IT’S starting to happen. The real impact from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was always going to take some time to land. But a month into the war and the physical shortages of fuel are now beginning to appear across Asia, which gets almost all of its fuel from the Persian Gulf. The volatility we have seen so far is driven mostly by skyrocketing freight and insurance. The actual, physical shortages of fuel have not yet hit. Those are now beginning. Perhaps this is one reason why Donald Trump is blowing hot one day and cold the next.

Why have the physical shortages taken so long to materialise? The answer is that the world started stockpiling oil in huge quantities through most of 2025. When the war began at the end of February, global stockpiles of oil were the highest they have ever been.

All this is borne out in data released by the International Energy Agency, which shows a massive buying spike that began in May 2025. That was the month the International Atomic Energy Agency told the UN that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had now reached a level that had “no civilian justification”. That finding led countries of the European Union to terminate their commitment under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era agreement between Iran and the great powers that Trump walked out of in 2018. Then came the June war between Israel and Iran, culminating in the mega strikes by America on Iranian nuclear........

© Dawn