Fifty years after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the current crisis in the Middle East could disrupt global oil supplies and push prices up, American experts have warned, according to The Associated Press.
The head of the International Energy Agency said the war in Gaza is “certainly not good news” for oil markets already exhausted by oil production cuts from Saudi Arabia and Russia and the expectation of stronger demand from China.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, told The Associated Press that the markets will remain volatile, and the conflict may lead to higher oil prices, which is certainly bad news for inflation, he said that they are the most affected by the rise in prices, noting that the fluctuations pushed oil prices to rise to 96 dollars.
The price of oil depends on the amount used and the amount available, and the latter is under threat due to the war in Gaza, although the Strip is not home to large oil production.
Andrew Lippo, president of Lippo Oil Associates, a Houston-based consulting firm, said: “in order to achieve a sustainable price move, we will really need to see supply disruptions, but experts said that if the blow happened this time it would not be as severe as the crisis of 1973 due to the fact that US oil production reached an all-time high. The US Energy Information Administration, affiliated with the Department of Energy, reported that US oil production in the first week of October amounted to 13.2 million barrels per day, surpassing the previous record set in 2020 by 100 thousand barrels. Weekly domestic oil production has doubled since the first week in October 2012 and up to now.
Mike Somers, president and CEO of the American Foundation, said: “the energy crisis of 1973 taught us many things, but what is most important in my opinion is that American energy power is a tremendous source of security, prosperity and freedom around the world.
“We cannot squander our strategic advantage and retreat from energy leadership,”added Somers, who has repeatedly criticized President Joe Biden’s policies restricting the restriction of new oil leases as part of Biden’s efforts to slow global climate change.
“In an unstable world, the war in Europe, the war in the Middle East, energy security is at stake,” Somers said in a speech at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington, adding: “American oil and gas are needed now more than ever, let’s take the lessons we learned from 1973 into account and avoid sowing the seeds of the next energy crisis.
At the moment, the crisis is not a repeat of what happened in 1973. Arab countries are not attacking Israel uniformly, and OPEC + countries have not moved to restrict supplies or increase prices beyond a few extra dollars.
