![]() Religious groups include Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Yazidis. A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including the majority Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Circassians, Armenians, Albanians, Greeks, and Chechens. It is a unitary republic that consists of 14 governorates (subdivisions). Cyprus lies to the west across the Mediterranean Sea. It is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. ![]() NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. But just like the rest of us, they don't have a crystal ball into how this terrible war might unfold.Ĭopyright © 2023 NPR. WONG: In other words, oil traders might be poring over political statements and scenarios. WOODS: Do these numbers from the oil market give you some comfort about lower probability of a bigger regional war?īRONZE: The oil market might be moving very quickly to an assumption that because we haven't seen an escalation or a spread of the fighting yet that it probably won't happen, but I don't think we should take that as a guarantee just yet. This then raises the question of whether the oil market is telling us something, maybe, a little encouraging about the future. WONG: Meanwhile, supply and demand seem to be in balance around the world. WONG: And that brings us to the second reason for lower oil prices, which is that oil traders don't seem to think there will be a regional war spilling outside the borders of Israel and Gaza.īRONZE: Some of the early concerns that might happen have diminished. So there's lots of ways you can be worried about the potential for spillover to disrupt oil supply, but we haven't seen it yet. WOODS: But what about just general disruption and chaos in the Middle East? The region is critical to global oil supplies, even though Israel and Gaza are not major producers.īRONZE: They're surrounded by a lot of very important oil producers, and a lot of the world's oil moves through places like the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Iran, through the Suez Canal. Plus, we now rely on more alternative sources of energy. Fracking, for example, means a lot of oil production happens here in the U.S. were much more dependent on Middle Eastern oil for their economies in ways that are not so acute today. WONG: Richard says there were other factors going on back in the 1970s, like Middle Eastern countries trying to wrest back control of their own oil fields after decades of Western companies owning them. We have seen Iran making some calls for an oil embargo, but that hasn't been picked up by other Middle Eastern producers or other members of OPEC more widely, and I don't think it will be. RICHARD BRONZE: I think it's extremely unlikely we get anything on the scale of the 1970s oil embargoes. Richard is an expert on how geopolitics affects oil markets. Yet this time, Arab and Gulf states haven't imposed an oil embargo. And in response to countries that supported Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states declared an oil embargo. WOODS: The Yom Kippur War was a conflict between Arab states and Israel over territory that Israel seized during an earlier conflict known as the Six-Day War. ![]() WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: And it's that war that led to enormous repercussions throughout the global economy. TOM BROKAW: Surprise attacks came early this morning. So why isn't that happening now? Our colleagues Darian Woods and Wailin Wong at The Indicator From Planet Money explain.ĭARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: The Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7 were 50 years, almost to the day, from the Yom Kippur War, when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel. Usually, when there's a war in the Middle East, oil prices shoot up. The day before Hamas attacked Israel, oil was around $83 a barrel. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |