It’s Not Just Oil. War in Iran Will Hike the Price of Nearly Everything You Buy

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Big Take – "It’s Not Just Oil. War in Iran Will Hike the Price of Nearly Everything You Buy"

Bloomberg and iHeartPodcasts | April 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Bloomberg’s Big Take, hosted by Sarah Holder, delves into the far-reaching, global economic impacts of the ongoing war with Iran—specifically how the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is affecting not only the price of oil but also disrupting the supply and cost of a wide range of commodities that touch almost every aspect of everyday life, from food to plastics to semiconductors. Sarah is joined by Tracy Alloway and Joe Wiesenthal, co-hosts of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast, for a deep dive on how these compounding disruptions could keep prices elevated for ordinary consumers—well beyond oil and gas.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Crisis: The Strait of Hormuz Blockade

• Context: Since February 28, the Strait of Hormuz—a key maritime chokepoint—has been nearly closed due to military conflict, stranding over 800 freighters in the Gulf ([02:00]).
• Oil is not alone: "Crude oil isn’t the only commodity struggling to get through... the conflict in the Gulf has been disrupting a wider array of raw materials and consumer goods with potential longer term and worldwide ripple effects."
  — Sarah Holder [02:50]

2. Ripple Effects Beyond Oil: Plastics, Fertilizers, and Petrochemicals

• The Gulf is a critical exporter not just of crude oil, but of oil byproducts like plastics and fertilizers ([05:05]).
  • Tracy Alloway emphasizes, "Most oil byproducts become petrochemicals... things like plastics which are basically in everything. We're talking about fertilizers, whether they're phosphates or other types... a lot of those petrochemicals now can't get out." ([05:06])
• Even non-Gulf manufacturing is affected since key feedstocks for plastic and fertilizer, like naphtha and natural gas, typically originate in the Gulf and are shipped to Asia for processing, which is now delayed or halted ([06:00]).

3. Commodities Sovereignty and Stockpiling

• Joe Wiesenthal notes a decade-long shift: "The dominant theme of this decade has been... countries wanting to have stockpiles in their own capacity of everything."
  — Joe Wiesenthal [06:08]
• Sovereignty focus is prompting nations to reconsider relying on global, low-cost supply chains since shocks (COVID, Ukraine, U.S.-China trade war, AI demand for physical resources, and now Iran) expose vulnerabilities ([06:08-07:15]).

4. Helium: The Hidden but Critical Commodity

• Helium, a byproduct of massive gas fields in Qatar and Iran, is crucial not only for balloons but for semiconductors (cooling/etching) and space exploration ([07:27-09:23]).

  • "Helium is only created on Earth by radioactive decay... its biggest demand source now is manufacturing semiconductors."
    — Joe Wiesenthal [08:47]

• The U.S. once had a strategic helium reserve but sold it off, leaving the market exposed in times of crisis ([08:01]).

• Price chaos: "Spot prices don’t mean anything... physical shortages, not just price."
  — Tracy Alloway [09:28]

• Quoting Nicholas Snyder, CEO of North American Helium, who joked: “In two weeks, that $9 balloon will be worth $19” ([10:20]).

5. Commodities Aren’t Always Fungible

• Not all helium or other commodities are easily interchangeable due to differences in purity and specialized storage/distribution ([10:53]).
  • "What we're learning... is that they're not commodities because getting them from one location versus another, the distribution is so different the price could be radically different."
    — Joe Wiesenthal [10:53]

6. Fertilizer and Food: The Urea Shortage

• Urea, a vital fertilizer and byproduct of natural gas, is in short supply right as spring planting begins in the Western Hemisphere.
  • "This came at one of the worst possible times—start of the spring planting season..."
    — Tracy Alloway [12:27]
• U.S. farmers were already squeezed by thin margins and high fertilizer costs even before the Strait closure ([12:56]).

