Apologies if this has been asked to death already and i haven’t seen it. I’m also not trying to be too much of a downer but it’s kind of unprecedented.
I’m wondering what you think it’ll do to you personally? I think we’re just getting started and haven’t experienced the full shock yet. Inventories are still being burned down and even if the strait opened tomorrow no oil would flow for 8 months since you need to demine it and line up passages of tankers.
My biggest worry is over fertillizer. The strait closed right at planting season for the northern hemisphere stranding like ⅓ of the world’s ammonium nitrate. Farmers in rich nations buy it in advance and have it staged for spring, so I’m unsure how the rest of the world does it or how bad that’s going to be…
people see strait closed and think of oil because of course there’s a lot of oil going through it, but oil can be routed through pipelines outside gulf so impact on oil is less than that 20% commonly cited
the bigger impact is on gas, because it can’t be transported that easily and it’s closer to 40% of supply. because gas is so hard to transport you can try to avoid doing that, so it’s turned into fertilizer and diesel and aluminum, whose transport is easier, and isn’t as constrained as LNG transport. byproduct of gas mining is helium and it can’t be mined on its own, and while valuable enough to be flown out of qatar supply stops when gas stops. gulf royals have seen that world tries to get rid of oil, so this energy intensive manufacture was intended as a sort of hedge or insurance, but this too stops without transport
so, yeah. things that can be expected to directly get more expensive are energy in general and gas in particular, plastics of all kinds, aluminum, nitrogen fertilizer and to some degree phosphorus fertilizer (uses sulfur as input). and everything that depends on them, which is broadly everything. the only winning move is not to play ie use renewables for energy. these chinese officials who backed renewables buildout are probably the most vindicated people in hemisphere
that said, you can make fertilizer from other fuels, and in other places too, so it’s likely that it will “just” get more expensive, and lower nitrogen use might work about as well because many farmers overapply it. if you are a westerner i guess you might not see it hitting you too hard, but in places like sudan that will be a problem
Agriculture in the U.S. is in a deep recession right now. Farmers are going out of business left and right due to disruptions in international trade caused by the orange moron.
Globally farmers are doing much better by taking advantage of the U.S. shooting themselves repeatedly in the foot.
As for fertilizer shortages, most of the northern hemisphere had already stocked up on supply over the winter in preparation for spring planting. So the effect there will be minimal.
The effects will be felt first in the tropical/sub-tropical regions as they rely on a more constant supply to match their planting seasons.
Next year is fucked globally however. The southern hemisphere will get it first starting in September This will send prices soaring during the northern hemisphere winter pricing/contacting.
Growers will cut back on fertilizer purchases initially but still do okay as speculation of lower yeilds will spike commodity prices. The spike in prices will hit consumers a little bit over the winter and really get going in spring 2027.