Nothing moved North Dakota’s economy over the last 10-years like oil development and even with the slow down of the past few years, energy still has a massive impact on our economy, our communities, and our government budgets. All that makes us heavily dependent energy price fluctuations and those are prices that move on large, geopolitical decisions.
That makes this story from Bloomberg particularly relevant; it seems the Trump administration is taking a harder-line position with regards to Iranian oil exports. If it’s harder to Iran to export oil, that will suppress supply which — if traditional economic principles hold — is likely to lead to higher prices in the near term. Beware the overly-simplistic analysis though; energy markets are complicated. The article from Bloomberg linked below provide more on the anticipated U.S. policy change.
