NPR.

A couple of months ago, some oil analysts had a big flashing red warning sign.

They said if the Middle East War continued through spring, the price of oil

could potentially reach $200 a barrel. But right now, it's actually closer to $100 a barrel.

And even without getting out my calculator, I can tell you that $100 is way less than 200. So why is this happening?

The U.S.-Israel War in Iran is almost three months in. Why isn't the price of oil even higher?

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Darien Woods. Today on the show,

the oil price mystery.

We learn about how the world is adapting to the blocked strait of Hormuz.

And we ask how long until we might really hit stratospheric oil costs.

Carl Larry works for Inveris.

That's a company that provides information and advice to the energy industry.

The BPs, the shells, the exons, anything you see there, you're stopping to get gas.

They're proactively hedging or making sure that their risk is not too high when they pass along to the consumer. Carl charges oil companies a lot of money for his

insights. That is prime advice as the Iran war stretches on, but we got to hear him for free. Yes. And

Carl says the first big reason why the oil crisis now isn't as bad as

ones in the past is because of fracking. The difference now is that America is actually

exporting oil. The fracking revolution in the U.S. completely changed the global oil market

from the mid-2000s. So now the world isn't totally held hostage by the

Strait of Formuz. There's an interesting caveat here, which is that American producers have

actually been kind of slow to increase production since the war in the Middle East started.

Here in America, it's a tricky thing to start increasing your production because we don't

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