Ongoing global energy disruptions, maritime insecurity, and shifting geopolitical alignments are converging to reshape the international landscape. From Europe’s tightening gas markets to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, and evolving trade dynamics, systemic pressures are building across sectors. These developments collectively point to a period of sustained volatility and structural change.
Tighter gas supplies test European Union energy strategy
Dan Rocha, Partner, Brussels
Europe is entering the 2026 refill season with materially lower gas storage following a colder winter, forcing earlier injections and a higher call on LNG imports, which is already feeding through into tighter balances and upward pressure on energy prices. The European Commission and the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG) both acknowledge that while physical supply remains adequate, the combination of low stocks and the Middle East disruption is driving heightened price volatility and competition for cargoes.
In response, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen has advocated for lower storage targets of around 80%. The thinking behind this proposal is that it would reduce incremental demand during peak refill periods and mitigate further price escalation, rather than reacting to an immediate supply shortfall.
EU policymaking remains relatively insulated from short-term price movements (the Commission’s mandate extends to 2029, and their exposure to electoral pressure is very limited), allowing for a measured and structurally consistent response. Against this backdrop, messaging has focused on strategic continuity, with Jørgensen reaffirming that there will be no return to Russian energy imports, even as market conditions tighten and prices rise.
The time for alternatives has arrived
Benoît Lioud, Managing Director, Geneva
The two most recent energy crises (the Iran and Ukraine wars) have disrupted or even fully broken global supply chains. Companies initially seek traditional solutions such as drawing on operational or strategic inventories, using alternative logistics channels, or seeking new suppliers in other regions. As a last resort, they reduce or temporarily suspend their consumption, when possible. Each step generates an increasing marginal cost, which ultimately impacts the price of raw materials.
Beyond these immediate changes, crises push companies to innovate at the industrial level. When feasible, substitution with alternative products becomes a strategic lever, and it also offers the opportunity to accelerate research and development efforts, optimize processes, and ultimately differentiate themselves from the competition. These advances foster the emergence of new products and increase alignment with sustainability requirements.
Faced with major crises, constraints become catalysts for structural change. By systematically integrating the search for alternatives into their business model, companies not only reinforce their resilience and competitiveness, but they also actively engage in sustainable development, thereby creating value for all links in the supply chain.
Strait of Hormuz under pressure as U.S. and allies weigh next moves
Tom Sharpe, Senior Advisor, London
As we approach the end of the fourth week of the war in Iran, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains a fraction of what it was before February 28th, 2026. Iran has not closed the Strait of Hormuz, but they most certainly control it. Like the Houthis before them, they are proficient in escalation management. There is no need for mines (although reports have emerged of their use) or for them to use their surface fast attack threat. Additionally, they do not need to activate the Houthis yet, as they are achieving their end states – regime survival and control of the Strait of Hormuz – without their involvement. Rumors are growing that companies are increasingly buying safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
The option for the U.S. to just walk away remains, as does the option at the other end – a land invasion. The USS Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group arrives in the region this week, along with thousands of U.S. Marines, Rangers and paratroopers. The middle ground between these two – a negotiated truce of some sort – is hard to envisage when an intransigent regime so clearly considers themselves to be winning.
Back in the U.K., the government announced this week that it intends to conduct board and search operations of Russian shadow fleet ships as they pass through U.K. waters. It took a long time to get here, and what has shifted legally to allow it is unclear, but it is a positive move, not just against Russia, but more generally, and shows that the U.K. still has some maritime spine left.
To read Tom Sharpe OBE’s latest columns in The Telegraph, click here.
From Ukraine to the Gulf, Russian power is in the spotlight
Ian Dollar, Analyst, Dubai
While disruptions to the global energy supply dominate headlines today, the broader geopolitical context into which the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran fits is an underreported element that is no less significant. Simply put, the world is witnessing the decline of Russian power in action.
Even as Moscow gains a temporary windfall from higher energy prices, it stands to lose significant allied defense industrial capacity which Iran uses to produce the Shahed drones that now rain down on Kyiv and the Gulf alike. No one understands this – and the messaging opportunity the war presents – better than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is visiting the Gulf this week and making much of his nation’s assistance to the defense of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) even as it faces an invasion on its own soil.
When we consider the addition of previously-neutral Finland and Sweden to NATO, the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the improvement of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan under terms favorable to the U.S., the removal of Nicolas Maduro from power in oil-rich Venezuela, and both of the U.S.-Israeli wars with Iran in 2025-26, the pattern of the past four years is unmistakable. Russia’s influence is limited by its war in Ukraine. And while Ukraine may well have to trade land for peace, Moscow will not gain a strategic advantage from its decision to invade.
World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference takes place ahead of one year anniversary of ”Liberation Day” tariffs
J.P. Carroll, Senior Advisor, Washington, D.C.
Global trade policy officials are meeting in Cameroon from March 26 to March 29 for the 14th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC14), ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Trump administration having implemented worldwide tariffs on April 2, 2025. “The world order and multilateral system we used to know has irrevocably changed. We will not get it back…We must look to the future,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala declared at the opening of the conference.
U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer is attending the conference and said in part, in his opening remarks, “U.S. trade policy measures are a corrective response to a trading system, embodied by the WTO, that has overseen and contributed to severe and sustained imbalances.” Greer went on to state, “As ministers, our focus should be on reforms that would make the WTO more responsive to Members and improve our ability to achieve outcomes that optimize our trading relationships.”
This is the first major global trade policy gathering since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration’s ‘reciprocal’ tariffs were illegal. Now the U.S. government must refund up to $165 billion in tariffs paid by U.S. importers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will reconfigure its tariff strategy in the long-term considering this recent Supreme Court ruling.
