March 2026

This is not an energy chart. It is a chart about power. China has spent the past two decades expanding nuclear generation at speed. Germany has shut its reactors down completely. One country is building firm electricity capacity. The other has chosen to dismantle it.

Iran has been almost completely offline for more than a week. According to NetBlocks monitoring, nationwide connectivity dropped from normal levels to around 1% in early March and has remained near zero since. This makes it one of the longest internet shutdowns the country has experienced in recent years.

Brent crude has pushed above $100 per barrel. It was bound to happen. The speed is not unusual either. Oil markets react immediately because the global system has very little slack. For ordinary people the implications are straightforward. Oil prices eventually flow through to petrol, diesel and transport costs. When crude rises sharply, the price of filling a car tends to follow. That's not great when many of us are experiencing a cost-of-living squeeze.

The current US-Iran conflict has brought the Strait of Hormuz back to the centre of global energy markets. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes through that narrow waterway. When tankers hesitate, insurance costs jump and shipping routes become uncertain. So the question the market must answer is simple: Is oil becoming harder to obtain right now?

If you compress 400 years of economic history into a single animation, this is what you will see. The world has never been stable.

By 2025 China is importing roughly 4.7 million barrels a day from the region. The European Union is under 1 million. The United States is around half a million. The Gulf still matters. It just matters most to someone else. That someone appears to be China.