The Iran War’s Oil Shock — How Bad Could It Get?

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Today's number 14.

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Welcome to Profty Markets.

I'm Ed Elson.

It is March 10th.

Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals.

The major indices rode out a volatile session with the S&P 500 falling as much as one and a half percent.

By close, however, the major indices were back in positive territory.

After Trump said the Iran war was, quote, very complete, pretty much.

Oil prices moderated after surging over the weekend.

We'll talk about that shortly.

Meanwhile, the dollar climbed and Bitcoin topped $69,000.

Okay.

What else is happening?

The global energy market is facing its most severe shock since the 1970s.

The straight of Hamuz closed for the first time in recorded history, pushing the price of oil above $100 a barrel on Sunday.

It spiked as high as 119 before crashing back down to $85 a barrel in Monday,

as the G7 signal that it is ready to release strategic reserves.

Meanwhile, Qatar halted 20% of the global liquid natural gas supply after Iran fired drones at a Qatari facility.

Okay.

Here to help us break down what is happening in the Gulf and what it means for energy and for oil.

We are speaking with Mohammed Surji, editor at Semaphore Gulf, Mohammed.

Thank you for joining us.

So much has happened in just a couple of days.

This story is changing literally by the hour.

I mean, oil skyrocketing and then coming way back down.

What do you make of what has happened over the past couple of days?

And what do you make of prices in reaction to what's happened?

Thank you for having me.

This has been just an incredible turn of events, I would say, for the Gulf.

And all the eyes went towards Hamuz.

And that's a choke point for the natural gas that comes out of Qatar, obviously.

And that had a huge price spike in gas prices in Asia and in Europe.

But even more importantly, it's the choke point for about 30% if not a bit more than the treated oil in the world.

And you know, it's what comes out from there.

It's all of the oil from Iraq, all of the oil from Kuwait and a significant portion from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The idea here is that we couldn't see any more ships going through over the weekend.

And this one was the unthinkable, the closing, the closing of Hormuz.

And I think that's why we saw this huge swing up and down.

But then when people started looking at, okay, so what is actually happening to supply is the market well supplied.

And how much can go through the pipelines that bypass Hormuz?

There's a pipeline that goes from the east to west and Saudi Arabia.

Usually has capacity, I would say, between five million could go up to seven million barrels a day.

So they could potentially move most of the oil that they need to the Red Sea.

And there's another pipeline that goes through the UAE down to the Gulf of Oman.

And I think once you start factoring that in the supply scenario, change a little bit.

And that's potentially one of the reasons why the prices came back down so quickly.

It helped me make sense of what exactly markets are reacting to.

Because there seem to be so many different stories here, one of which is Israel striking many of the oil facilities over the weekend in Iran.

We also saw that giant cloud of smoke in Tehran that was going viral and seemed to be kind of the image of this war.

There's also the fact that they announced the new supreme leader who is going to be Hamanai's son.

There's the fact that Trump was then saying that he had opinions on how this regime change would work.

So that that seemed to be a signal.

Oh, yeah, they're going after a regime change.

Then they kind of pulled back on that.

There's the fact that the trade of almost was closed.

And then there's also the factors that seem to be bringing prices down, which is that I guess G7 nation said, oh no, we have our own oil anyway.

So it's fine.

The price action is so temperamental and it's hard to understand exactly what traders and investors are actually reacting to here.

And therefore, which things are actually important for people like us who just live in the US who probably aren't going to get shot down in this war, but will be affected on the consumer side.

So my question being, what exactly have markets been reacting to?

I think it's more the first part of the factors that you were mentioning.

So if this war is extended, if we see no off ramp for the US and Israel and it has to continue and therefore that choke point stays closed.

So at some point, you're going to see a supply crunch.

And that's really the major fear.

Now, the world is oversupplied with oil.

A major theme really over the last couple of years looking forward.

If you look at IEA reports, they had it at 4 million barrels a day.

Obviously, OPEC for years has been constraining its supply.

And they've reversed some of their cuts over the last year or so, year and a half or so, because they felt that demand was growing in particular in India and other Asian markets.

But if you take out 20% of the oil, then obviously that's a huge supply shock.

So that's a reaction.

The fear that this thing is going to last a long time.

And now we're seeing messages, even just before coming on here, President Trump had an interview, I believe, with CBS, where he's saying that the major operations are the large part of the war is over with Iran.

And hence, is there an end in sight?

And also, I think you mentioned that some ships are starting to come through Hormos.

Some supermax, they're called the biggest tankers.

If they come through, you can basically make a case that there is going to be at least enough supply to meet demand at a market.

