Oil crisis lessons from Iran to Kuwait
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the world faces another energy crisis, what can past shocks teach us?
We look back at earlier oil crises to understand how conflict has disrupted global supply - and what that means for markets today.
We hear from a former boss of one of the world’s biggest oil companies, BP, on the challenges the business faced when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
And as many of us are now facing rising prices at the pumps, we explore how reliant we’ve become on oil and whether it’s possible to reduce our dependence on it anytime soon.
If you'd like to get in touch with the programme, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Rahul Tandon Producers: Rebecca Smyllie and Josh Martin
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, the economic impact of the war in the Middle East, and why bond markets are so powerful.
We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.
(Picture: Plumes of smoke rise over the oil depot tanks hit by joint Israel-US overnight in a station north west of the Iranian capital, Tehran, the 8th of March 2026. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.7 | Hello, you're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Rahul Tandon. |
| 0:13.6 | Today, as the world faces yet another energy crisis, we're asking what can we learn from previous ones. |
| 0:20.1 | And we'll hear from the former head of one of |
| 0:22.3 | the world's biggest oil companies on the challenges that BP faced when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. |
| 0:29.2 | People were very concerned about exactly where supplies are going to come from, how much would |
| 0:34.7 | have to come out of stock, and how do you manage that to make sure that |
| 0:38.3 | you could keep things going? And as many of us are now facing rising prices at the pumps, |
| 0:43.7 | we'll look at how reliant we've become on oil and how quickly we could move away from it. |
| 0:48.7 | Well, this transition that you're talking about takes a lot of time. This is not something that you can do quickly. |
| 0:56.0 | We're not talking about five years. That's all coming up in Business Daily and the BBC. Sounds there from the current conflict in the Middle East, |
| 1:18.4 | which has led to a spike in global energy prices. |
| 1:22.2 | It's not the first time that this has happened. |
| 1:25.4 | A critical oil shortage sweeps across Europe. |
| 1:28.1 | Cues like this are common in Paris as supplies of gasoline dwindled. |
| 1:32.1 | Service stations, still in operation, get a big play from famished motor. |
| 1:35.7 | From the Suez Crisis in 1956, |
| 1:38.5 | the United States, Britain and the EU clamped down on importing Russia's oil and gas. |
| 1:45.3 | To the start of the war in Ukraine, the global economy has faced shocks because of surging energy prices during times of conflict. |
| 1:54.0 | Much of this has to do with oil and our dependence on it. |
| 1:57.9 | Let's give you some figures on that. |
| 1:59.9 | Oil currently remains the leading source of |
... |
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