Overheating Hormuz with constant on-off

It's like two people are playing with the switch, leaving everyone else blinded with each flick. The on-off passage of tankers through the Hormuz Strait will need to stabilise before energy trade can take its first steps towards recovery. Tankers are stranded on both sides of the strait - loaded in the Persian Gulf, and empty in the Indian Ocean - and they need to pass to begin shipping out crude oil and natural gas. A round trip for a tanker from, say, Saudi Arabia to China involves months of sailing. Tankers have also been diverted to ferry oil and gas for Asia from the US, which are much longer routes. Getting them back to the Persian Gulf will require even more time.

Once tanker logistics stabilise, energy-exporting nations in the region can get down to the job of reducing their storage capacities that have filled up. Onshore storage in the region has reached 20 days' production. This pressure must be relieved before production can resume. Rebalancing tankers to the Gulf trade will take around 3 mths before operations stabilise, and storage capacity is depleted to a point where it allows for resuming production. Ensuring the Hormuz Strait remains open and free of hostilities over this duration is the necessary condition for oil and gas wells in West Asia to start pumping again.

Most of the wells that have shut down can be brought on stream quickly. Half the region's pre-war output should take around a fortnight to revive. Under a third might take over a month, provided disrupted supply chains are patched up. A fifth of the output faces bigger challenges in terms of reservoir pressure, war damage and power supply. Here, recovery could stretch for the better part of a year. Damage to energy infrastructure will take years to rebuild, and some older wells may not return to their previous output. New wells can be dug. But these typically take a year, and require an improved security environment. A few weeks of conflict requires years of rebuilding to restore global energy equilibrium.