The escalating military confrontation in the Middle East has effectively frozen commercial maritime navigation through the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. In response to the severe supply shock, global energy majors are rapidly securing alternative long-term liquefied natural gas agreements across the Pacific.
Global market
As the United States executed military strikes against Iranian targets for the second consecutive day, commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz virtually collapsed. Vessel-tracking data revealed that only one tanker—a sanctioned very large crude carrier—was navigating the contested waterway. Retaliating against the American offensive, Iranian armed forces deployed unmanned aerial vehicles to strike United States Patriot missile systems in Kuwait and commercial fuel depots in Bahrain, according to the Iranian state news agency Mehr.
Anticipating prolonged supply disruptions, Goldman Sachs commodity analysts completely reversed their previous forecasts of an impending oil glut, warning that Middle Eastern crude production remains 10.5 million barrels per day below pre-war levels. Concurrently, international energy majors are pivoting to new supply nodes; France’s TotalEnergies shipped its first liquefied natural gas cargo from the Mexican Pacific coast to Asia, while the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) secured a 15-year agreement to supply 1 million tonnes per annum of LNG to Japan’s INPEX.
Russia & CIS
Domestic energy infrastructure within the Russian Federation continues to endure severe physical damage from cross-border hostilities. Following intensive overnight drone strikes, Energodar Mayor Maksim Pukhov confirmed that the city’s critical infrastructure was forced to operate entirely on backup power sources due to a total grid blackout.
Despite these infrastructural vulnerabilities, there are emerging signs of stabilization within certain regional retail fuel networks. Kuzbass Governor Ilya Seredyuk announced that the panic-driven, abnormal demand for gasoline across the Kemerovo region has finally begun to subside, offering a slight reprieve to the strained domestic supply chains. Meanwhile, wholesale natural gas prices in Europe surprisingly decreased by 1.8% despite the broader global volatility.
Armenia
The complete paralysis of the Strait of Hormuz and direct Iranian military strikes on Gulf fuel depots present severe geopolitical and macroeconomic risks for Armenia’s regional energy security environment. Although international market price assessments remain highly elevated due to the Middle Eastern conflict, the slight 1.8% drop in European natural gas prices provides a marginal counterweight to the overarching inflationary pressures on imported energy.
Domestically, the retail fuel sector is closely monitoring the slight stabilization of gasoline demand in major Russian regions like Kuzbass. Because Yerevan is critically dependent on tariff-free motor fuel quotas imported via the EAEU framework, any reduction in panic buying within the primary supplier nation directly lowers the risk of wholesale supply chain disruptions for Armenian gasoline and diesel distributors.