Inside the luxe conference venue at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on Monday, oil and gas industry elites wrung their collective hands about the global oil price shock set off by the Iran war. Outside, hundreds of colorfully dressed climate justice activists from across the Gulf South marched and demonstrated to call out those profiting from the war inside.
At S&P Global’s premier energy industry confab on Monday, United States energy secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright characterized fallout from the war, including ongoing disruptions of tanker shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, as a “short-term disruption to end a multi-decadal problem” and encouraged oil and gas leaders to ramp up domestic extraction.
“Prices went up to send signals to everyone that can produce more: ‘Please produce more,’” Wright said of the war’s impact on fossil fuel markets in his opening speech at CERAWeek. “Prices have not risen high enough yet to drive meaningful demand destruction.”
