The executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Turkish Fatih Birol, warned this Tuesday, 21, that it will take “a long time” to return to normality, even if the Strait of Hormuz were reopened immediately, with risks of inflation and economic slowdown.
“Even if the Strait of Hormuz were reopened tomorrow, it would take a long time for us to return to normal, because there are energy, oil and other installations that have been seriously damaged,” in the Persian Gulf, he said, in an interview with France Inter radio.
Asked about the two-year period estimated as the time needed to restore pre-war levels of commercial activity in energy facilities in that region, Birol reiterated the prediction, but clarified that it would be a gradual process.
The leader of the IEA – an organization created in 1974, in response to the first oil crisis and which brings together most of the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – insisted that the current crisis is “the biggest in history” in terms of energy because it affects not only the supply of oil, but also gas, fertilizers and other petrochemical products.
“This will slow down economic growth and, the longer it lasts, the more difficult it will be”, he continued, before stressing that the crisis will particularly affect developing countries, which, in many cases, will face “a debt spiral” that will weigh on future generations.
In its monthly report on the oil market, published on April 14, the IEA warned that global oil production fell by 10.1 million barrels per day (mb/d) in March due to the war in the Middle East, the biggest drop in history.
The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz resulted in losses of 13 mb/d in oil exports from the Persian Gulf, partially offset by the use of reserves, which are increasingly smaller, a situation that led the institution to revise its oil demand forecast downwards.
Birol stated that, “for now, Russia is coming out of the crisis well”, as its oil revenues doubled in March, thanks to rising prices and, to a lesser extent, the increase in its exports.
The same official estimated that, “in the long term, the consequences of this crisis will lead to a reconfiguration of the energy map”, as already happened with the oil shock of 1973, when, for example, many countries chose to build nuclear power plants to replace hydrocarbons in electricity production.
