Expert warns Middle East energy infrastructure will take months to recover

Geoff Bennett:

Well, even with this shaky cease-fire, some more in the energy infrastructure in the Middle East will take months to recover and prices may not drop as much as hoped.

Our William Brangham has more on this part of the story -- William.

William Brangham:

That's right, Geoff.

As we mentioned, it is unclear if the strait is really open, and even, if so, there is still great hesitation about sending multimillion-dollar vessels through it. Separately, there were additional attacks earlier today on energy infrastructure. One thing that is clear, consumers are feeling the pain at the pump. Gas prices are over $4 a gallon nationally.

So, for more on what this all means, we are joined by Jason Bordoff. He's the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Jason, thank you so much for joining us.

Does this...

Jason Bordoff:

Thank you.

William Brangham:

... alleged cease-fire, as much as we can call it that, give you any sense about what happens going forward with regards to energy prices?

Jason Bordoff:

Well, as you have been talking about with your correspondents, the only thing lacking from this cease-fire is for people to cease firing.

And we have seen Iran today strike many of its neighbors, Israel strike Lebanon. And as long as that's the case, that does not give confidence to the oil tankers sitting in the Gulf trying to get out to deliver oil to the market to go through.

We saw maybe three or four -- reports differ -- a couple of tankers moved through today. But until oil starts flowing again, and it is not yet, and this cease-fire as you said, is very tenuous, the market is still short. And we saw the sort of traded price of oil come down, but the physical price that people were willing to pay is still quite high, and it's going to keep going higher unless the oil starts to flow again.

William Brangham:

If Iran maintains control over the strait, which, we should say, it did not have before this war began, is it your sense that it is just too financially scary for shippers to go through there? Is it an insurance issue? What is it in particular?

Jason Bordoff:

I think, first and foremost, it's just confidence. Certainly, you need insurance. You need signals from Iran that tankers will be allowed to pass, that their military is not going to arbitrarily stop some and not others.

I don't think anyone in the oil industry -- I saw a quote today from someone in the industry who said, we didn't have to pay a few million in fees before, and I thought we won this conflict, meaning the United States. So no one's going to be happy about paying a toll. If it was just a toll, the cargo is valuable enough that people would do it.

But, right now, there's just no confidence that you can move tankers through the strait. And that's just to clear the oil that's sitting there in tankers for the last 40 days waiting to get to market. If you want to start producing again in the region, you need the rest of the world's tankers to be willing to go to the wrong side of the strait back into the Gulf and load up.

And they don't want to get stuck if this thing falls apart again in a couple of days or a week or two.

William Brangham:

And separate from that, a lot of energy infrastructure was targeted. I believe it's at least nine countries saw facilities targeted successfully by Iran.

How long does that take to both rebuild and then restart a legitimate supply of energy?

Jason Bordoff:

You know, we have seen an escalation there, and even today, with a reported attack by a drone on the major Saudi pipeline to the Red Sea, the East-West Pipeline.

As far as we know, most of the oil-related infrastructure damage is still modest. There's a bit of a mutually assured destruction dynamic where I think Iran knows that if they really target things in a serious way, they will be targeted as well. So we're still at a point where, within weeks, maybe a month or two, you can probably get the infrastructure back up and running.

That could change if this escalates in a tit-for-tat way and we start to see more significant damage. And, then again, you -- no one's going to start restarting production. We have nearly 10 million barrels a day that is shut in. People stopped producing. That is costly and it can do damage to the wells to restart.

No one's going to do that until they have long-term confidence they can get the oil to market.

William Brangham:

Crude oil prices, we saw, did start to come back down. I believe it was a 13 percent drop today. But U.S. gas prices, as I mentioned, still remain high. How long should consumers be expecting here in the U.S. to be bracing for those kinds of spikes?

Jason Bordoff:

Well, it is a well-known phenomenon that, when oil prices rise, gasoline prices rise quickly, and, when oil prices fall, gasoline prices fall much more slowly, maybe two weeks or so.

And so that would be the time frame, if the oil starts flowing and that sharp reduction in price we saw today is matched by the physical reality of the oil market. But that's still to be seen if the cease-fire holds, if tankers are willing to go through. If none of that happens, again, the price people have physically been willing to pay for oil has been quite a bit higher than that oil price you just mentioned that fell about 10 percent or 15 percent today.

That price will rise again if we don't see the oil start to flow quickly.

William Brangham:

And the same thing we saw with jet fuel prices, and a lot of consumers reporting today that airlines were now tacking on all sorts of new fees. Again, is that just what consumers should be expecting going forward?

Jason Bordoff:

I think jet fuel, the same as gasoline, the same as diesel. And it's even worse in some other parts of the world. Asia, you're seeing physical shortages. You're seeing not just airlines raise prices, but some airlines canceling flights to Asia because they're not sure they can refuel.

And so that's only going to change once we start to see millions of barrels a day of oil transiting through the strait again. And until that happens, people should still be ready for higher gasoline prices and airline prices and all the other ways oil prices trickle through the economy.

William Brangham:

And are there any other -- lastly, just any other downstream consequences we ought to be looking out for, fertilizer, food prices?

Jason Bordoff:

Well, the Strait of Hormuz is just one of the most critical transit -- maritime transit places in the world.

So we have seen it with oil. We have seen it with natural gas, and there has been real physical damage to the Qatari LNG plant. So natural gas prices have been rising, particularly in Europe and in Asia.

And then, as you said, petrochemicals, aluminum, fertilizer, which could have really significant impacts as we enter harvesting season in particularly low- and middle-income countries, all of that is going to get much more painful if that strait is not reopened quickly.

William Brangham:

Jason Bordoff, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

Jason Bordoff:

Thank you.