Hence, prices should not be rising at such a rapid pace.

But that initial fear, that trigger of fear, that's exactly what it is.

The traders shot everything up.

And he wrote on Truth Social, he said, quote, short-term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for USA and the world and the world and safety and peace only fools would think differently.

I mean, I think the big question here is like, what will this actually do to the price of gasoline in America?

I mean, we've spoken with experts who've said that, you know, basically like a $10 increase in the price of oil is going to increase prices at the pump per gallon by around 25 cents.

But then the question becomes like, well, what happens if it goes up by $50 one day, down $50 the next day and keeps on swinging back and forth as we are literally seeing right now?

I mean, what can you say about what the price of oil will actually do to consumers in America right now?

Yeah, it's a tough question because it doesn't necessarily, oil goes up to $1.10 and all of a sudden they go out and change all the signs.

And you're like, here you go, you're at $250 or $2.85 and now you're at $4.50, right?

So there's a lag in some of this.

I think there's a certain averaging that happens and there's a moving average over a couple of days that they price into the pump because it's a refined product.

Yeah.

This is obviously no huge relief to people who are really worried about their pocketbook and how much their main factors in life are going to go up.

But it's one of the, it's like a question of like, what is the real price of oil and what should it be and should it always be stable at like $75 to $80 a barrel or that's a fair price or does it change over time?

Right. But then how does it affect inflation? It's inflationary. There's no question about that because it rises.

It increases the cost and the factors in every single input of the economy.

Yeah. Just before we end here, I thought on how you do your job as a reporter, as a journalist covering this stuff, something that I have been struggling with.

I can't tell if the markets right now are proactive or reactive.

I can't tell if I'm looking at the price and oil traders are saying this is a reflection of what we expect to happen in the future.

Or if they're completely just something changed, someone got shot, an oil facility got blown up and now the price of oil is different.

And so my question to you as a journalist who covers this stuff, are you looking to the price of oil as an indication of what is to come?

Or do you look at the price of oil and does it simply tell you things that you've already known, things that you've been covering as a journalist on the ground when it comes to what is actually unfolding in this world?

In this war, in the conflict.

It's probably a mix of both, right?

So it has been that geopolitical risk premium has been muted for a long time.

So there have been certain things that have happened in the Gulf and between the June war expectations where the oil should have increased, should have popped higher.

And even the first few days of the strikes in this last week or so, we haven't seen, of course, oil didn't jump, but didn't jump at the same level.

It's that closing, I think a psychological switch happened with Hormos attacks on oil facilities, attacks on processing plants.

And there was always this understanding in a way between all of the Gulf countries that we're not going to hit critical infrastructure.

The attacks, the retaliation from the Iranian regime would be against perhaps US assets, military assets, that sort of thing.

And very quickly, we saw that there was an attack on Rasafan, which is the LNG complex in Qatar.

There was another one on a processing plant in Bahrain, in a refinery.

So that escalated it.

And then, as you mentioned earlier, we believe it's an Israeli attack on a refinery into Iran.

So when you start hitting the actual nuts and bolts of export of crude and products from that region, I think it rightfully so changed their trigger.

There's still question.

And the Qatar energy minister said over, I think on Thursday or Friday, that he believes that oil can go up to $150 a barrel, if this continues for a long time.

There are two, the bypass pipelines that I mentioned earlier from the East West line in Saudi Arabia, and the one that goes basically north south through the UAE.

If those are hit as well, then I could see oil going way back up again because of this, because people would say, are they going to be able to get enough oil out to the market?

Yeah.

If this all ends in March, there's a lot of analysis out there that says oil stays within this range and is manageable.

If it's more prolonged, it changes.

There's also the question of the precedent that's been set.

So the Gulf, the Arab Gulf states where most of the oil comes out from and where all the really good facilities are in terms of that export and they have all the ships and all that stuff and the customers in Asia.

Now that they've been attacked and attacked repeatedly, even if you have a ceasefire, some sort of arrangements with the Iran energy, but they still maintain their drone capability, their short range missiles and the mid range missiles.

That they can always place spoiler over any type of negotiation or any type of changes.

And that would just bake in a premium into the price.

So that's kind of longer term due oil prices remain elevated despite a resolution to this current conflict.

All right.

Mohammad Sergei, editor at Sama for Gulf.

Thank you, Mohammad.

Thank you.

After the break, the DOJ settles with live nation and ticket master.

And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, simply putt at profgmedia.com.

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We're back with Profty Markets.

After just one week in court, one of the biggest antitrust cases in decades is nearing a resolution.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced a settlement with Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

In the sweeping monopoly case filed in 2024, the DOJ, along with 40 state attorneys general, argued that Live Nation legally dominates the market for live events.

