How important is the Middle East to oil?
The following graphic comes from the Congressional Research Service:
You can see why the Red Sea is so important. Most of the oil is drilled near the Persian Gulf, but the only pipelines to take it to Europe are through Turkey and Syria. They take Iraqi oil, but the oil from Kuwait, the Emirates, Oman and Saudi must sail through the Red Sea and Suez canal to get to the Mediterranean and Europe.
And the narrowest point of the Red Sea, the Bal al-Mandeb Strait, is under attack from the Houthis in Yemen.
For oil flowing east to Asia, the Strait of Hormuz is crucial, and it comes under attack by Iran.
The solution to this connundrum is for non-middle-east oil producers to step up production. Some governments are trying; the British government issued more than a hundred new drilling licences to extract oil from the North Sea last summer. But environmentalists immediately sued the govt claiming drilling in the north sea "fueled climate change". And drilling in the middle east doesn't? Who funds these environmentalists?
The other part of the equation is reduction in demand. The great switch-over to electric vehicles has begun, but it's in it's early stages.
We're going to be vulnerable to events in the middle east for a few more years.