And the longer exports out of the Persian Gulf remain constrained, the more production the Middle East would have to shut it and the longer it would take to restart it. Reuters’ Ron Bousso noted this in a column on the $200-per-barrel scenario, saying that even if the war ended, prices would come down, but they would not come down all the way to pre-war levels because of the physical oil shortage. The news that Iraq and Kurdistan had finally reached an agreement to restart oil exports via the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline also won’t make much of a difference: it only has a capacity for up to 250,000 barrels daily.
Author: Irina Slav
Published at: 2026-03-19 00:00:00
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