Energy crisis: naval blockade on Russia and the Hormuz risk

Ten navies against Russia's shadow fleet and the diesel to come

How high can diesel prices rise before the roads stop moving? That is the question hanging over everything else. The United Kingdom has ordered its warships to intercept and board Russian tankers, with the English Channel turned into a bottleneck, and ten European navies are coordinating pressure on the so-called shadow fleet. The prime ministers of Finland, Petteri Orpo, and the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, closed ranks outside the JEF framework, according to Reuters.

The thesis of a manufactured energy crisis

There is a school of thought that sees no accident in this sequence. It argues that breaking supply chains is the goal, not collateral damage, and that expensive energy serves to shut down industry by suffocating those who cannot pay for it. In its harshest version, the energy crisis would be the result of a deliberate redesign of the economic order. The opposing reading is far more boring: a sanctions escalation that has run ahead of its own consequences. Neither has been settled, and that is precisely the uncomfortable part.

From Hormuz to €4.50 a litre

The second front is the Strait of Hormuz. Iran plays the card of letting ships pass or not depending on their flag and describes Spain as a country committed to international law, while Washington squeezes Tehran. If that passage closes or becomes a minefield, the circulating estimate points to a 30-40% increase in the price of oil not coming from Russia, with a scenario of diesel at €4.50 per litre, hauliers stopping and empty shelves within 72 hours. It is not a forecast: it is a working assumption. And there lies the trap, because an assumption repeated often enough stops seeming like one.

Ten navies mobilised, one channel blocked and one strait up in the air. All perfectly coordinated, except for the small detail that nobody quite explains who signs off on the plan.