When Wars Cost More Than Lives: The Price of Oil, the Chaos at Dubai, and the Bill That Is Coming for All of Us

In the five days since Operation Epic Fury began, Brent crude has surged 36% this year, more than 21,000 flights have been cancelled, hundreds of thousands of passengers are stranded across the globe, and the world’s most important oil chokepoint has effectively closed. The war in the Middle East has a price tag — and it is being totted up in real time on every trading screen in London, Frankfurt and Istanbul.

Markets do not wait for ceasefire announcements. The moment Operation Epic Fury began on the night of Saturday 28 February 2026, the calculations started. By Sunday night, when oil trading reopened, Brent crude had surged past $80 a barrel — up 9 per cent in a single session, the largest single-day gain since March 2022. By Wednesday 4 March, it had extended those gains to $82.76 a barrel. Over the course of 2026 to date, Brent is up 36 per cent. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are now modelling scenarios in which it breaches $100 per barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC on Monday: ‘If it went on for a long time, that would be different.’ He was, by Wall Street standards, being cautious.

The numbers from CNBC-e London’s Berfu Guven, reporting live from the City, capture the immediate market picture with precision: the euro under pressure from energy costs, Deutsche Bank estimating that every 10 per cent combined rise in Brent and European gas prices weakens the euro by around 0.8 per cent, sterling similarly exposed. If Brent reaches $100, euro/dollar parity could retreat to approximately 1.13. These are not abstract figures. They translate directly into the cost of heating a home in Manchester, filling a car in Milton Keynes, or running a restaurant in Hackney.

The Strait That Moves the World

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway — at its tightest point, just 21 miles wide — connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the broader ocean. Through it passes, on average, between 13 and 20 million barrels of crude oil per day, depending on the source: roughly 20 per cent of global daily oil demand. It is also the transit route for approximately 20 per cent of the world’s liquefied natural gas supply, including the bulk of Qatar’s LNG exports, which serve European homes.

Iran has threatened to close the Strait in every major confrontation with the West since the 1980s. It has never fully done so — the military and economic consequences for Iran itself would be severe. But full closure is not the only scenario that matters. As the past week has demonstrated, the mere threat of attack is sufficient to achieve the same practical effect: tanker operators, shipping companies, and their insurers have simply stopped sending vessels through the waterway. Insurance premiums for vessels attempting the transit have hit six-year highs, making passage economically unviable for most commercial operators. The Strait is not closed in the legal sense. It is closed in the practical sense, and that is what matters to the oil price.

“Nothing seems to be going through at the moment. Tankers are definitely spooked.”

Rystad Energy’s head of geopolitical analysis Jorge Leon described ‘an effective halt of traffic’ through the Strait from the first days of the conflict. Matt Smith of Kpler was blunter: ‘Nothing seems to be going through at the moment. Tankers are definitely spooked.’ Four vessels have been hit in Gulf waters since the conflict began. The IRGC’s Revolutionary Guard commander stated, in terms that left no room for ambiguity, that the Strait was closed and that any vessel attempting passage would be set on fire. Against that backdrop, no insurance underwriter in Lloyd’s of London is writing cover for routine commercial transit.

The consequences ripple outward immediately. Iran exports roughly 1.6 million barrels per day, almost entirely to China under existing sanctions workarounds. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait — all major exporters whose supplies transit the Strait — face logistical paralysis. Qatar’s LNG, which has become a critical European energy supply since the Russian gas cutoff of 2022, cannot reach European terminals. OPEC+ announced an additional production increase of 220,000 barrels per day on Sunday — more than analysts expected, an attempt to ‘mute some upside pressure’ — but the gesture was, as one analyst noted, ‘only marginal in the face of heightened geopolitical risk.’ Russia, meanwhile, whose Urals crude supply route is unaffected, finds its market position suddenly and dramatically strengthened. India and China are already pivoting to Russian supply.

Dubai: When the World’s Busiest Airport Goes Dark

Dubai International Airport handled 95.2 million passengers in 2025. It is, by passenger volume, the busiest international aviation hub on the planet. On the morning of 28 February 2026, Iranian missiles and drones struck it. A concourse sustained damage. Four people were injured. Emergency teams were deployed. And then, for the first time in its history, the airport went dark.

