Geopolitics, OPEC, Russia and Energy Security

Energy is the one commodity that governments treat as a weapon, a shield and a budget all at once. Since the Arab oil embargo of October 1973, every major shock to the industry has had a political trigger: the Iranian revolution (1979), Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (1990), the Saudi–Russian price war of March 2020, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its gas cut-offs to Europe (2022), and in 2026 the war with Iran, which effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz from early March and pushed Brent above $115/bbl in March and to a reported high of $126.41/bbl on 30 April 2026, its highest since 2022. Producer governments manage supply through OPEC (founded 1960) and, since December 2016, the wider OPEC+ alliance with Russia, using spare capacity held mainly by Saudi Arabia as their lever; the alliance lost the United Arab Emirates, which left OPEC and OPEC+ on 1 May 2026 (reported). Consumer governments answer with strategic stocks (the IEA system, created 1974), sanctions (the G7 price cap on Russian oil from December 2022, the EU's lower "dynamic" cap of $44.10/bbl from February 2026, and US blocking sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil from 22 October 2025), new supply routes (above all US LNG) and, increasingly, industrial policy to escape China's dominance of clean-energy supply chains. This section explains how energy security works as a business variable: who holds the levers, how shocks move prices and company values, what sanctions actually do to flows and discounts, where the chokepoints are, how LNG changed gas security, and how an experienced analyst reads the next crisis. Prices are given with their benchmark and date; volumes in million barrels a day (mb/d), billion cubic metres (bcm) and million tonnes a year (Mtpa) of LNG.