This week’s interim deal between the U.S. and Iran to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz avoided the worst possible scenario for oil markets. Assuming the dealholds, the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf will pick up and the global economy will escape the much feared shortages and price hikes, along with the eventual recession, that seemed imminent.
But declaring a return to normal would be a mistake. Indeed, the situation remains anything but. This year’s energy crisis will leave a mark with long-term implications not just for oil markets but across the whole energy sector. “I don’t think this is a utopian resolution that says we can just look at ‘normal’ or pre-crisis markets anytime soon,” says Arjun Murti, a partner at Veriten, an energy research investment and strategy firm. This will be “measured in years,” Murti says, “not months or weeks.”
Markets will expect continued volatility and will price it in accordingly. Governments and energy-intensive firms will look at electrification with newfound interest. And companies will adjust their approaches to how they make big capital decisions with resilience in mind.
In other words, this isn’t the end, though it may be the end of the beginning.
The first thing to expect is that companies will need to embrace the volatility—or suffer the consequences. Oil markets have always experienced boom and bust cycles. Tight supplies brought more investment, which in turn led to too much production for the market support. Rinse and repeat. But this crisis has forced executives and policymakers to grapple with much broader volatility, including questions about the foundations of the whole system. Or what oil analyst Bob McNally previously described to me as “load-bearing assumptions.” If the Strait of Hormuz can close, all bets are off about the other foundations of the energy system.
For companies in the oil and gas sector, Murti says, this may mean building a fortress balance sheet that can weather disruptions. The crisis also provides a business logic for continued consolidation in the industry. Bigger players with diversified operations can simply navigate challenges better.
In the midst of that, oil prices are likely to continue to fluctuate. After months of warning of supply shortages, the International Energy Agency said this week that 2027 may bring a supply glut as the sector fires back into action. This may sound like an argument that things are easing, but really it suggests that volatility is part of the new normal.
“Everyone wants to know where prices settle out,” Murti says. “I continue to think that is just not the right perspective.”
The oil and gas sector isn’t the only industry thinking carefully about volatility. As I’ve written about previously, industrial firms will look at electrification with newfound interest, sometimes because it’s cheaper and sometimes because it provides resilience against fuel price fluctuations.
Expect similar changes in the policy landscape, particularly in the hardest hit regions. Across southeast Asia, governments have raced to facilitate deployment of electric vehicles and other fuel-efficiency measures. Lower prices may slow the urgency, but it’s unlikely to stem the efforts.
Even oil prices can tell us a similar story. Following this week’s deal, the U.S. crude benchmark has declined more than 30% from the April peak, when the endgame seemed the most unclear. But, trading at more than $75 a barrel, it still remains significantly above pre-war levels. There is no return to normal.
To get this story in your inbox, sign up to TIME’s Future Proof newsletter here.
The post Why Energy Markets Will Remain Volatile Even After the Iran-U.S. Deal appeared first on TIME.
