At the IATA Congress 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, industry experts painted a concerning picture of the aviation sector’s challenges amid ongoing geopolitical tensions affecting global energy supplies. Richard Quest noted the numbers are quite frightening for the rest of this year and into next, adding that “if everything were to solve tomorrow we are still in the shit for a long time to come.”
Marie Owens Thomsen shared: it is natural to our brains somehow to think that oh we are going to have a crisis and then we go back to normal but that just never happens, explaining that we had the COVID crisis and of course some things have improved since then but many things are still lingering, notably the supply chain in aircraft manufacturing, and then these oil crisis related problems comes on top of that and it all just compounds and becomes this thousand layer cake we never get back.
The discussion turned to the technical impacts of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Eleanor Budds of S&P shared: essentially every day that the crisis goes on we are losing energy supply from the market, so crude production in the Middle East Gulf is shut in and refineries are closed down, not all of them and not all crude production but a substantial amount of crude and refining production of products is shut in, which means that the product is not being produced and it is not just not leaving the Gulf but it is not actually entering the market and it is not existing, adding that if you are not producing a barrel of oil it stays in the ground and the longer that goes on the more we lose with every single day being more loss from the market.
Richard Quest shared that of course there was production that was continuing filling up storage capacity to the point where there is no more storage and then eventually you have to start shutting down the wells or at least trying to mothball them, noting that it is not easy to do and once you have done it you risk losing the well.
Eleanor Budds of S&P shared: it takes time and it depends how long it is shut down, that it takes time to restart an oil well and it takes a couple of weeks at least to restart a refinery, and aside from the fact of the tanks filling up there is also the missile attacks and the damage to some of this infrastructure which also takes time to repair.
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