Days ago, Brussels presented a catalog of recommendations to reduce oil and gas consumption: teleworking, promoting public transport or lowering road speeds as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire may provide a respite, but traffic in this area will take time to recover its pre-war volumes: While in 2025, an average of 95 ships transited here every day, including 55 oil tankers, since the start of the conflict that number has fallen to less than 10 ships, according to data from the University of Oxford. To this we must add the time it takes each ship to reach its destination and assume that the ceasefire is definitive.
We have seen the first consequences of the specter of rationing this week. Italy restricted refueling of commercial flights due to the “limited availability” of kerosene. It did so at the airports of Milan Linate, Venice Marco Polo, Bologna and Treviso, all in the north of the country, until April 9, giving prior notice of possible operational changes. Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, announced that it is studying canceling up to 10% of its flights.
“Better to be prepared to face structural and lasting effects,” said the EU Energy Commissioner in an interview in the Financial Times, pointing directly to the reduction in demand after releasing a large amount of reserves to compensate for the lack of supply. The recommendations are a carbon copy of those that the International Energy Agency published a few weeks ago and are reminiscent of measures already heard in the crises that have occurred since the pandemic, such as the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022. The entity speaks of the largest supply interruption in the history of the world oil market.
Many countries in Asia were beginning to apply them. The Philippine government asked workers to carpool and has increased the workday to four days weekly. Sri Lanka declared every Wednesday holiday for civil servants, Burma had limited the use of private cars allowing drivers to use them every other day. South Korea lifted limits on coal burning, while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urged citizens to take public transport in the coming weeks to maintain fuel for farmers, miners and other workers in “critical industries.” The country, highly dependent on imports from China, was thus reacting to the closure of diesel and gasoline exports decreed by Beijing. In the United States, the aviation sector has also been affected. Flights between Los Angeles and Anchorage, Alaska have been eliminated and the head of Delta has announced price increases for flights.
Dependent products
Aviation kerosene is one of the fuels that has been first affected by rationing, but the IEA points to other products. «The Gulf countries are major exporters of middle distillates, and their crude oils, once refined, produce large quantities of jet fuel or diesel. The latter is especially important because it powers trucks, ships, construction and agricultural machinery. If there is a shortage of diesel, it will affect food supply, construction, mining and global trade,” the entity says.
The UN has warned that hup to 318 million people are at risk of famine due to the bottleneck of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, since More than 30% of fertilizers pass through this area (urea or ammonia) used in agriculture around the world. In Europe we have noticed it in the price, already 45% more expensive, agricultural organizations lament in the middle of the fertilizer season and warn that A cereal without these phytosanitary products can produce up to 70% less.
Another of the crucial elements for the economy or AI that passes through Hormuz is helium, which, together with silicon and bromine, is used in the manufacture of chips for mobile phones, household appliances or credit cards. 38% of the world’s helium comes from Qatar. Cristian Castillo, professor of Economics and Business Studies at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), talks about “the vulnerabilities we have. We have experienced stockouts since the pandemic in products on which the global economy depends, such as fertilizers for agriculture or semiconductors. In this case, we can see some increase in prices because freight rates have increased, and also insurance, although, at the moment, there are no stockouts. We will have to see how events evolve. We are facing a complicated scenario and we don’t know what can happen,” he says. However, he calls for caution: “Uncertainty and messages that we may run out of stock can generate a stockpiling effect on citizens, which only aggravates the situation. “We are seeing it in Asian countries with gasoline and we all remember what happened with toilet paper during the pandemic and it was not a factory problem.”
No one knows what to expect from the conflict or whether the ceasefire will last beyond two weeks. However, Antonio Turiel, researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the CSIC and doctor in Physics, warns that “due to the wells that have been stopped and the damage that has been done to infrastructure such as refineries or loading terminals, repair can take years.” And it goes further.
a step
For him, this crisis is one more step in a process of decline. «We expected a process of decreasing production and all Trump has done is accelerate it. Let’s see how the conflict turns out, because at stake is an important part of the production of oil and gas and other materials such as helium or fertilizers that in very high percentages in the global market are produced or pass through this area. I always say that what we have been seeing for years is the preparation for shortages,” he says.
To argue the decline in global production, he refers to the IEA report from September entitled “The implications of the rates of decline in oil and gas fields” in which the institution states that Almost 90% of upstream investment is intended to compensate for production losses in existing fields (about 15,000 worldwide). “The average annual decline rate observed after peak production is 5.6% for conventional oil and 6.8% for conventional natural gas.” According to the IEA, production losses force investment to be constantly raised just to “stay in the same place.” The industry needs to accelerate its pace to stay afloat. In the case of oil, this drop would be more than 5.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) per year, on average until 2035, which is equivalent to losing more than the current total oil production of Brazil and Norway annually. As for natural gas, it would mean a loss of 270 billion bcm per year, equivalent to losing all the gas produced by African countries annually. By 2035, more than 70% of unconventional production would have been lost and conventional production would fall by around 55%.”
Will the economy recover from what happened? What will happen if the war continues? We will have to see, but the word that has been heard the most in recent years is “uncertainty.”
Restrict car traffic on the road
►According to IEA calculations, working from home could reduce automobile oil consumption by 2-6%; Lowering the speed on highways by 10 km/h can reduce consumption by between 5 and 10% and alternative access to cars with savings between 1-5%. Aside from the war, in Spain, the DGT announced in January the increase in high-occupancy lanes. As defended by the Director of Traffic, Pere Navarro, increasing occupancy would reduce both the volume of cars and the environmental impact. It also includes more demanding measures of use and vehicles with a Zero environmental label no longer have access to these lanes if they circulate with a single occupant.