As Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Wednesday (18 October) the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 57 countries in the Muslim world, held an emergency meeting in the Saudi city of Jeddah. During the meeting, Iran’s foreign minister called for an oil embargo against Israel. Almost 50 years to the day after Opec nations embargoed oil exports to Israel and its supporters, the echoes of the 1973 oil crisis – and the recessions that followed – are getting louder.
The Hamas-Israel conflict has already caused a surge in the price of oil, which has risen beyond $92 per barrel, and the gas market, which has reached an eight-month high. It has had a similar – but so far much less pronounced – effect on energy markets to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which caused oil to immediately rise to more than $100 a barrel and wholesale gas prices to peak at ten times their typical levels.
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