RED SEA SHOCKS AND THE NEW MORE STABLE NORMAL
GREGORY BREW
FEBRUARY 23, 2024
Vella Gulf Conducts Operations in the Red Sea
You can’t choke a dead horse. Anyone who has studied geopolitics, particularly in the context of energy, has learned that control over waterways — most notably the Suez Canal — translates into influence, as actors can threaten to disrupt energy supplies. But they also know that leverage is limited: Commerce invariably adjusts to disruptions and markets stabilize around a new normal. The crisis in the Red Sea demonstrates this effect, though in an unexpected way. Months of Houthi attacks on shipping, followed by a significant U.S. and British military response, has done little to move oil prices, while the impact on supply has been negligible. Markets, in effect, shrugged off the Red Sea disruption.
This is indicative of a broader shift. The geopolitics of energy have undergone a transformation, call it “the great de-risking,” brought on by progressive geopolitical shocks and shifts in the sources of supply over the last decade. Risk still exists. But dislocating events, compounded by the shift in oil production from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Mexico, have redrawn the energy map. Energy flows have now been forced into two distinct channels, centered on the Atlantic basin and Indo-Pacific region. These connect markets not just through commercial ties but through geopolitical relationships, improving the resilience of energy connections and, by extension, improving energy security in the midst of an expanding global energy transition.
Energy relationships that used to inject risk and volatility into the global economy — Europe’s dependence on Russia, or U.S. dependence on the Middle East — have now largely been replaced by relationships tying like-minded states together, through channels that largely avoid strategic chokepoints. The Red Sea crisis, rather than the beginning of a new era of instability, could mark such an era’s end, and the transition to a new — and perhaps more stable — normal.
https://warontherocks.com/2024/02/red-sea-shocks-and-the-new-more-stable-normal/
