Since the beginning of the year, producers have decided to take advantage of the reversal of the balance of power between supply and demand to ration production and drive up prices. Oil, gas and electricity prices are soaring.

All the benchmarks are blurred, because they are faced with a difficult health situation. Energy prices are soaring. Chaos has settled into the world organization of producers. Supply chains that used to run like clocks are out of whack. In barely a year, it has known all the states: a secular crisis marked by a collapse of prices below 20 dollars per barrel, freezes and production stoppages, and even an unimaginable episode in economic theory: the 20 April 2020, the price of a barrel turned negative (−36.75 dollars), as oil companies and financiers paid their customers to have their cargo taken away from them. Since the beginning of the year, the price of oil, whether West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the reference on the American market, or Brent, the reference on the European market, has doubled to exceed 70 dollars on barrel. Even if the fluctuations are linked together following the announcements of the variant, the basic trend remains unchanged: the price of oil increases inexorably. Some banking analysts are predicting a top at $100 a barrel.

That of natural gas follows the same curves: it has also more than doubled since the beginning of the year. Because these increases are reflected throughout the energy chain to electricity. This outbreak, which even reaches end consumers, ends up being seen as a real threat by governments. Two days after the publication of the IPCC report, which he hailed as a formal notice to commit to the energy transition as quickly as possible, Joe Biden urged oil producers to increase their supply as quickly as possible, in order to reduce the price of gasoline at the pump. The request has so far remained unanswered.