7. Packaging, Plastics, and Rapid Disruption

• The supply shock most immediately hits food packaging. The cost of plastic packaging (e.g., bags for carrots) is a significant portion of retail food prices ([12:56-13:59]).
• Shutdowns in Asian petrochemical "cracker" plants (which convert oil/natural gas into plastic) are already happening, and restarting them is slow and costly ([13:59]).
  • "Once you shut them down, it's actually really hard to restart."
    — Tracy Alloway [13:59]

8. Knock-on Effects in Transportation and Market Reactions

• The immediate industry hit is transport (fuel for aviation, shipping). Aviation margins are "clobbered" ([18:14]).
  • "It's gonna clobber aviation margins, et cetera."
    — Joe Wiesenthal [18:14]
• Market volatility is intense; neither drillers nor traders want to make big bets until there's certainty about a lasting ceasefire ([19:08-21:46]).

9. Shifts in Global Energy Dependence and Response Strategies

• Western nations are relatively insulated for now but are increasingly seeking greater energy independence and stockpiling ([20:10-20:53]).
• In Asia, the crisis drives a resurgence in nuclear energy and accelerates decarbonization pushes (electric vehicles, solar) ([19:08-20:53]).
  • "The entire world has just woken up to yet another instance of the need for their own ... stockpiles of crucial energy."
    — Tracy Alloway [20:10]

10. Long-Term Outlook: Lasting Damage Even If Strait Reopens

• Certain impacts—like loss of facilities destroyed in conflict—could take years to fix.
  • "One of the big gas facilities in Qatar being destroyed... that was supplying a bunch of feedstock... It’s not going to come back [quickly]."
    — Tracy Alloway [23:02-23:15]
  • "The price that the globe is going to be paying for this war... it's going to be a long time."
    — Joe Wiesenthal [23:19]
• Even a swift reopening would not immediately resolve shortages for plastics and other petrochemicals, as restarts are slow and some capacity is lost ([22:36-23:19]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On fragility of supply lines:
  “Right now, more than 800 freighters are stuck inside the Gulf... The blockade has sent gas prices surging...”
  — Sarah Holder [02:00]

• On commodities as more than ‘just oil’:
  “Everything can be kind of everything else in some sense. You turn oil into plastic. If you don't have oil, you could turn coal into oil and then turn that into plastic and so forth...”
  — Joe Wiesenthal [03:59]

• On urea and food packaging:
  “A big element of that is the container, the plastics container... Since we're talking about plastics and... how this war and the supply shock could transmit into higher food costs, it could be transmitted via higher food packaging costs.”
  — Joe Wiesenthal [12:56]

• On real-life supply choke points:
  "Crackers in Asia... are already shutting down production. The difficulty with a lot of these... once you shut them down, it's actually really hard to restart them and it takes a very long time."
  — Tracy Alloway [13:59]

• On market chaos:
  “The spot prices don’t mean anything... numbers are getting quoted but the actual petrochemical can’t get out of the strait... So, like, we are actually talking about physical shortages at this point, not just price.”
  — Tracy Alloway [09:28]

• On the durability of damage:
  “It’s not just the straits... a lot of ripple effects... Qatar said it was going to take what, like three to five years, something like that [to rebuild].”
  — Tracy Alloway [23:13]

• On the uncertain future:
  "And it might not [reopen soon] because this is a two week ceasefire and it's tentative at best and who knows if it's holding?"
  — Joe Wiesenthal [23:30]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Supply chain crisis & Strait of Hormuz context: [01:50] – [03:44]
• Petrochemicals & ripple effects: [05:06] – [06:08]
• Helium: why it matters: [07:15] – [09:23]
• Helium price volatility anecdote: [10:20]
• Commodities are not always fungible: [10:53]
• Urea and agriculture impacts: [11:55] – [12:56]
• Packaging & plastics shortages: [12:56] – [13:59]
• Petrochemical plants shutting down/restart problems: [13:59]
• Transport and aviation affected first: [18:14]
• Energy sovereignty & global adaptation: [19:08] – [20:53]
• Delayed and lasting repercussions with or without Strait reopening: [22:12] – [23:27]

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Conclusion

This episode underscores how the closure of one of the world’s key energy arteries—the Strait of Hormuz—has consequences that extend well beyond gasoline prices. The conversation with Alloway and Wiesenthal reveals just how dependent the global economy is on Gulf-derived commodities, the compounding effects on plastics, food, and technology, and why restoring supply chains may take years even with a rapid ceasefire. Expect higher costs not only at the pump but across nearly everything you buy. The world is entering a new era of supply chain sovereignty and fragility, with profound implications for economic stability and everyday life.

