The factoid thrown around is that roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply travels through the Strait of Hormuz. Since it closed, my local gas prices in one area of the US midwest have gone from $2.60 to now $4.10 presumably as reserves have been used up.
I could understand a 20~30% increase in price to correlate with the reduction in supply, but what are the economic factors that lead to what feels like such a disproportionate increase?
You also have to remember that since oil is a commodity price driven item, the producers don’t want to overproduce, that means they plan 5-10 years out on speculative demand so there is a lag of up to years before they can expand production in some cases. No one wants to spend billions of dollars increasing production capacity only for the price to fall down on its face again and burn up your investment.
A LOT of the production capacity in Corpus Christie is also about to get shut off since they (the refineries) have essentially fucked their own ability to get water required to refine the oil. The whole region is about to drain itself dry and the state isn’t doing shit to stop it.