While President Donald Trump met Tuesday in the Situation Room to discuss a possible attack on Iran, global energy leaders at a conference just one mile away were fixated on something very unusual in the oil markets: relative calm.
Since Israel launched its attacks on Iran last week, oil prices haven’t increased more than 8% on any given day. That’s a huge divergence from the energy market’s usual reaction in the face of a potentially massive, disruptive, Middle East conflict: During the 1973 oil embargo, prices tripled; during the Gulf War, they doubled.
But oil markets are not so simple anymore. Unless Iran takes direct and aggressive action against major energy targets, the world’s current robust and diverse sources of oil, combined with somewhat low demand, can withstand a Middle East conflict, industry experts said to each other and to NOTUS at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum on Tuesday.