Trump’s war has been a gift to an industry he detests

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All wars tend to have unintended consequences way beyond what the protagonists are trying to achieve. Some of them are relatively trivial, others truly transformational.

So it is with Donald Trump’s war in the Gulf, which – ironically for a US president who has made “drill, baby, drill” one of his calling cards – seems to be massively accelerating the shift away from traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

You never know with Trump but this is unlikely to have been one of his key war aims.

Indeed, to the extent that it is possible to glean any economic method at all in the madness of his approach, it may be that it lays the foundations for an age of much lower oil and gas prices to come, which very much is one of his objectives.

If Australia’s greener than ever, how much oil do we really need? The reality is brutal

This outcome is admittedly hard to square with the current surge in prices and fast-developing crisis in commodity supply but it is possible that once some kind of resolution is reached, today’s famine will transmogrify quite quickly into a veritable glut, driving prices lower across the board.

Already, there are early signs of the preconditions for a coming age of abundance, with the Gulf Emirates refusing to be bound by current quotas and pulling out of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil cartel accordingly.

Once the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, it is likely to be a free-for-all with big discounts on offer to win back market share damaged by the blockade.

But for the moment, the sky’s the limit on petrol and other fuel costs and there is growing evidence that this is driving a sharp uptick of interest in electric and other low-emission vehicles.

Again,........

© The Sydney Morning Herald