Europe can absorb this Mideast energy hit - but not much more
Airfind news item
By Mike Dolan
Published on March 5, 2026.
European natural gas futures are still more than 50% up on Friday and at their highest levels in over a year after the Iran attacks, according to the Polymarket prediction market. Crude oil prices are still up over 10% from the previous week and at its highest levels since the February 2022 attacks. However, long-term inflation expectations have only barely moved since then, largely due to the assumption that the conflict and energy supply hiatus in the region will allow normalization of pricing through summer. Economists suggest that this is a time-limited supply outage, with futures curve for Brent crude oil seeing prices drop more than $10 per barrel again by year-end and back to pre-attack prices within a year. The ECB's main risk of economic damage was a significant undershooting of its 2% inflation target over the next year, but economists suggest that the relatively limited energy futures moves are consistent with removing the risk of overshooting of its target. The rise in geopolitical uncertainty could potentially damage Europe's GDP by 0.25 percentage points if it continues.
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