Blood and Oil in the Orient: A 2024 Update
After years of falling relative oil prices and differential oil losses, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine boosted both and helped pull the Middle East out of its ‘danger zone’.
A year later, the war that broke out between Israel on the one hand, and Hamas-Islamic Jihad-Hezbollah-Iran on the other, promised to increase those relative prices and differential returns even further.
But these hopes were dashed.
As the figure below shows, in 2023, relative prices and differential profits both sank, pushing the Middle East once again into the ‘danger zone’.
