A Two-Speed Energy Shock

The war against Iran and the threat hanging over the Strait of Hormuz cannot be read on a military map alone. Their economic translation is a shift in wealth. The groups that produce and refine are collecting exceptional prices and margins. The countries that import their energy are seeing inflation climb and activity wither. The figures published this week, on both sides, make it possible to measure that gap.

Refiners Cash In: The BP Case

BP has reported the highest quarterly profit in its recent history, at least since 2021. Underlying profit for the third quarter reached $8.46 billion, against $2.2 billion a year earlier and $7.33 billion expected by analysts surveyed by the group. Operating cash flow stands at $14.8 billion. Net debt falls back to $13.9 billion, which allows the debt target to be met a year early.

The mechanism is visible in the customers and products division, which posts a pre-tax result of $6.95 billion against $1.72 billion a year earlier. The benchmark refining margin reaches $46.7 per barrel, against $29.6 in the second quarter and $15.8 a year before. In other words, the margin has nearly tripled in twelve months. The conflict has pushed up oil and fuel prices, and the spread between crude and refined products has widened to the benefit of those who process.

The group is allocating part of this windfall to settling its last commitments linked to Deepwater Horizon, whose debts and provisions amount to $5.94 billion. Management nevertheless stresses that the results also rest on internal performance gains. The share strictly attributable to the geopolitical context therefore cannot be isolated.

Importers Pay: France Under Pressure

The same sequence produces the opposite effect in France. GDP contracted by 0.1% in the third quarter, after stagnation in the second and a 0.2% decline in the first. Economy Minister Roland Lescure sums up the situation by judging the economy to be "at a standstill." In October, consumer prices rose 3.4% year on year, against 3.1% in September. Energy prices, led by gas and petroleum products, jumped 24.1% after 21.3% in September, a fourth consecutive month of acceleration.

The transmission channel is direct: more expensive fuel drives up household and business costs, weighs on consumption and investment, then reduces fiscal room for manoeuvre. Roland Lescure himself cites the tensions around the Strait of Hormuz among the causes, along with the summer heatwave. The 2027 budget bill targets a public deficit of 5% of GDP after 5.4% in 2026, but its adoption remains uncertain for lack of a majority. The energy shock thus hits an economy with little cushion to absorb it.

Spain, a Useful Nuance

The picture is not uniform. Spain posts growth of 0.6% in the third quarter and 2.7% year on year, while its inflation reaches 4.9%. Spanish data nevertheless signal the same fragilities: rising oil prices unbalance the trade balance, household consumption slows to 0.6% and job creation is running out of steam. The energy shock therefore does not produce a recession everywhere, but it erodes growth engines, at different paces depending on national structures.

Diplomacy and Diversification: Two Responses to Risk

Faced with this exposure, two responses are taking shape. The first is diplomatic. In Istanbul, the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Italy warned against any new US attack on Iran. Jean-Noël Barrot warned that an escalation "would create only losers" and would have heavy consequences for hydrocarbon prices. His Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani spoke of de-escalation to guarantee freedom of navigation and reopen Hormuz. The fact that the risk to prices is invoked first by the Europeans confirms that the energy bill has become a central foreign policy argument.

The second response is industrial. ST LNG is targeting a final investment decision in mid-to-late 2027 for an offshore LNG terminal off Texas, costing $8.2 billion. Its capacity of 8.4 million tonnes per year would represent about 8% of US capacity, with the first commercial delivery expected by mid-2030. Its head, Sharad Tak, justifies the demand by the war in the Middle East, which is pushing buyers to diversify their suppliers, with the United States appearing more stable to them than others. The project, however, has no long-term purchase commitments, even though it says it is close to a first buyer in India. The United States already has more than 100 Mtpa of export capacity and about 100 Mtpa under construction.

What the File Does Not Allow Us to Assert

Several limits impose themselves. First, the exact share of the conflict in the French slowdown cannot be isolated: the minister cites a combination of internal and external shocks. Next, the maritime incidents at Hormuz, which Tehran says hit several vessels, are not documented in the file by volumes or durations. Finally, the initial angle of this work concerned regulatory monitoring, with 173 entries recorded, but only a few titles of European texts are available. Their content is not usable, and the associated open data request failed. No link between these texts and the energy shock can therefore be established.

A Proportionate Conclusion

The data converge toward a cautious finding. As long as the tension around Hormuz persists, producers and refiners capture a rent (BP provides the quantified illustration) while importers, France foremost, suffer energy inflation and anaemic growth. Policymakers are responding with diplomatic de-escalation and the search for alternative suppliers, but these levers operate on very different horizons: a few weeks for diplomacy, at least until 2030 for new LNG capacity. Until then, the energy bill remains the main channel through which Gulf geopolitics weighs on European accounts.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence and verified by our editorial team.