The truce announced, and already in doubt, removed some of the panic, not the risk. As long as negotiations remain open and the Strait of Hormuz remains under pressure, the global energy system will not return to normal. It is there that a regional crisis stops being regional and becomes price, inflation, industry, bills. Reuters reports that the talks between the United States and Iran still have to deal with the real issue, that is navigation in the strait, while the market continues to behave as if the danger was still there.
Approximately one fifth of the world’s oil passes through Hormuz, along with a decisive share of refined products and LNG. The fragile truce curbed the alarm, but did not put trade, insurance and supplies back on track. Reuters writes that many operators are still waiting for clarity on the transition conditions and that full normalization could take weeks, perhaps months. Barclays warns that, if flows do not restart quickly, the risk of further increases in Brent remains open.
The distance between finance and the physical market is clear: the oil traded on the markets reacted to the words of the truce, what the refineries really need reacted to the stopped ships and the missing barrels. Reuters reports that European and African crude oils have risen to record premiums even as part of the market took a breather. Paper oil has let go a little, what refineries really need has continued to cost more. This is where the crisis is measured.
On gas the tension is even more exposed. According to the IEA, just over 112 billion cubic meters of LNG passed through Hormuz in 2025, nearly 20% of global trade. Asia absorbs almost 90% of those volumes, but Europe also receives a share of around 7% of its LNG flows from there. A loss of this magnitude cannot be replaced quickly, because the other plants are already working close to their limits. So even those who are less exposed still pay for the global rush for available loads.
For Europe the problem is more about price than scarcity
In Brussels no one is talking about an immediate emergency. The European Commission says that there is no direct risk to the security of gas supplies today, but it is already taking into account long-lasting effects. The blow will come from prices. And when energy goes sideways, in Europe the script is known: storage to be filled while prices rise, industry under pressure, governments in search of resources and families who understand everything when the bill arrives.
The crisis around Hormuz has brought home a truth that in Europe continues to be treated as a temporary annoyance. The countries most exposed to the gas take the hit sooner and worse. In March, the electricity markets most dependent on methane, including Italy, recorded much heavier increases than other countries on the continent, while France, Spain and Portugal, supported by a stronger mix of nuclear and renewables, held up better. Fragility has a precise geography. It affects where the addiction remains within the system.
It can also be seen on a political level. Five EU countries, including Italy, have already asked the Commission for a European tax on extra energy profits to contain the impact of price increases on families and businesses. This is enough to understand the climate: in Brussels the issue is no longer just the continuity of supplies, but the social stability of prices.
For Italy, vulnerability passes through gas and can reach up to home electricity
Italy, from this point of view, has a very recognizable profile. Eurostat places it among the European countries with the greatest energy dependence on foreign countries: in 2024 the Italian figure is above 93%, while gas represents 37% of Italian energy imports, the highest share in the EU. Terna, for its part, points out that almost all the gas consumed in the country comes from third countries. This means that Italy does not need to be the direct target of the crisis to feel its effects: it just needs to continue buying energy in a more nervous global market.
On the supply side, the picture is more nuanced than it seems. ARERA reports that in 2024 Italian LNG imports fell to 14.7 billion cubic meters, just under a quarter of the total, and that 95% of these volumes came from Qatar, Algeria and the United States. Furthermore, the Gulf area still accounts for approximately 10% of the gas and 12% of the oil imported from Italy. It is not an absolute dependence, and in fact Italy is not the worst European country in terms of immediate quantities. But it is enough to transform a crisis in Hormuz into very real pressure on supply prices.
As regards the electricity market, Acquirente Unico writes in black and white that in 2024 the correlation between gas price and PUN remained evident, and also explains the reason: in the Italian market, in many hours, the marginal plant is still the gas turbine. This means that a gas increase does not stop at the methane bill. It also risks having an impact on electricity, because gas often continues to determine the final price of energy. It is the mechanism that makes Italy particularly sensitive to international energy shocks even when blackouts are not on the horizon.
In Rome the Hormuz crisis is described as a matter of diplomacy and maritime security. The problem is that even before the ships there is a more brutal fact: Italy arrives at all this still hanging on gas, with an electricity system that passes on the increases in the bill more quickly than other large European countries. Trips to the Gulf and calls for freedom of navigation serve to buy time, not to erase fragility. And when a government cuts excise duties for a few days, it attributes part of the problem to ETS and speculation, but in the meantime it postpones the exit from coal and moves to look for more gas abroad: rather than governing the transition, Palazzo Chigi seems to manage the shortness of breath of dependence.
Palazzo Chigi waves the flag of energy security, but the concrete response continues to resemble damage management, not a correction of the model. At the end of March the majority supported the postponement of the definitive closure of coal power plants to 2038, thirteen years beyond the original deadline of 2025 and in contradiction with the G7 commitment to exit coal by 2035. Ergo: as soon as the wind blows, this government returns to focusing on fossils.
Then there is another detail that takes the poetry away from the patriotic narrative. In the first days of April Meloni flew to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates to reassure partners, look for energy and secure Italian interests, while the government was already trying to extract more gas from Algeria and Azerbaijan and was waiting for new shipments of LNG from the United States. In that same context, the Gulf is still worth 10% of the gas and 12% of the oil imported from Italy. Calling it an autonomy strategy requires a certain imagination. It seems much more like the attempt of a country that changes supplier every time the previous one becomes dangerous and then calls all this security.
The Prime Minister speaks of diplomatic firmness, taxes on extra profits and calls for speculation. However, beneath the surface, there remains an electricity system that is too exposed to gas, growth already limited by the high cost of energy, public accounts that leave little margin and a transition that, as soon as the wind picks up, is postponed once again. Rather than managing the crisis, the government gives the impression of chasing it. And every time it chases it, it makes a country that still lives on energy short of breath.
Every additional megawatt is one less piece of blackmail
The less visible side of this crisis concerns the future. The fragile truce says something that Europe has already known since the Russian gas crisis: any concentrated energy dependence, even when it seems manageable, becomes a form of political vulnerability. The EU produced 43% of its own energy in 2024 and bought the rest outside; in the same year, renewables represented 48% of European energy production and 48% of electricity production. These numbers are still far from full autonomy, but they show the only direction that truly reduces the power of geopolitical bottlenecks.
For Italy the reasoning is even drier. Terna recalls that in 2024 the installed renewable capacity has risen to 74.5 GW, equal to 54% of the total gross efficient power, and that the network development plan aims to integrate at least 65 additional GW by 2030. It is not ideological furniture, but security infrastructure: every additional renewable gigawatt and every piece of strengthened network takes away the weight of the gas that enters from outside and the prices that form elsewhere.
The truce has lowered the noise of the weapons, but the price of energy dependence continues to make its own noise. For Europe it means preparing for a still unstable gas market. For Italy it means remembering that foreign gas enters the boiler and then often also decides the price of electricity. Hormuz is far away on paper. On the bill, much less.
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