Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, has said the Iran war has forced a complete and urgent reassessment of global energy supply chain vulnerabilities that governments and energy companies had previously either underestimated or chosen to ignore. Speaking in Canberra during his Asia-Pacific tour, the IEA chief said the crisis — equivalent in force to the combined 1970s twin oil shocks and the Ukraine gas emergency — had exposed weaknesses in the global energy architecture that had been known for decades but never adequately addressed. He said the time for half-measures and deferred action was definitively over.
Birol explained that supply chain vulnerability assessments conducted before the Iran crisis had typically treated a full Hormuz closure as a scenario requiring contingency planning but not urgent investment. The reality of the current crisis had shown that those assessments were catastrophically wrong in their estimation of both probability and consequence. He said every government and every energy company needed to immediately review its supply chain risk models in light of what had actually happened.
The conflict began February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran and has since removed 11 million barrels of oil per day and 140 billion cubic metres of gas from world markets. At least 40 Gulf energy assets have been severely damaged, and the Hormuz strait — through which approximately 20 percent of global oil flows — remains closed. The IEA deployed 400 million barrels from strategic reserves on March 11 — its largest emergency action in history.
Birol confirmed further releases were under active consideration and said the IEA was consulting with governments across Europe, Asia, and North America. He called for demand-side policies including remote work, lower speed limits, and reduced commercial aviation. He met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and said Australia had an important role in helping reshape regional energy supply chain resilience.
Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum to Iran to reopen the strait expired without result, and Tehran threatened retaliatory strikes on US and allied energy and water infrastructure. Birol concluded that the reassessment of global energy supply chain vulnerabilities was not a task that could be deferred until after the current crisis was resolved. He said it needed to begin immediately, be conducted with complete honesty about what the Iran crisis had revealed, and result in investments and policy changes commensurate with the scale of the vulnerabilities exposed.