Are Oil Markets Underestimating Iran’s Threats?
Iranian officials have suggested that they could shut the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. moved to completely disrupt Iranian oil exports, a dire scenario that would present a supply shock to the oil market.
The prospect of an outage at the Strait of Hormuz repeatedly crops up when tensions between the U.S. and Iran deteriorate, but most analysts dismiss the idea as fanciful.
But the scenario may not be as outlandish as is commonly thought. Bob McNally, founder and president of energy consultancy The Rapidan Group, said that the U.S. is waging economic war against Iran and when a country is backed into a corner like that, “there has to be some risk that the country will lash out, even if it’s against a bigger power.”
“I think the market’s a little complacent,” he told CNBC, referring to the lack of movement in oil prices following the exchange of threats between Rouhani and Donald Trump. He said that Iran has much less leverage compared to 2012 when it was enriching uranium and oil prices were much higher. With oil prices much lower, Iran’s leverage is weaker, which could lead it to take drastic measures, such as shutting the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a “credible threat,” McNally said.
Obviously, that would send oil prices skyrocketing. “When you talk about Iran’s exports, that’s about 2.5 million barrels per day, but if you talk about interrupting the Strait of Hormuz, that’s 19 million barrels a day,” he said. “About 30 percent of…seaborne-traded oil goes through that strait. So that’s a much bigger problem.”
The real pain would depend on the length of the outage. Most analysts argue that the U.S. Navy would beat back Iranian attempts to close the Strait and would manage to reopen the shipping lane in a matter of days.
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