, electrical conduit would need to be re-run to different places, much of the existing equipment would be too small. The equipment would need to be ordered from suppliers who already have the next couple months to years of business booked, new suppliers sourced and contracts signed, etc. On an American timeline, I can't imagine it being done in under a year if you threw money at every problem aggressively.
We did change some auto plants to manufacturing airplanes and airplane components for WWII, but there was a lot more human labor involved, manufacturing tolerances were more loose, and we had widespread support of the American public to do what we needed to make things happen. It'd be incredible to see the War Powers Act implemented to publicly fund bus transportation, but I cannot fathom that occurring with this administration.
Thanks, that was quite informative!
You were right in broad strokes, but buses are too much like collective action for the taste of Americans. The most optimistic outcome I can think of is that people start buying large quantities of E bikes and pressure their towns to use all that space in their stroads to accommodate bike lanes.
i think they're saying the situation then would be such that americans won't be able to eat so much. that might shock your sensibilities, but remember that thousands of iranian civilians have been indiscriminately murdered these last couple weeks, by america.
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I forgot only Republicans are allowed to do that.
Hasbara bot
The buried lede: Israel did an unprovoked attack on Pars and Iran immediately retaliated by attacking QatarEnergy, which has major LNG partnerships with US oil companies.
And it's important to not that until that point, both the US and Israel had not been attacking any of the Iranian production and export infrastructure, only some depots (and refineries?) for domestic use.
They wanted to take them over.
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'Unprovoked'
https://xcancel.com/glcarlstrom/status/2034500768087093525
(and that excludes various attacks on Israel)
A basic chronological analysis makes it abundantly clear who is provoking and who is retaliating in each of these situations (none of which are located in Israel, by the way).
After thinking it over I'm on the side of the people of Iran. Why aren't they blowing up refineries in Corpus Christi, Texas?
Even if they could I don't think they would. It is not in their interest. Their target selection does make sense from their point of view and it has been a restrained and capability constrained tit for tat.
For now all they seem to want is to have a financially viable future as an independent country, not as anybody's vassal, not as a country for other superpowers to play games for geopolitical reasons. Essentially to control their own destiny.
That was scuttled in 1953. Their civilian aircraft was shot down without apology. Saddam Hussein was foisted against them. They pulled through 8 years of wars that saw attacks with chemical weapons to which they lost several tens of thousands lives.
If they do not like the people who have messed with them, I cannot say that their feelings are unjustified.
I am not even Iranian.
To state the obvious:
1) It is not clear that the people of Iran actually want to blow up refineries in general right now, but living in an autocracy they don't have much of a choice.
2) Because there is a pretty big ocean between them and most American civilians/infrastructure (this also enabled past colonial powers to wage war very pretty cost effectively and at their convenience). I'd like to argue that the prospect of retribution on home soil is important to stem aggressive wars, but at least for medieval Europe this apparently did not work that well either.
(1) is written as if other forms of govt like a typical liberal democracy in the west or Europe give their citizens much of a choice.
I’m probably missing some subtext or sarcasm here but because they don’t have ICBMs to reach the US?
They could stage a "Operation Spiderweb" inspired attack [0], but this seems highly unlikely with the current powerful surveillance state of the USA. I once read a wild theory that some Mexican cartels might be able to, since they have access to military hardware too nowadays.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb
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If they really are trying to provoke a revolt in Iran this was about the stupidest thing you could do. Over 800 million Iranians rely on gas for cooking and heating. Before you joke about heating in a desert. Sand radiates heat incredibly fast, nights can get below freezing in some parts of Iran.
“Oil and gas prices jump after US-proxy Israel attacks Iranian gasfield infrastructure, and after Iran responds in kind after having promised to do so.”
is a headline that reflects reality and doesn't finesse the details -- I should really become a headline writer, I'm clearly better than whoever is employed by The Guardian.
At the very least it should be "Oil and gas prices jump after Israel and then Iran attack gasfields"
Putting Iran first might lead some to believe this was Iran-initiated, which of course is probably the intention.
is israel a US proxy? that's feeling a little backward right now.
all proxies do this eventually.
no one ever seems to learn, you use a proxy to do dodgy shit for you and eventually they become the tail that wags the dog.
made worse in this case by the fact that trump is a weak leader and Netanyahu is not.
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s/No/Yes/
s/just//
They're not exclusive
Well... maybe... but US is backing them so... what's your point?
Put the blame where it belongs, don't fall for the victim card of Israel. Remember why the world economics turned bad. All because of ISRAEL.