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Transcript

[Amy Robach]

In the fall of 2023, Romana Didolo, a woman calling herself the Queen of Canada, drove into Richmond, Saskatchewan with a fleet of RVs and set up her kingdom in an abandoned school. So the town banded together to get the cult out by any means necessary. My name is Rachel Brown, and in this season of Uncover, I explore what happens when a conspiracy theory lands in your backyard. The cult Queen of Canada, available now on cbc. Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. Hey there folks. Amy Robach and T.J. holmes here and

[T.J. Holmes]

we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days, from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake Lively thing about anyway?

[Amy Robach]

We are on it every day, all day.

[T.J. Holmes]

Follow us Amy and TJ for news updates throughout the day.

[Amy Robach]

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[Iris Palmer]

Hi, I'm Iris Palmer, host of the Against All Odds podcast. Every week I'm sitting down with exceptional people who have broken barriers even when the odds were stacked against them, like Chef Victor Villa of Villa's Tacos. You know the taquero from the Bad Bunny halftime show.

[Chef Victor Villa]

It was great. It was a big moment, it was special and I felt like I was really representing my family, you know, my brand, my, my city. I was representing all taqueros, not only of, like, you know, the U.S. but of Mexico and beyond, all the taqueros of the world.

[Iris Palmer]

Listen to Against all odds on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News if

[Chef Victor Villa]

they're going to try to play us,

[Joe Wiesenthal]

then they're gonna find that the negotiating

[Chef Victor Villa]

team is not that receptive.

[Sarah Holder]

So on Friday, US Vice President J.D. vance departed for Pakistan where he and a US delegation will hold talks with Iran in an effort to turn this week's shaky ceasefire into a lasting peace. One key to a deal will be Iran's willingness to open the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed to shipping traffic since the US and Israel first struck Iran on February 28. President Donald Trump on social media said Iran is doing a, quote, very poor job letting oil through the strait, and said Iran had better not be charging ships to pass through. Right now, more than 800 freighters are stuck inside the Gulf. Only a handful of ships have been observed passing through the strait each day. Compared to pre war times when about 135 ships a day would come and go. The blockade has sent Gas prices surging, which in the US contributed to a rise in consumer prices last month. But crude oil isn't the only commodity struggling to get through. A couple of our Bloomberg podcast colleagues have been chronicling how the conflict in the Gulf has been disrupting a wider array of raw materials and consumer goods with potential longer term and worldwide ripple effects.

[Tracy Alloway]

I always like to say that one of the things that Odd Lots tends to do well is we uncover the supply chains when they're affected. And right now is kind of like a bull market in supply chain shocks. Right. I think one thing to understand about our current moment in the petrochemicals and also broader energy space is that this is the scenario that people were worried about for years. Like, this is the thought experiment that used to dominate, like bar talk for oil traders in London.

[Sarah Holder]

What if the Strait of Hormuz was closed?

[Tracy Alloway]

What if the Strait of Hormuz was closed? And now we're actually experienc. And so now we're getting a much fuller understanding of exactly how all of that energy, all those carbons or whatever, actually route throughout the entire world thanks

[Joe Wiesenthal]

to the brilliance of sort of advanced chemistry. Everything can be kind of everything else in some sense. You turn oil into plastic. If you don't have oil, you could turn coal into oil and then turn that into plastic and so forth. When you cut off a bunch of stuff, you find ways to reroute things. But like when there's just a choke point, choke point, nothing gets through.

[Sarah Holder]

