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Gulf countries lose Dh550 billion in energy revenue due to regional war
Crescent Petroleum CEO Majid Jafar warns the Middle East military conflict has become a whole-economy shock, costing the Gulf over $1 billion every day
- PUBLISHED: Tue 9 Jun 2026, 3:48 PM UPDATED: Tue 9 Jun 2026, 3:52 PM
Gulf countries have lost $150 billion (Dh550.5 billion) in revenues and trade due to the Middle East war, said Majid Jafar, Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Petroleum.
Speaking during a meeting with senior business, finance and government leaders in Washington, DC, he said damage to energy infrastructure in the Gulf region exceeds $60 billion.
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He added that the region is losing revenue and trade by more than $1 billion a day. "Energy is security," he added.
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Since the outbreak of the war involving the US, Israel and Iran, energy facilities have been targeted in the Gulf region, pushing oil prices to above $100 a barrel.
Jafar said the conflict has become a whole-economy shock with consequences reaching far beyond energy markets, as the disruption to flows through the Strait of Hormuz exposed how dependent the global economy has become on a handful of strategic chokepoints.
Around a fifth of the world's oil normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been blocked by Iran after the war. According to UN estimates, the Hormuz's closure affects one billion people in least developed and island nations around the world.
"This is not an energy story. It is a whole-economy story," Jafar said, noting that the same waterway carries up to a third of the world's traded fertiliser, 40 per cent of its helium, which is vital to the world's semiconductors, and much of the feedstock on which modern industry depends.
"It is not just oil prices in the markets that are affected; it is the food on your table, the planes in the sky, the chips in your phone," he added.
"Infrastructure is never just steel and concrete; it is human effort, accumulated expertise, and the livelihoods that millions depend on every day," Jafar said, paying tribute to the engineers, operators, and field teams across the region's energy sector who kept supplies flowing through unprecedented danger and risk, often at great personal sacrifice.
"The deliberate targeting of civilian energy infrastructure is considered a war crime under international law," he said, pointing to its consequences for lives and livelihoods not only in producing countries but across every economy that depends on that energy, including some of the poorest populations in Asia.
Jafar argued that years of optimising energy systems for efficiency had left them exposed, and that the coming era would be defined by resilience. "A supply source with a single way out is insecure, however large it is," he said. "True security now means infrastructure, connectivity, redundancy, and real alternatives for when the unexpected comes."
Resilience itself, he said, is becoming investable, pointing to growing opportunities for sovereign wealth funds, development finance institutions, and long-term institutional capital to back new energy corridors, distributed storage, and cross-border connectivity. Across the Gulf, governments are already building overland routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz, spreading strategic storage across multiple locations, and investing in alternative export pipelines and interconnection to reduce dependence on a single chokepoint.
"The countries and companies that thrive in the next energy era will not be those that simply produce the most but those that build the most resilient systems around what they produce and turn their resources into lasting value for their own people," Jafar concluded.