Maybe the Islamic Republic shouldn't have attacked civilian assets in portions of the Gulf that are have been pro-Iran such as Qatar's ONG infra (it is QatarEnergy that has been helping Iran productionize the South Pars field since the early 1990s), Kuwait's welfare office, and the ADNOC loading dock in the Emirate of Fujairah.
Sentiments have hardened amongst Khaleejis [0] who previously were open to an off-ramp.
Edit: can't reply
> haven't hit any schools
They did in Azerbaijan [1]
> apartment buildings full of civilians.
Already did in Saudi [2] and similar incidents have happened in the UAE and Kuwait.
> I'm confused how Qatar is pro-Iran and hosting CENTCOM, which is running the war on Iran
Becuase countries are fine compartmentalizing relations. You see this in US-Turkiye-Iran, US-Qatar-Iran, Israel-India-Iran, US-Armenia-Iran, Turkiye-Azerbaijan-Israel, and other relationships.
In Qatar's case, Al Udeid only opened in 1996, but it was Iran that averted a coup d'état in Qatar in 1996 [3], collaborated with Qatar on supporting Hamas [4] and the Houthis [5], and Qatar became Iran's primary financial conduit abroad via agreements in 2017 [6][7] and 2023 [8].
By allowing the US to base in Al Udeid from 1996 and working with ExxonMobil on LNG exports, Qatar was able to incentivize the US to allow it's continued relationship with Iran.
The world isn't a game of Civ where you are either an ally or an enemy. The reality is countries compartmentalize relations, and when compartmentalization is broken, trust is broken as well.
For Gulf states like Qatar, they took a massive gamble doubling down on building a relationship with Iran - heck, Saudi Arabia-UAE-Egypt almost invaded Qatar due to these ties until Rex Tillerson stopped them [9] becuase the QatarEnergy-Exxon deal was his baby.
Now that Iran is striking Qatar, decades of risk taking was essentially all for naught, and Sheikh Tamim entire foreign policy and economic strategy is now in question internally because he staked his entire legacy on Iran-Qatar normalization in order to carve strategic autonomy from Saudi or the UAE.
The Gulf is very small - it's all the same people who went to the same colleges, worked for the same companies, and now work for the same ministries, so once reputations stick, they really stick and your only choice is to leave.
[0] - https://xcancel.com/MofaQatar_EN/status/2034517464940159428#...
[1] - https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/06/aliyev-vows-attacks-on-a...
[2] - https://tribune.com.pk/story/2596430/israel-launches-fresh-a...
[3] - https://www.danielpipes.org/6317/hamad-bin-jasim-bin-jabr-al...
[4] - https://www.dw.com/en/who-is-hamas/a-57537872
[5] - https://sites.bu.edu/pardeeatlas/research-and-policy/back2sc...
[6] - https://ifpnews.com/iran-qatar-boost-banking-relations/
[7] - https://www.arabnews.com/node/1331176/business-economy
[8] - https://en.irna.ir/amp/85241114/
[9] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/8/1/rex-tillerson-stoppe...
Qatar, the country hosting the US airbase that's the forward headquarters for U.S. Central Command? That Qatar?
I'm confused how Qatar is pro-Iran and hosting CENTCOM, which is running the war on Iran.
At least they haven't hit any schools or apartment buildings full of civilians.
I am sure iran have a reason to do that just like US and israel have no shortage of reasons to kill babies and unarmed innocent patients in the hospitals.
So they should just take it and accept a unilateral pounding? Like it or not disrupting gas prices might be the one chance they have of forcing Trump to the table on more favorable terms over domestic pressure.
> So they should just take it and accept a unilateral pounding
Pretty much. This is what happens when you alienate all your neighbors and don't take the off-ramps that were offered.
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The current price for crude oil does not correctly price in either:
- things end in the next 2-3 weeks and then get back to normal
- this goes on past 6-8 weeks, and stockpiles run out
The first would argue for a modest price increase, the second a somewhat unpredictable, but very severe price increase with hard to understand second order impacts.
So, the price is some weighted version of these two, based on traders estimates of what is most likely. And of course, these estimates can change quickly as events unfold, which is why the price can move so fast, despite no immediate impact to supply "on the ground".
Whoa hold your brush. US admin agency over wars that affect oil prices was very different in 2022 compared to 2026.
IIRC the cost of gas during the Biden era were driven largely by factors outside of our control - the pandemic, supply issues, Russia invading Ukraine, etc. This is a war of choice directly caused by the very deliberate actions we took in the middle east. There is a very clear cause and effect to point to here, much like the Iraq war in the early 2000s raising gas prices.
Already feeling this even in Brazil... Right when we got inflation under control for a couple of years.
You got inflation under control? Must be nice…
I thought you run your favela-rovers on sugarcane gasohol?