The scale of the aviation disruption that followed is, even by the standards of the past week’s events, staggering. According to Flightradar24, more than 21,300 flights were cancelled at seven major airports — Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Tel Aviv, Beirut — in the first four days of the conflict. FlightAware reported more than 2,800 cancellations on Sunday alone. Emirates, the world’s largest international airline, suspended all flights indefinitely. Etihad extended cancellations. Qatar Airways halted all services. Lufthansa suspended Dubai, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Amman, Erbil, Dammam and Tehran. Air France, Singapore Airlines, Wizz Air, Oman Air: the list of airlines halting or rerouting services reads like a roll-call of global aviation.

For passengers, the experience has been disorienting and, for many, frightening. CNN verified footage of a passenger in a blood-spattered shirt being helped along a travelator at Dubai International after the first strike, a voice audible in the background saying ‘go home, don’t stay here.’ On the normal peak-season winter weekend, Dubai’s beaches, malls, and hotel brunches would have been full. Instead, as CNN reported, ‘highways were largely empty and the sky was clear of the constant stream of arriving and departing aircraft.’ The city was, briefly, unrecognisable.

“We can’t get home, we can’t go back to work, we can’t get the kids back to school.”

The human geography of the disruption is vast. Estimates suggest more than 58,000 Indonesian Ramadan pilgrims were stranded in Saudi Arabia. Approximately 30,000 German tourists were stuck on cruise ships, in hotels, or at closed airports. Tatiana Leclerc, a French tourist stuck in Thailand whose connecting flight routed through a Gulf hub, captured the absurdity of the situation: ‘We can’t get home, we can’t go back to work, we can’t get the kids back to school.’ An American chef stranded in Doha was more direct: ‘They say get out, but how do you expect us to get out when airspaces are closed?’ Aviation consultant Anita Mendiratta explained the structural problem: ‘Within the Middle East, an eight-hour flying distance covers two-thirds of the world’s population. When that corridor is blocked, it forces aviation to either move far north — into potentially other conflict airspace, such as Russia or Pakistan — or fly south. That puts huge pressure on the airlines.’

By Tuesday, limited flights were beginning to resume. Virgin Atlantic operated its first London Heathrow to Dubai service since the closures began. The UAE government confirmed 60 emergency corridor flights, then more than 80. Emirates resumed limited repatriation priority. But Emirates flights remained suspended until at least 11:59pm on 7 March, and Etihad until 6am on 6 March. The British Airways rebooking window for affected passengers runs until 29 March. The disruption, even as it eases, will take weeks to fully unwind.

The War Economy: Who Wins, Who Loses

Wars have always created economic winners alongside their many losers, and this one is no exception. The clearest immediate winners are oil companies and defence contractors. Shell shares advanced 2.2 per cent, BP gained 1.8 per cent, and TotalEnergies rose 3.6 per cent on the Monday morning that oil spiked. In the US, Exxon Mobil was up 4.1 per cent pre-market and Chevron 3.9 per cent. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, the defence manufacturers whose products are being used in active operations, traded strongly. Every $1 per barrel increase in oil adds approximately $40 million annually to Delta Air Lines’ fuel costs — but for the producers and traders of oil, that $1 is pure margin improvement.

Russia’s position deserves particular attention, because it is the most structurally consequential unintended consequence of the conflict. With Middle Eastern oil facing logistical disruption, India and China — the two largest importers of both Middle Eastern and Russian crude — face strong incentives to deepen reliance on Russian supply. Kpler’s analysis is explicit: ‘India faces the most acute near-term exposure and is likely to pivot towards Russian crude immediately… China, which has recently been moderating its intake of Russian crude, will likely abandon that restraint if the conflict extends beyond a few weeks.’ Moscow, which has been sanctioned and isolated since 2022, finds itself in the paradoxical position of benefiting from a war it had no role in starting.