One proposed remedy was to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

Now, under the proposed settlement, Live Nation will pay damages to states and change how it structures ticketing deals with venues.

But the case is not over yet. Only 10 states have signed on to the settlement, while others are expected to keep fighting.

Plus, the terms of the agreement must be approved by a federal judge.

Still, shares of Live Nation rose 6% following the news.

Joining us to discuss this case was speaking with Jonathan Canter, former assistant attorney general for the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

He's also the man who originally filed this case.

Jonathan, thank you for joining us. I want to get right into this because this is a case that you have been talking a lot about.

I remember when we lost spoke, I said, what is the most important antitrust case that no one is talking about?

And you said, this is it because this is something that really affects consumers.

Consumers really have a stake in this because consumers, they know that the price of tickets for live events have gone up significant over the past few years.

And it's because of this monopoly dynamic are now they're settling.

This to me seems like a win for Live Nation.

But tell us your thoughts. What do you make of what's happened here?

Sure, it is a win for Live Nation and it's disappointing to the extent that this is ultimately the settlement that gets approved by the court.

But as you indicated, Ed, we have a situation where you have maybe as many as 30 state attorneys general as of today, I think 27, who are not going to settle.

They want to continue trying this case.

And so I'm encouraged by the willingness of the states bipartisan group of states to fight for what they believe is right.

Also to your point, this is probably the most popular antitrust case in history.

It is widely regarded as beneficial to an issue that affects so many consumers and performers on an issue that they care deeply about, which is live music.

The era where affordability is top of mind for pretty much anyone, it strikes me as politically deficient or political suicide to settle a case like this.

Let's put it this way. Breaking up Live Nation ticket master is more popular in this country than breaking up Iran.

Just in terms of what antitrust officials have said here, I'm trying to understand why they have settled here because as you say, this is not a popular move.

People are not going to like this. I don't like it. I don't see why I mean, if the if the option was to break this company up, another decided to settle and that's good for good for Live Nation.

That doesn't seem great for consumers. And then the question becomes like, why did they settle?

And perhaps it's because there was some lobbying happening here. I mean, Gail Slater, who was the antitrust chief before she was just dismissed.

She was ousted like, why are we settling with Live Nation if it's so unpopular?

There are a whole host of questions that have to get answered here and hopefully we'll get answered.

But the fact of the matter is the DOJ started the trial and after four days, the case was going extremely well.

By all accounts, DOJ was doing an extremely good job in court and was on a trajectory to have a big victory if they finished the trial to attend.

And that was an extraordinary case with an opportunity for extraordinary result. And when you're winning, you don't pull the plug. It's not how that works.

Especially when you don't get the remedy that you ask for when you file the case, which in this case, in this instance was a breakup.

So it's quite unclear and raises a lot of questions about when and why and how and who.

And hopefully we'll get answers to the question of those questions because under something a little known statue called the Tani Act, antitrust settlements like this one have to get approved and investigated by the court.

And so in this instance, the judge in New York will have the opportunity to interrogate the settlement and actually get discovery from the Department of Justice and Live Nation and others about what was said to whom what was promised is in exchange for this deal.

This is in terms of what it looks like to me. I mean, we had Gail Slaterin who you and I discussed was actually someone who was going to be pretty tough on antitrust.

It was quite a good pick if you are pro antitrust, which you are, I think we are on this show as well.

So it looks like what happened is that she was working on this. We also learned that there was a lot of lobbying happening where people from Live Nation, also from Hewlett Packer and Juniper, they would go to the DOJ and they would try to create these affiliations with the DOJ.

And if they got any pushback, what we see was Pam Bondi or someone higher up in the administration would say to Gail Slater, hey, get out of the way here because we are, you're being too harsh on these companies and we have a relationship with these companies, which is in one sense lobbying and some would also characterize that as some level of corruption.

That's certainly a genuine question. Then Gail Slater gets ousted. Then this case that seems to have a lot of momentum, suddenly the plug is pulled, why did that happen? Who knows? My question to you, it appears that this was a result of lobbying on some level of honestly corruption or maybe that word is too harsh.

Is there any evidence that that isn't what happened here?

There's a lot of smoke. And in terms of the lobbying, they reportedly hired killing in Conway to argue on their behalf and engaged in a whole lobbying campaign and coaxing up to the administration.

And so there is a lot of smoke, whether there's a fire or whether something inappropriate was done, only time will tell, hopefully time will let us know for sure. But that's why we have the Tony act, which was enacted when Nixon, Richard Nixon, actually cut a deal to settle an antitrust case because of promise for political donations.

