{"text":[[{"start":7.6,"text":"Less than a month ago, Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, warned an audience in London that the world was in the grip of the biggest energy crisis in history. Unless conditions improved, he said, oil prices could move into “the red zone” over the summer."}],[{"start":23.950000000000003,"text":"But even as he spoke, the market had come to a different conclusion."}],[{"start":28.1,"text":"After touching $112 a barrel shortly before Birol’s appearance, benchmark Brent crude began a steady retreat. It had fallen a fifth before the US and Iran announced a preliminary deal last Sunday. Since then it has fallen a further 10 per cent."}],[{"start":44.25,"text":"By Wednesday, the narrative had decisively shifted. After months in which traders, executives and politicians worried that the oil industry was heading for acute summer shortages, attention turned instead to the surge of crude that could be released if peace in the Gulf holds."}],[{"start":63.05,"text":"Brent crude was trading below $80 in Asia on Thursday, a level last seen in the opening days of the war. Even at the height of the crisis, prices peaked at $126, far below the $200 forecasts floated by a number of Wall Street analysts."}],[{"start":80.19999999999999,"text":"“Forecasting is always hard, but oil market forecasting in particular is extremely humbling,” said Amrita Sen, founder of consultancy Energy Aspects. “When the largest oil supply disruption in history only leads to $100 a barrel oil, you have to ask, did the market, including us, just get this very, very wrong?”"}],[{"start":100.79999999999998,"text":"For Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the overblown oil forecasts during the Iran conflict echoed the warnings issued after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022."}],[{"start":114.24999999999999,"text":"“This is the second episode where we had apocalyptic oil price forecasts” that did not materialise, he said. The lesson for western governments, he argued, is that the oil market is more resilient than many assume and there is more scope to confront bad actors without triggering severe economic consequences. "}],[{"start":133.1,"text":"“I wish Europe would enforce the clampdown on the [Russian] shadow fleet in the Baltic [Sea] more aggressively because the worry about oil prices is not as well founded as some people say,” Brooks said."}],[{"start":145.5,"text":"Over the past three months, oil industry executives and traders have regularly warned crude prices were too low and did not reflect the extreme stress that they saw in the global energy system. But Brooks said the industry had underestimated how quickly demand would fall."}],[{"start":162.1,"text":"“Executives, especially in the last month, have been very vocal that prices would rise because of the drawdown of inventories,” he said, referring to the release of large volumes of oil from global reserves. “They see what is right in front of them, but I don’t think they have a macro perspective.”"}],[{"start":180.25,"text":"What was missing, he added, was a recognition of how prices had already risen significantly. At $126 a barrel, Brent was 75 per cent higher than it had been before the fighting started. “It was a big rise” that reflected a big shock to supply, he said."}],[{"start":196.8,"text":"Aldo Spanjer, head of commodity strategy at BNP Paribas Markets 360, had modelled a worst-case scenario that oil would hit $200 a barrel if the conflict dragged on through the year. He said Sunday’s agreement was “more serious than anything we have seen in the past few months” and had brought forward the prospect of energy exports resuming from the Gulf before the drawdown in global reserves became critical."}],[{"start":220.60000000000002,"text":"But Spanjer said the crisis had also underlined a structural feature of the oil market: it prices the present rather than the future. While the energy industry focused on the looming supply crunch, traders concentrated on a simpler question: whether crude was available in the near term. “Future balances are not what the market is pricing,” he said."}],[{"start":242.05,"text":"The peace plan has not yet increased Middle Eastern oil supply and the talks could collapse. Donald Trump on Wednesday warned that if he did not like the final agreement, the US would resume its bombing campaign — and that, without the deal, the world would run out of oil reserves “in about four weeks”."}],[{"start":258.7,"text":"Even so, traders are looking beyond the immediate disruption. In the short term, they expect a glut as tankers trapped inside the Gulf begin to exit through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow export route closed by the fighting. Over the longer term, they are betting demand will recover more slowly than supply."}],[{"start":276.55,"text":"Kpler, a commodity data provider, estimates more than 90mn barrels of non-Iranian crude and a further 70mn barrels of Iranian crude are waiting to leave the region. The IEA on Wednesday said that, if peace holds, it expected a “significant overhang” of crude in 2027 as countries increased production. That view contrasts with that of Opec, which expects stronger demand next year."}],[{"start":301.8,"text":"Tamas Varga, analyst at oil broker PVM, said the market might already be pricing in next year’s glut, although he cautioned that the selling looked “overdone”."}],[{"start":311.8,"text":"“Sentiment is a powerful thing,” he said. “If the market wants to be bearish, it will look for bearish signals. But I don’t expect this sentiment to last. I expect stronger prices in the coming months and maybe quarters.”"}],[{"start":330.7,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781770823_7162.mp3"}