For central banks, the picture is considerably less comfortable. The CNBC analysis published Wednesday is unambiguous: higher energy prices filter through to consumer and producer prices, and the central banks of Europe, the UK, and Asia now face a fresh inflationary shock at precisely the moment they were hoping to complete their rate-cutting cycles. Janet Yellen’s assessment was pointed: ‘The recent Iran situation puts the Fed even more on hold, more reluctant to cut rates than they were before this happened.’ US inflation stood at 2.4 per cent in January — already above the Fed’s 2 per cent target, and already pressured by Trump’s tariffs. Brent crude up 36 per cent this year is not a data point the Fed can simply ignore.

For Turkey, the economic consequences are acute and specific. Turkey imports approximately 90 per cent of its oil and gas needs. Every dollar increase in the oil price costs the Turkish current account. The lira, already under structural pressure, faces additional headwinds from both energy import costs and the general risk-off sentiment that Middle Eastern conflict generates in emerging market currencies. Turkish Airlines, which has cancelled flights to Bahrain and suspended services across the affected region, faces both revenue loss and fuel cost increases simultaneously. Turkish exporters who ship through Gulf ports face logistics disruption. The Turkish tourist sector, which depends heavily on Gulf visitors, faces a demand shock. The economic implications for Ankara are not marginal.

What Comes Next

The trajectory of oil prices from here depends almost entirely on the trajectory of the war. Bank of America’s worst-case scenario — Brent above $100 per barrel, European natural gas above 60 euros per megawatt hour — requires a prolonged disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. Rystad Energy’s Jorge Leon has said that ‘elevated global benchmark prices are expected to be sustained until the Strait is passable.’ Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects told CNBC that she expects prices to ‘likely hold at around the $80 level for some time’ but that complete Strait closure is unlikely given US and Israeli military superiority.

The OPEC+ production increase — 220,000 barrels per day extra from April, concentrated in Saudi Arabia and the UAE — is the cartel’s primary mechanism for moderating the price impact. Saudi Arabia has approximately 3.5 million barrels per day of spare capacity; the UAE has additional buffer. If the conflict de-escalates and the Strait reopens, that spare capacity can soften the price impact significantly. But OPEC+’s ability to compensate for a full Strait closure is limited. The arithmetic does not work: 15 million barrels per day through the Strait versus 3.5 million barrels per day of OPEC+ spare capacity is not a manageable substitution.

For the ordinary consumer in London, Istanbul, or anywhere else in a world that runs on oil, the calculation is simpler and more direct. JPMorgan estimates that retail petrol prices move approximately 2.5 cents for every $1 move in crude. From Friday’s pre-war close of $72.87 to Wednesday’s $82.76 is a $10 increase — implying roughly 25 cents per gallon at the pump. Multiply that across heating costs, food logistics, manufacturing inputs, airline tickets, and the full supply chain of a modern economy, and the war’s economic cost begins to take shape. Every day the Strait stays effectively closed, that cost compounds.

The people stranded in Dubai hotels waiting for their flights home are, in a sense, a human metaphor for the broader situation. The world that existed on the morning of Friday 28 February — imperfect, inflation-pressured, but navigable — has been interrupted. When normal service resumes, and at what price, is a question that markets, governments, and central banks are all asking simultaneously. The honest answer, as of 4 March 2026, is that nobody knows.

THE NUMBERS AT A GLANCE — 4 MARCH 2026

• Brent crude:  $82.76/barrel  Up 36% year-to-date; up 9% in single session 1 March
• WTI crude:  $75.48/barrel  Up 32% year-to-date
• Flights cancelled:  21,300+  At 7 major airports since 28 Feb — Flightradar24
• Hormuz daily flow:  13–20 million bbl/day  ~20% of global oil demand; effectively halted
• OPEC+ response:  +220,000 bbl/day from April  Above expected 137,000 bbl/day — Saudi/UAE led
• Deutsche Bank:  Brent+Gas +10% = EUR -0.8%  Brent $100 scenario: EUR/USD ~1.13
• Tanker insurance:  6-year highs  Commercial transit economically unviable
• Defense stocks:  Northrop, Lockheed up strongly  Oil majors: Shell +2.2%, BP +1.8%, Exxon +4.1%
• Stranded passengers:  Hundreds of thousands  Incl. 58,000 Indonesian pilgrims, 30,000 German tourists
• Emirates suspension:  Until 11:59pm 7 March  Etihad until 6am 6 March; Virgin Atlantic resumed 4 March