I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today on the show. I'm joined by Tracy Alloway and Joe Wiesenthal, the hosts of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. We talk about the downstream impacts of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and what could happen to the price of things like food and plastic if it doesn't reopen soon. So we're recording this on Thursday, April 9th. We're on the second day of a very fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran. Global shipping through the Strait is still essentially at a standstill. It's affecting lots of different commodities, including, but not limited to oil. So give us a sense of what kinds of commodities are most affected here.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, well, I think one thing to realize about the Gulf is it's not just where a lot of oil comes from. It is also where a lot of oil byproducts come from. And most of those byproducts happen to eventually get turned into petrochemicals. So we're talking about things like plastics which are basically in everything. We're talking about things like fertilizers, whether they're phosphates or other types of fertilizers. Phosphates are byproducts of sulfur, which itself is a byproduct of oil refining. A lot of these Gulf nations got into the petrochemicals business because they had all these byproducts coming, coming off from their oil industries. And of course, it means that a lot of those petrochemicals now can't get out. And even for petrochemicals that aren't manufactured in the Gulf specifically, you have a lot of the feedstock that comes from the Gulf. Again, we're talking about things like NAT gas and oil. They go over to places like Asia and then they get turned into plastics or fertilizers or whatever. All of those are disrupted.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

The other thing I would say is that the dominant theme of this decade has been in every physical respect, countries wanting to have stockpiles in their own capacity of everything. So it's like there's helium in the ground in North America, there's a lot of it. But for years, like, you know what, it doesn't matter. There's plenty of helium that they're finding in the gas fields around Qatar. So it's like, it's not that important to mine our own helium. But the bigger story is that from COVID to Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the trade war that Trump really accelerated in early 2025, now this war, and I would also add in artificial intelligence and all of the fight for physical commodities to build the data centers, we're in an era of sovereignty focus, where every country feels they need to have everything. Because every country could no longer take for granted that there is some really low cost producer somewhere in the world making it, every country is going to want to either have domestic production, domestic mining, or at least redundancies.

[Sarah Holder]

Well, I want to talk more about helium because that was such an interesting episode. Why is the Gulf such a hotspot for helium? And how much is actually coming out of the Gulf right now or so how much typically comes out of the Gulf?

[Joe Wiesenthal]

I had assumed that helium was like this gas byproduct because as Tracy mentioned, you stick a pole in the ground and a bunch of other stuff comes out and you can monetize that frequently. Helium is, incidentally, not one of these things that's just naturally found where natural gas is found. Helium was found in the huge gas fields that Qatar and Iran control, because that gas field happens to be so big. That eventually you stick enough pipes in the ground and. And some of them will hit helium.

[Tracy Alloway]

The other interesting thing about helium are the sort of market incentives at play. So for a very long time, the US Actually had a strategic helium reserve down in Texas, like this big cave filled with helium. And it turned out that, you know, storing it was expensive and it wasn't really thought to be that strategically necessary anymore. And so we decided to sell it off. And then lo and behold, you fast forward a few decades. Like, not only have you kind of undermined the market for, I guess, private helium exploration because you had so much of it stored in this cave, but it turns out that actually in moments like this, a strategic helium reserve could be kind of useful.

[Sarah Holder]

Why is helium important? Is it just for balloons? Like, why did the US Need a strategic stockpile of helium?

[Joe Wiesenthal]

So, yeah, we did our helium episode. In fact, our guest was Nicholas Snyder, the CEO of North American Helium, the perfect guest, which is mining helium in Saskatchewan. Helium is only created on Earth by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. So what makes it so useful is that it has the lowest boiling point of anything in nature. The biggest demand source, which you've probably seen in the news a little bit because of the events in Iran is manufacturing semiconductors. And beyond that, one of the fastest growing end uses is for launching rockets for space exploration.

[Tracy Alloway]

One thing that it is very crucial for is etching for semiconductors.

[Sarah Holder]

So that's a big one.

[Tracy Alloway]

My understanding is that that has to be done in a very cold environment and the helium is used to cool down the environment. Now the cost of helium going up, that probably a very marginal increase for most semiconductor manufacturers, but you would imagine that they still want a stable supply. The other interesting thing that's happening now is we are getting to the point in some markets where like you look at the spot prices for certain petrochemicals or for certain fertilizers, and there are analysts out there saying that the spot prices don't mean anything at the moment because numbers are getting quoted. But the actual petrochemical, the actual stuff can't actually get out of the straight. Or if the numbers quoted, the quote disappears so quickly because the prices keep moving around that it's basically meaningless. So, like, we are actually talking about physical shortages at this point, not just price.

[Sarah Holder]

Are we seeing price changes in the helium market?

