Fears of a Global Oil Shock if the Mideast Crisis Intensifies

The threat of an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has created an “extraordinarily precarious” global situation, sowing alarm about the potential economic fallout.

As the world absorbs the prospect of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, the potential economic fallout is sowing increasing alarm. The worst fears center on a broadly debilitating development: a shock to the global oil supply.

Such a result, actively contemplated in world capitals, could yield surging prices for gasoline, fuel and other products made with petroleum like plastics, chemicals and fertilizer. It could discourage investment, hiring and business expansion, threatening many economies — particularly in Europe — with the risk of recession. The effects would be potent in nations that depend on imported oil, especially poor countries in Africa.

The possibility of this calamitous outcome has come into focus in recent days as Israel plots its response to the barrage of missiles that Iran unleashed last week. Some scenarios are seen as highly unlikely, yet still conceivable: An Israeli strike on Iranian oil installations might prompt Iran to target refineries in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, both major oil producers. Iranian-supported Houthi rebels claimed credit for an attack on Saudi oil installations in 2019. The Trump administration subsequently pinned the blame on Iranian forces.

As it has done before, Iran might also threaten the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that is the conduit for oil produced in the Persian Gulf, the source of nearly one-third of the world’s oil production. Such a move could entail conflict with American naval ships stationed in the region.

That, too, is currently considered to be improbable. But the upheaval in the region in recent months has pushed out the parameters of possibility, rendering imaginable scenarios that were once dismissed as extreme.