The petrol price could break every record in case of war between Iran and Israelwith oil now up 2% and now close to $90 a barrel after the Israeli attack on the military base in Esfahan.
Many people ignore it, but for the price of petrol and gas a lot depends on the situation in the country Strait of Hormuza strip of land that divides the Arabian Peninsula from the coasts of Iran, connecting the Gulf of Oman to the South-East with the Persian Gulf to the West.
To understand the importance of this stretch of sea we can rely on the numbers: in 2023 on average 20.5 million barrels of oil per day, 80 million tons of LNG in one year and several other petroleum products.
From here it passes approximately 40% of the world’s oil and 20% of LNGwith countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar exporting their resources mainly through the Strait of Hormuz.
In case of a war against Iran, Tehran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and this would cause an immediate surge in the price of petrol: in Italy in many distributors it has already exceeded 2 euros per liter in self-service mode, with the government making it clear that it does not want to intervene at this time.
Petrol prices: the risks of a war in Iran
Last October after the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, JP Morgan with a note he expressed all his fears for a possible increase in the price of oil and gas in the event of turbulence along the Strait of Hormuz.
“If the conflict were to extend to include the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s busiest oil shipping channel, this it would shut down the region’s oil trade, driving up oil prices – JP Morgan said -. Crucially, although Iran has threatened to block the strait over the years, this has never happened”.
Basically if the petrol price has increased due to attacks by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, let alone what could happen in the case of a blockade of maritime transport along the Strait of Hormuz.
L’Iran several times it has threatened retaliation against maritime traffic in the area – in May last year it seized two oil tankers – as a sort of deterrence towards an attack on its borders, with tension in the Middle East now at an all-time high after mutual attacks between Tehran and Israel.
Fortunately, the feeling is that both Iran and Israel do not want to come to one war direct, with the Iranian regime appearing to much prefer the proxy one underway in the Holy Land using its allies Hamas and Hezbollah.
These turbulences, however, inevitably have repercussions on the price of raw materials, with the increase in the cost of gas he was born in gas which is a direct consequence of the war in Ukraine and the chaos in the Red Sea.
With excise duties that in Italy account for over 50% of the cost at the pump for petrol and diesel, the The government currently does not have the economic means to implement discounts at the pump again: if the Strait of Hormuz were to fall into chaos, filling up your car could become almost prohibitive for many Italians.
