Since the beginning of the Iran War, global oil markets have experienced a seismic shock.

The conflict has sparked what the head of the International Energy Agency calls the worst oil supply crisis in history.

Shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively stifled,

although both Iran and the United States have expressed some willingness to reopen the

strait. Parts of the world are already grappling with higher gas prices and energy shortages.

I'm Mikhaila Tendera, and today on a special edition of the FT News Briefing,

we're taking a deep dive into how the oil sector is coping with this unprecedented disruption.

Jamie Smith is the F.T.'s U.S. energy editor, and he's been focused on making sense of this constantly changing situation in the oil and gas industry.

Hi, Jamie. Hello, McKellar.

We're sitting down on a Friday afternoon after the U.S. and Iran both said they wanted to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but there's still disagreement and a lot's up in the air here.

Can you just recap for us a bit?

You know, since the war began in February, what has the impact of that been on oil?

What we're seeing is the Iran War has created this blockage in the Strait of Hormuz.

That's this narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, which carries about a fifth of the world's oil and about a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas. So Iran started firing missiles,

a tankers, and that sort of shut things down.

And then the US set up its own blockade to prevent Iranian tankers from getting out and providing oil to China and India. So that brought all oil and gas shipments out of the strait to a total standstill.

So by blocking this straight, essentially, you are forcing up prices all around the world

of oil, of liquefied natural gas, of petrol, diesel, jet fuel.

And we're beginning to see shortages in Asia.

And people think this is going to spread to other parts of the world, Europe,

and even the United States within weeks.

Now, we're beginning to see a willingness from the United States in Iran to reopen the strait. There are moves to go

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