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, okay. It's very hard to get a benchmark helium price. And I'm pretty sure we tried before the episode and there was not a. There isn't one. I will say the Helium CEO that we spoke to, we got a helium filled balloon from like CVS or something as a prop. And we were just talking about the pricing on it. And he asked how much we had paid. I think it was like $9. Yeah, $9 or something like that. And he kind of quipped on his way out the door, out the proverbial door. Cause he was in Canada, he was like, oh, well, you know, in two weeks it'll be worth $19, that helium.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

One of the things that came up in the conversation too is that, you know, let's set aside where the helium is in terms of where it's mined. There are only so many, like industrial storage containers that exist for helium. And then if you look at the type of high grade helium that say a semiconductor manufacturer would want to use, they require a different type of storage container for their helium distribution because they need like seven nines, you know, 99.9999999, whereas maybe the other containers are just for 99.999. So the point is that, like, I think it's important to think about when we talk about commodities. The word commodities implies a degree of like, it's all the same fungibility, It's a commodity. Right. But what we're learning when we sort of explore some of the different commodities that are being disrupted right now is that they're not commodities because to get them from in one location versus another, the distribution is gonna be so different that the price could be radically different.

[Sarah Holder]

You also went deep on urea. And I know about urea because it's in my moisturizer.

[Tracy Alloway]

That's so funny. My husband got urea based moisturizer for his feet and he keeps trying to get me feet and he keeps trying to get me to use it. And I'm like, no, thank you. I don't want to put urea on my feet.

[Sarah Holder]

Yeah, apparently it works. It was a little freaky to see that word on my moisturizer, but it's been pretty, pretty useful.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, noted.

[Sarah Holder]

But it's also very essential in agriculture. It's a key component of fertilizer. How much of urea is produced in the Gulf and flowing through the Strait on a good day? Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

So I think the important thing about urea is it's a byproduct of Nat gas. The issue that we have now is with the Strait of Hormuz being disrupted, it kind of came at one of the worst possible times, which is the start of the spring planting season in the Western hemisphere. And again, Thinking about America, one of the dominant stories in Dec over decades now has been this idea of like the small scale farmer really struggling with higher costs and lower food prices and

[Sarah Holder]

higher fertilizer costs already even before the

[Joe Wiesenthal]

year elevated, we did an episode just prior to like a few weeks before the war on something else. But they were talking about like oh, the American farmers are already have been like getting squeezed for various reasons. So there's already margins have been extremely thin. But when you think about the price of your food that you buy, a big element of that is the container, the plastics container, right? So it's like you know, you buy a bag of carrots, a pretty big, a non trivial amount of that will be the plastic bag. Since we're talking about plastics and we're talking about like that's been affected dramatically. If we're thinking about how that could, how this war and the supply shock could transmit into higher food costs, it could be transmitted via higher food packaging costs.

[Sarah Holder]

Well then let's talk about oil byproducts like plastics and how they've been affected by this conflict so far. You talked about polyethylene, you had a whole episode with Philip Gertz, chemical and oil analyst at Bloomberg nef. What did he say that struck you about how you know, the packaging supply chains could be impacted?

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, I think the thing that struck me is just how fast they seem to be affected at the moment. So we already know that there are some, they're called crackers in Asia, places that actually transform petrochemicals into plastics. They're already shutting down production. And the difficulty with a lot of these like petrochemical operations is, and energy in general is once you shut them down, it's actually really hard to restart them and it takes a very long time. So again, even if the conflict were to get resolved in the next day or week, these problems have the potential to linger on. Again we've already seen some closures of crackers in Asia.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

This is an important element too which is, you may have seen one of the charts that's going the most viral is the cost of jet fuel in Singapore. And we, and this is a really important concept or it's at least for me it really struck, which is because any of these operations have a high cost of shutting down and restarting. No facility wants to do that, that they will slow their intake. A refinery that turns oil into jet fuel, they don't want to shut down because there's no more oil. So they have this fixed amount of oil that they can get so they start slowing down their intake and then there's less jet fuel than you would anticipate given how much oil there is. So the price, the price of these end products surges much more than even the price of oil surges because that the refinery is already doing this rationing and the ration. Because the last thing they want to do is run out. Because if they run out, then they have to shut down and then that costs a lot of money.

[Sarah Holder]

So when could strains to global supply chains start to impact consumers? That's after the break.

[Lala Kent]

Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sur may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown up vibes. But over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala. You either love or love to hate. I've been full on over sharing with fans, family and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz. I had a little bone to pick with Schwarzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I must flipped a pizza in your lap.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

Oh my God. I literally forgot about that until just now.

[Chef Victor Villa]

Sorry, I don't want to, I don't

[Joe Wiesenthal]

want to blame alcohol that I got

[Chef Victor Villa]

to blame that one on the alcohol.

[Lala Kent]

This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on life in because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to. We're growing, we're thriving. And yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala. Listen to Untraditionally La la on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sarah Holder]

Opus DEI is a controversial Catholic group known for its orthodoxy and discipline.

[Tracy Alloway]

There's always been an idea in Opus DEI of trying to be near the elite of.

[Sarah Holder]

Hey, I'm Antonia Cundi. I'm a journalist with the Financial Times and I've been investigating how Opus DEI has become central to the American conservative movement.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

We were the closest tabernacle to the

[Sarah Holder]

White House from the Financial Times. Listen to untold Opus DEI wherever you get your podcasts.

[Amy Robach]

Hey there, folks. Amy Robach and T.J. holmes here and

[T.J. Holmes]

we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days, from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high profile Trials. And what the hell is that Blake Lively thing about?

[Amy Robach]

Anyway, we are on it every day, all day.

[T.J. Holmes]

Follow us, Amy and TJ for news updates throughout the day.

[Amy Robach]

Listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Sarah Holder]

When we think about all the commodities that we've talked about so far which have experienced the most profound disrupt from the Strait's closure, and then what industries are being hit the hardest?

[Joe Wiesenthal]

My guess right now is it's straight up transport still, it's like going to clobber aviation margins, et cetera.

[Tracy Alloway]

The west is kind of insulated at the moment, but again, all of these markets are interconnected in one way or another. And so we're gonna see it spread slowly from Asia over into the West. And we're gonna see it spread from the industries that are most immediately hit, like transportation, into second order effects, like what if Walmart has to raise the price of plastic bags or something like that. And it's hard to predict exactly how these things unfold. But again, we are talking about like a crucial part of the entire world's supply chain.

[Sarah Holder]

How have players along the supply chain been adapting to these disruptions, at least in the short term? Like, have they been changing their recipe, finding other shipping solutions, looking to other sources? Are there any unexpected winners as the Strait is closed?

[Joe Wiesenthal]

I don't know. I think like, I think by and large, like the thing that we keep hearing is like, by and large in the west, things are going to be more expensive. And even looking at financial market positioning is a good example of this. No one really wants to be caught holding the bag. If one is like, okay, ceasefire, it's back to normal. And we saw the violent reaction in the market in oil on Wednesday after the sort of preliminary ceasefire news like, you can lose a lot of money by getting on the wrong side of the boat and then it rocks in the other direction. So the episode that we recorded today with Alex Turnbull, one of his arguments was already Asia was seeing a re acceleration in reopening nuclear plants that had been closed, particularly in the wake of the 2011 earthquake. So he thinks the nuclear restart is going to accelerate in Asia. So I do think like some long term plans, particularly in Asia, particularly thinking about the future of energy. Yes, absolutely. This will like accelerate efforts to sort of fortify their commodities, not be so reliant on certain imports.

[Tracy Alloway]

And so for this is some of the irony of America's current situation, which is, you know, the Trump administration can talk about how we are Hashtag blessed with carbons, and we have lots of nat gas and things like that. But on the other hand, like the entire world has just woken up to yet another instance of the need for their own. To Joe's point earlier, stockpiles of crucial energy. And so it's not entirely clear to me that like they are going to be looking to the US for their energy future. At the same time, you have places like China which, setting coal aside, have made a big push into providing cheap solar panels, cheap electric vehicles. You can imagine those are going to be in demand after like the traumatic experience of this current energy crisis.

