What oil bosses are saying about the global energy crisis

, secretary-general of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (), reflected upon the dramatic geopolitical developments of the past few weeks as he addressed a ballroom in Houston this week. Thousands of oil executives have gathered in the world’s petroleum capital for CERAWeek, an energy conference organised annually by Global, a financial-information provider. He observed that the cartel has seen seven painful boom-and-bust cycles in oil since its founding in 1960, and worried that the Russian crisis may lead to another such “catastrophe”. His warning came on a monumental day in the history of energy. In retaliation for Vladimir Putin’s bloody and unprovoked attack on Ukraine, on March 8th America imposed a total ban on imports of Russian oil and Britain said it would phase one in over several months. President Joe Biden spoke of targeting the “main artery of Russia’s economy”. No country joined the embargo but on the same day the European Commission unveiled its new energy strategy, explicitly designed to slash the ’s reliance on Russian gas, which accounts for some 40% of its total consumption of the fossil fuel, by two-thirds this year and entirely “well before 2030”. Mr Putin parried with a decree on March 8th threatening to cut off commodity exports, which given Russia’s outsized role in everything from wheat to nickel could up-end world markets. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, soared above $130 a barrel. “When this is over, however it ends, the world oil industry will be different,” sums up , an energy wiseman and vice-chairman of Global.