Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
They're horrible. They're too expensive. They're high. Sometimes you have to choose between gas and other things that you really need.
Chapter 2: How is the war in Iran affecting global oil supplies?
They're high. It's really disappointing.
Just got to suck it up, I guess.
You're hearing from just some of the frustrated drivers in Los Angeles, watching prices at the pump rise as the war in Iran continues. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, March 20th, 2026.
According to a statement issued by the International Energy Agency, or IEA, the war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Amy Jaffe is the Director of Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability and a research professor at New York University.
She's a leading expert on the topics of global energy policy and geopolitical risk and has written several books on energy and sustainability. Thank you so much for joining me, Amy.
Dana, thanks for having me.
To begin, how are limited oil supplies affecting U.S. consumers?
So for every $10 increase in the price of oil, we can expect about a 25 cent increase at the pump. And for many Americans, an extra 25 cents for gasoline is really burdensome.
We're going to dig into this more in a moment. But if we look beyond the vast quantities of oil available in the Middle East to how those barrels of oil are moved, how important is the Strait of Hormuz? Tell me about that waterway.
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Chapter 3: What role does the Strait of Hormuz play in oil transportation?
And that no doubt raises fears for people living there. So how does all this affect Americans here at home?
Well, Gulf cities rely on that water to run industry cities and refineries. So if water supplies are disrupted, we could see energy prices jump further, supply chains disrupted, and possibly higher costs for consumers. And this is often known as the energy-water nexus, and it's more intertwined than we think. So let me give you an example of how it can affect us here.
Energy powers water in the Gulf because there's almost no fresh water, right? Water is also required to produce energy and petrochemicals. Now that same energy helps produce fertilizer for the world, for example. Places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia are big exporters of fertilizer. Well, farmers here in the U.S.
are already feeling the pinch as spring planting season approaches because they need to plan out their crops. So some might have to do less corn. which takes more fertilizer and more soybeans, for example. But that could all translate into higher prices for consumers later on because of supply and demand.
We know that Iran said a U.S. airstrike had damaged one of its plants. Bahrain also accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants. How big is this threat?
Desalination plants, or desal plants, remove salt from seawater to make it drinkable. And if they're severely damaged in this conflict, we could feel the effects here over time. To learn more about this, I want to introduce Shafiq Islam. He's the founding director of the Water Diplomacy Program at Tufts University in Boston and a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Thank you so much for joining us, Shafiq, to talk about this issue. Gulf cities and countries predominantly rely on what's called desalination plans to get drinking water. So first off, can you just start by explaining how they work in simple terms and then what makes them so crucial to the region?
Think about Kuwait, about 90% of water is desalinated. In Oman, about 80%. So most of the water is coming from diesel. So what is diesel? Diesel is essentially, is a very complicated process. You not only need water, you also need power to run goods. So when that becomes a lifetime of a system, it is very different than oil. So oil is substitutable. I can use wind, I can use nuclear power.
There are many ways to produce power, but water is not substitutable. There are only two resources which we need as human beings. One is air, another is water. Those are not easily substitutable. That makes water extremely difficult when the water infrastructure which supplies water to your system is vulnerable. Right now, what is happening with the war in Iran?
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