[Sarah Holder]

Right. And the US can lean on its energy independence to a certain extent. But what about these other commodities that we've talked about? You know, they're not necessarily urea dependent, independent. And it's interesting to think about whether or not the US could mine its own helium.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

I think this is the key thing, which is that the US is blessed in terms of the endowments of our land. Right. So we have plenty of gas, plenty of oil, there is helium, there is all these other things. It's an expensive place to do it. So the question is like, at what point does the commodity company or whatever is like, oh, this is going to be a lasting thing. So a couple weeks ago was Zero week down in Houston where they had a big energy conference and Chris Wright, the energy secretary, I think it was like, please drill more. Right. That was the measure. But no one's going to do that unless they're certain that the price is going to stay elevated for a long time.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, and if you look at the Baker Hughes new rig count, it still hasn't picked up even after what, like five or six weeks now of pretty high oil prices?

[Joe Wiesenthal]

The high oil prices are not translating into higher rig counts. And so I think like it might one day. But I like that is a big decision to make when you're like shelling out new capital investment. And because it could turn on a dime, no one's doing it yet.

[Sarah Holder]

So my last question for you guys is about this sort of long term potential. So one thing that's become clear throughout this conversation is that there are some commodities where we're already seeing some price pressures, others most where there might be a more delayed reaction or where issues may compound over time. So say the strait does open to traffic tomorrow. What commodities that you've been tracking might be the slowest to bounce back?

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, I think it would go to some of the petrochemicals, maybe that we've seen, like where the crackers have already had to like either shut down completely or diminish some of their production. I think those are going to take a while to restart.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

I also think it's important to remember that there are, you know, a number of facilities were attacked directly.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, that's true.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

And so export capacity in the Emirates is already. Right. Like we've seen.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, no, if you think about like one of the big gas facilities in Qatar being destroyed, like that was supplying a bunch of feedstock for petrochemicals which became plastic.

[Sarah Holder]

It's not just the straits.

[Tracy Alloway]

It's not going to come back.

[Sarah Holder]

A lot of ripple effects.

[Tracy Alloway]

I think Qatar said it was going to take what, like three to five years, something like that.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

The price that the globe is going to be paying for this war, even if we're to be done by, as of when we're talking about this, it's going to be a long time.

[Sarah Holder]

Yeah. And what if it doesn't reopen soon?

[Joe Wiesenthal]

And it might not. And it might not because this is a two week ceasefire and it's tentative at best and who knows if it's holding?

[Sarah Holder]

Well, Joe and Tracy, thank you so much.

[Joe Wiesenthal]

Thank you for having us.

[Tracy Alloway]

Thanks so much.

[Sarah Holder]

If you like this episode, check out Joe and Tracy's show, Odd Lots where they've been having more convers about how the Strait of Hormuz's closure is affecting global supply chains. This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. The show is hosted by me, David Gura and Juan Ha. The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Jeff Grocott, Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Paddy Hirsch, Rachel Lewis Christie, Katie McMurran, Naomi Ng, Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, Alex Sugiura, Julia Weaver, Yang Yang and Taka Yasuzawa. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.

[Chef Victor Villa]

Hi, I'm PJ Vogt. My podcast search engine has a new two part series for you. Of all the new technologies coming out of AI, the most transformative one might be driverless cars. They're already on the road in 10American cities and they're quickly coming to more. We tell the story of how we got here. The secret team at Google that spent 15 years building what might be the safest vehicle on the road. And we cover the fights brewing in blue cities where unions and politicians are working to keep those cars off the streets. Listen to Search Engine wherever you get your podcasts.

[Amy Robach]

Hey there, folks. Amy Robach and T.J. holmes here and

[T.J. Holmes]

we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days, from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake Lively thing about? Anyway?

[Amy Robach]

We are on it every day, all day.

[T.J. Holmes]

Follow us, Amy and TJ for news updates throughout the day.

[Amy Robach]

Listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Iris Palmer]

Hi, I'm Iris Palmer, host of the Against All Odds podcast. Every week I'm sitting down with exceptional people who have broken barriers even when the odds were stacked against them, like Chef Victor Villa of Villa's Tacos. You know, the taquero from the Bad Bunny halftime show?

[Chef Victor Villa]

It was great. It was a big moment. It was special. And I felt like I was really representing my family, you know, my brand, my city. I was representing all taqueros, not only of, like, you know, the U.S. but of Mexico and beyond, all the taqueros of the world.

[Iris Palmer]

Listen to Against all odds on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.