Iran’s parliament is reviewing a plan to ban ships linked to the U.S., Israel and other “hostile countries” from transiting the Strait of Hormuz until Tehran is compensated for war damage, according to Iranian state media.
The plan would impose fees of up to 7% of cargo value on commercial vessels that pass through the strait. It would also fine ships 20% of cargo if they violate Iran’s conditions.
Iran on Wednesday said it was finalizing an agreement on shipping routes with Oman, a U.S. ally that sits on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state media quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying that ships would enter through the strait’s northern corridor near the Iranian coast and exit through the southern corridor near the Omani coast.
I wonder how long it would take to rebuild society without oil, if we were to cut it from one day to the next.
I don’t think it would be long. Lots of solutions already exist but are infeasible only because oil is cheaper.
For energy yes, for materials and particularly fertilizer we’d be running in a problem. Moving to more sustainable diets and agricultural methods will take time. Too much time to not have famine for a while if cut off from one day to another.
Also for poorer countries with less infrastructure the impact (also for transportation) will be a lot more devastating.
Hydrogen can be used to make fertilizer and hydrogen can be produced via water and electricity.
I think fertilizer production is one of those things where we already have a solution that works on renewable energy, but it’s more expensive than the conventional methods.
It basically boils down (pun intended) to pressure cooking organic materials. This requires a lot of energy. In my opinion it would make sense to decentralize the production and make it smaller and closer to the also decentralized sources of renewable energy.
About 50% of the price of conventional fertilizer comes from the transportation anyway, so it would make a lot of sense to make it closer to where it’s needed. This is not economically feasible with the conventional production though.