And so the act was created after that to make sure that public that settlements were actually in the public interest and done for the right reasons. So hopefully we're going to get some answers to those questions.

But right now there's a lot of smoke and a lot of concern because they had this great case. They were in trial. They were doing a great job. And they were on trajectory to get a very, very big outcome. And now they're settling on the cheap.

John Newman, who's a former senior antitrust official, he said, quote, you really couldn't send a clearer message that antitrust is dead at the federal level than settling this particular case. Do you agree with him?

Certainly feels that way today when you have 27 state attorneys general from all sides of the political continuum filing a motion in court saying that they were not only cut out of the discussions, but don't think that the settlement is sufficient and want to go ahead litigate that paints a picture that antitrust is alive and well at the states, the laboratories of democracy and not doing so well at the federal level.

All right, Jonathan Cantor, former assistant attorney general for the antitrust division of the US Department of Justice.

Jonathan, thank you. This seems like a story that is not getting enough attention, maybe for real reasons, but it's certainly something we want to keep tracking.

Thanks as always. I'd great to be with you.

If you listened to yesterday's episode with me and Scott, you might have noticed it sounded a little bit out of debt and you would be correct.

We recorded that episode just before the weekend when markets still hadn't priced in the possibility that this war could get out of control.

Oil prices were nowhere near as high as they reached over the weekend and the stock market at the time was still pretty stable.

And that was the debate that Scott and I were having. I believe that markets were underreacting to what was happening in Iran.

Scott believed that the markets were roughly getting it right, that the region was perhaps more stable now that we had taken out the IOTOLA versus less stable, I disagreed.

And that was the conversation you heard. Well, over the weekend, everything changed.

Israel carried out more airstrikes. They hit several oil facilities. Iran tried to retaliate and then they announced their new Supreme Leader who was, wait for it, Kamenei's son.

Which essentially means that this war is far from over. It's probably going to get worse and so markets finally reacted.

Oil hit $119 per barrel. Stocks fell nearly 2% erasing $6 trillion in value globally.

Now it's possible that the markets are now overreacting and indeed the price of oil came back down again. But I would argue that this reaction is actually appropriate.

In last week, investors were unwilling to acknowledge how bad this could really get. They were unwilling to recognize how clumsy this operation really was.

And now they are starting to have to contend with reality a bit and they're pricing in what is probably a more accurate reflection of the instability that we are about to face.

And the question then becomes, are they pricing in all of it? Or are they still putting their blinders on?

Now, I'm not totally sure. But I would argue there are plenty of questions that the market and investors still haven't answered here.

They're beginning to answer the oil question, which is what happens if the state of hormones continues to be affected.

But there are plenty of other questions here. What happens to American consumers if the price of gas hits for even $5 a gallon?

What if that causes inflation to rise back up above 3%. What happens if the Fed then decides to raise rates because of inflation?

But then we're dealing with the double lami of a worsening labor market and higher prices. In other words, what happens if this leads to stagflation?

And then what happens if the stagflation creates a recession or perhaps even a depression? What happens if the war isn't contained as they promised?

And if it escalates beyond the region, what happens if China gets ripped in? And they decide to say support Iran or if they decide to strike Taiwan while we're all distracted.

What happens if Russia strikes NATO for all the same reasons? And what if this leads to a nuclear detonation?

And to be clear, that's not likely, but it is possible.

According to the prediction markets last week, the odds of that happening in 2026 were 24%.

Now, we could argue that the prediction markets bet is a stupid, they're misinformed, they don't know what they're talking about. Maybe that's true.

But let's also remember that we are the same people that have pointed out that over the medium and the long term, the prediction markets have tended to be pretty accurate.

So what is it? Are they dumb or are they smart? What do we think?

These are the questions we have to start taking very seriously. It's not enough to just trust that America is going to work it all out or that the government is going to work it out all out.

Or the president or Wall Street, if we want to understand our situation, it is on us to understand it. It is our job to look at this issue from every angle and to figure out what it actually means for us, how it might affect our lives.

That is what we will be doing on this show over the next several weeks.

Tomorrow, we will have a panel where we will discuss these issues, we'll probably have more discussions after that.

And I have also just written an article on what has happened in Iran, which you can read on my sub-stack right now.

But let's be very clear, this is big. And fortunately, for my sanity, the markets are finally agreeing.

Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Pasin, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.

Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Shalan. Isabelle Kinsel, Cristino Donahue, and Mirsel Vario.

And our social producer is Jake McPherson.

Thank you for listening to Property Markets from Property Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.

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