On Monday, benchmark oil prices briefly surged close to $119 per barrel, representing a jump of nearly 30% since the conflict began and raising fears of a global energy shock. Roughly 200 million barrels of oil have been removed from global supply over the past ten days as tankers remain stranded and producers scale back operations. Saudi Arabia has begun diverting some crude exports through pipelines to the Red Sea in an effort to bypass the Gulf shipping bottleneck. This US/Israel-Iran conflict is producing one of the most severe disruptions to global oil supply since the early stages of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The recipe for trouble ahead includes halted shipping, regional production cuts, and geopolitical escalation, which rapidly transformed the Gulf energy market into the central economic front of the widening conflict.

Source: The North Africa Journal March 09, 2026 16:53 UTC