Foreign Affairs – From fertilisers to helium, the Third Gulf War is redrawing the map of who pays and who profits….We are accustomed to overlooking the degree to which the petroleum century, so frequently declared over, persists because hydrocarbons permeate, directly or otherwise, virtually every activity of our hyperindustrial societies. The ramifications surface in the most unexpected places. Consider food. Urea is the most widely used nitrogen-based fertiliser in agriculture. Its industrial production is an intensely energy-hungry process, wholly dependent on natural gas. This is where the Gulf asserts its centrality: the region produces approximately 40 percent of the world’s exported urea and 20 percent of its ammonia. Roughly 30 percent of global fertiliser exports and 20 percent of liquefied natural gas pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Even sulphur, a byproduct of oil refining and an essential input in fertiliser production, originates in the Gulf for nearly half of the world’s supply. A single month of closure, arriving on the eve of the planting season across the northern hemisphere, is sufficient to threaten a widespread shortfall in crops that depend heavily on nitrogen fertilisers: maize, wheat and rice — the grains that sustain the greater part of humanity. The impact would be felt across the world’s leading agricultural producers, from Brazil, India and South Africa to the major European growers, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Alternative suppliers — Russia, China and the United States among them — have little spare capacity and are structurally unable to compensate for a disruption of this magnitude. When natural gas becomes expensive, fertiliser prices follow.  Combined with the increased cost of the petroleum that powers farm machinery and cold-chain logistics, this burden ultimately falls upon the price of food, where energy accounts for roughly 50 percent of total cost. For the approximately one billion inhabitants of the wealthy world, the consequence is inflation. For much of the rest, it is hunger…India, with a population of 1.4 billion, is among the most acutely exposed. The region at greatest risk, however, remains sub-Saharan Africa, where even in ordinary circumstances many countries apply quantities of fertiliser wholly inadequate to meet nutritional needs. Paradoxically, the food security of the Gulf states themselves has been thrown into question. The Arab Gulf imports 90 percent of the food it consumes. Under normal conditions, 70 percent of the food supply reaching Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates passes through the Strait of Hormuz and arrives at the port of Jebel Ali in Abu Dhabi, one of the largest container terminals in the world. Since the outbreak of hostilities, part of this flow has been rerouted through the ports of Fujairah and Sohar, but both are significantly undersized for the volumes involved. Cargo is being redirected overland by truck, at greater cost, with longer lead times and diminished throughput. Iran, which has suspended its own exports since the conflict began, was, until recently, the principal supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables to the United Arab Emirates…”