Scheduled to open in Riyadh on Sunday, the energy conference went ahead as planned, just days after an attack on King Khalid International Airport — attributed to the Houthi movement — left 12 people dead and 309 others injured, according to figures from Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation. An announcement from the energy ministry confirmed that Riyadh is hosting the 25th World Petroleum Council Energy Congress, which opened on Sunday.
Scheduled to run through Thursday, Riyadh Energy Week is hosting the 17th International Energy Forum Ministerial as a parallel event within its programme. A videolink connection is carrying Italy's participation into the meeting, given the country's role as IEF cohost, while a delegate from Nigeria, one of the two host nations, is attending the gathering.
Spanning 68 member nations, the IEF draws together countries whose combined share of worldwide oil and gas production and consumption exceeds nine-tenths of the total. Among the nations holding membership are Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Russia.
The gathering is taking place against a backdrop of armed conflict between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, a confrontation that has strained energy supplies and prompted governments to reconsider how they secure their fuel needs.
Fossil fuels retained their hold on roughly 81 percent of worldwide energy consumption, even as renewable sources expanded their footprint. Petroleum leads all energy sources at 31.4 percent of the total, with coal accounting for roughly a quarter at 25.9 percent and natural gas contributing 23.5 percent. Nuclear power, traditional biomass, and a range of additional energy sources account for the portion of supply not covered elsewhere.
Production of commodities concentrated in a handful of growing areas means that disruption in any one of them can ripple through global markets well beyond those regions. Petroleum output on the largest scale flows from the Middle East, while natural gas extraction finds its highest volumes across North America. Both Russia and the nations of Central Asia rank among the world's notable producers of each commodity.
Three chokepoint passages carry the bulk of seaborne trade linking oil-producing regions to markets elsewhere in the world. Roughly 27 percent of oil shipped by sea worldwide, along with nearly a fifth of all liquefied natural gas exports, moved through the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage at the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula — in the period before the Iran war. Two waterways define the peninsula's western flank: the Bab al-Mandeb strait, threading between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
Heightened conflict in the broader Middle East region and an intensification of Yemen's civil war have together curtailed vessel movement through both the strait and the canal, redirecting a portion of energy shipments onto lengthier routes skirting the African continent. Matthews, who holds a director's post at Gibson Shipbrokers — the London-based firm operating across shipbroking and maritime advisory — told a broadcast outlet that the Strait of Hormuz occupies a category of its own among maritime chokepoints, given that no alternative sea lane exists to route traffic around it.
Nations dependent on Gulf supplies of oil, gas, and fertiliser face a combination of elevated costs, extended delivery timelines, and pressure to identify alternative sources — a situation shaped partly by the fact that pipeline infrastructure in the region remains limited, leaving cargo volumes heavily reliant on shipping routes. Of the nations tracked for petroleum import reliance, Eritrea and Madagascar stand out, with roughly nine-tenths of their oil supply drawn from producers across the Middle East. Ranking just below them, Pakistan, Japan, and Kenya each recorded figures of 77 or 78 percent.
Natural gas has proved more resistant to substitution than oil, with the bulk of supply arriving in liquefied form aboard tankers from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, routed through the Strait of Hormuz. Among the four markets drawing natural gas from that part of the world, South Korea's reliance runs highest at 31 percent, with India drawing 29 percent of its supply from there, Pakistan 27 percent, and Taiwan 26 percent.
Nations hold reserves of petroleum for moments when supply chains falter or contract, and those stockpiles have served as the primary buffer against disruption throughout the conflict. Energy industry figures cautioned that reserves held by Western nations had dwindled to the point where little remained available for release, while the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve had fallen to its lowest point in roughly four decades. At the Energy Intelligence Forum in London on Monday, Saudi Aramco chief Amin Nasser told delegates that commercial inventories globally had dropped to under six billion barrels, with the bulk of that volume not practically accessible for use.
Drawing on its role managing emergency petroleum stocks for member nations, the International Energy Agency authorised the disbursement of 400 million barrels of oil during March, a volume without precedent in the organisation's history. Plans are in place to put an additional 100 million barrels of crude and diesel onto the market, a move aimed at bringing down elevated diesel prices, though a portion of that volume may consist of oil from the March release that has not yet worked its way through the supply chain.
Tropical weather in the Gulf of Mexico and unrest targeting energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia have put upward pressure on crude prices, which have held above the $100-a-barrel threshold. Heading into this year's releases, China's stockpile stood at an estimated 1.4 billion barrels — a volume that exceeded the combined total of every other nation on the list. Japan's tally of 263 million barrels placed it third, with the United States having logged 413 million barrels to claim the second position.
