Würde Trump eine Ölkrise riskieren?

Rogé Karma: “The last time an Iranian regime was overthrown, the resulting oil crisis eventually saw Americans lining up at gas stations and paying double what they’d spent a few years earlier to fill their tanks. So far, Donald Trump’s new Iran war hasn’t caused anything close to a 1979-type crisis. But the longer the conflict goes on, the likelier such an outcome becomes.

“In response to the strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran announced that it would attack any ship that attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off the country’s southern coast. For decades, this move has been widely considered the doomsday scenario for the global energy system. About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait every day, carried by ships bringing Middle Eastern output to the rest of the world, and virtually no alternatives exist for getting all of that oil to market. Several experts told me that if the strait were to remain closed for more than a few weeks, the price of oil could double or triple as countries and businesses engage in a bidding war to secure the limited supplies available from other sources … 

“Now that the strait has been closed, hundreds of tankers carrying millions of barrels of oil are sitting idly at the entrance, afraid to proceed further; oil supplies around the world are dwindling, and, with nowhere to send their product, major exporters are shutting down their oil fields. And yet oil markets have so far been relatively sanguine about the situation. In recent days, oil prices have spiked by only about 20 percent. That seems to be due to a widespread belief among traders that the United States wouldn’t possibly allow such a catastrophic disruption to persist. That’s not an unreasonable bet—but it is very much a bet, and one that might not pay off. If anything, global oil markets might not be taking the current crisis seriously enough.”

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Perhaps a more pertinent question: Can Trump think ahead?