Daniel Yergin Sees a 'Different World' Emerging After the Hormuz Crisis

Tracy Alloway (0:00)

Hey there, Odd Lots listeners. Joe and I are very excited to announce that we will be holding our first ever live show in London.

Joe Weisenthal (0:07)

That's right. We've done shows around the country, around the US, a fair amount. Always a lot of fun, made guests, record live episodes on stage, fans of the podcast get to meet other fans of the podcast and so forth. But this is our first time doing one of these outside the US, in London, as you said.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

So if you want to come hear some live recordings of Odd Lots episodes, if you want to hang out with me and Joe, if you want to hang out with other Odd Lots listeners, then you should definitely head over to bloomberg.com/oddlots where you can find all the info there and purchase tickets. It's going to be on the evening of May 7th at Wilton's Music Hall. Doors open at 6 and the recordings start at 7

Joe Weisenthal (0:45)

Yeah, there's still a few tickets available. So go look on the website, go look through our Twitters. The ticket link is also in the show notes to this episode. So go buy a ticket before they sell out.

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

Hope to see you there.

SPEAKER_3 (0:58)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (1:18)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (1:20)

Joe, in the Odd Lots tradition of spring of 2026, I'm going to start this podcast by saying that we are recording on April 17th at 1 p.m. 101 p.m., yes.

Joe Weisenthal (1:31)

And of course, the reason we have to specify dates is because this is yet another episode about commodities, oil, the war on Iran, and so forth. We've already had multiple mixed headlines today, but by and large, even with the mixed headlines, and again, who knows what's going to happen, but the market is moving past the acute phase of the war pretty clearly.

Tracy Alloway (1:52)

Possibly. Possibly.

Joe Weisenthal (1:54)

Right now, the market is moving past it.

Tracy Alloway (1:57)

The market is certainly interpreting this as moving past, yes. Absolutely. But again, things are very fluid. They can always change on a dime, which they have been. I'm convinced that one day in early 2026, we'll be able to record one of these energy-related episodes without saying exactly what time and date it is, but not yet. However, I think that no matter what happens with the status of the ceasefire, it seems very clear that what we've just experienced has been, I'm not even sure if you could say a wake-up call, but certainly an acute phenomenon that is being interpreted very differently by different players in the world.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

I would say three things that, regardless of how this ultimately resolves itself, are on my mind right now. They all relate to past episodes.

Of course, we did that episode with Bob Brackett. We talked about, okay, this is perhaps going to be a change in global and nad gas flows, maybe to the benefit of American producers of LNG, depending on how much that can be expanded. We did that episode with Alex Turnbull, who said, in East Asia, there's going to be an appetite for restarting more nuclear plants, and also we've seen this surge in EV buying there. So already a change in East Asia. And then I'm thinking back to our, and this was before the war, but our most recent conversation with Jeff Curry, who talked about this sort of, the story of global commodity hoarding, and this being like a sort of real post 2020 story in generally. And so wondering whether this will accelerate structural shifts towards more resource nationalism, et cetera.

Tracy Alloway (3:28)

Resource guarding. Yeah, I mean, whatever you can say about the current environment, one thing seems very certain, which is if you compare where we are now to say, I don't know, 2018 or 2019 before the pandemic, it just feels so different. If you think about that energy environment, it was all about, you know, cheap US shale. It was about lots of money flowing into green energy and ESG and aiding the energy transition.

Russian gas was going to power Europe for pretty much forever. And now we are just in a very different world. So the long term trajectory of the energy layout, let's put it that way, seems to have been altered, like no matter what happens immediately with Iran. And who do we call when we want to talk about longer term structural changes in global energy markets?