The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of Hormuz.

Barely 30 miles wide at the narrowest point and bounded on one side by the state of Iran, this passage is used for a quarter of the world’s oil supplies and a fifth of its liquified natural gas (LNG). As we have now discovered, the consequences of disruption are severe: on the day that Qatar suspended its LNG production – partly because of the closure of the Strait and partly because of Iranian attacks on its infrastructure – the price of LNG spiked by 50 percent in a matter of hours.

The US can ramp up oil and gas production to fill the gap, but not in sufficient quantities

The US can ramp up oil and gas production to fill the gap, but not in sufficient quantities

In a speech to the International Energy Agency last month, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered a remarkable statistic: fossil fuels account for 83 percent of global primary energy supply – the same as they did when he began his career. But the global energy market has changed little in another important respect: the world remains almost as dependent on the Middle East for........

© The Spectator