While the public selfishly celebrates the prospect of peace and record-high stocks, nobody is thinking about the hardworking energy conglomerates who priced in a sustained global conflict.
I was enjoying a perfectly reasonable mid-morning quail egg at the Reform Club when the news broke that Brent crude had plummeted eight percent, hovering precariously at $101 a barrel. The culprit? President Trump’s abrupt decision to pause "Project Freedom" and announce "great progress" on an Iran deal. Across the mahogany dining room, I watched the color drain from the faces of several dear friends in the energy sector.
The broader public, naturally, is behaving with its usual short-sighted euphoria. Global stocks are hitting record highs. The masses are riding high on the fumes of artificial intelligence and the prospect of a slightly less radioactive Middle East. But as I watched the market ticker flash green for tech and red for wartime crude, I could not help but feel a profound sense of sorrow for the institutions that truly built this global economy.
Consider the human toll on BP and Equinor. For months, these companies have dutifully collected billions in windfall profits driven by the absolute certainty of an escalating war with Iran. They made long-term capital expenditures based on those unearned margins. Equinor, in particular, has been working tirelessly to cash in on the expected bloodshed by pushing forward the development of the Rosebank oil field—a project environmentalists have rudely called a "terrible deal for the UK."
But how can we expect hardworking Norwegian energy executives to finalize a terrible deal when the geopolitical rug is pulled out from under them just as the ink is drying? It is a question of basic economic fairness. When a global superpower heavily implies it is going to destabilize a sovereign oil-producing nation, the market responds in good faith. To abruptly pivot to diplomacy is a profound betrayal of the shareholders who priced in a sustained, multi-year catastrophe.
It is frankly irresponsible for an administration to dangle a highly lucrative regional conflagration and then just snatch it away without consulting our quarterly earnings guidance.
I am told by my editor that I must also address the domestic labor market, which the perpetually aggrieved are once again using as an excuse to complain. According to the job-matching platform Adzuna, UK vacancies actually bounced back in March, rising 3.74 percent month-on-month to a very robust 752,711. Yes, overall vacancies are still 13.6 percent lower than they were in 2025, and yes, the market remains near a five-year low, but one must look at the trajectory. The jobs are there, provided you are willing to look.
Naturally, the youth remain unsatisfied. Openings for graduates have reportedly slumped by more than a third, prompting the usual chorus of whining from twenty-two-year-olds holding degrees in the humanities. I recently sat next to a young university leaver on the Eurostar who spent twenty minutes lamenting her inability to find entry-level marketing work.
I had to gently explain to her that if she truly wanted a job in this economy, she should have positioned herself as a senior maritime logistics consultant for wartime petroleum extraction. The fact that our universities are producing media studies majors instead of crisis-profiteering analysts is hardly Equinor’s fault.
We are living through a period of immense technological and geopolitical transition. The AI euphoria driving the rest of the market should be a comfort to these unemployed graduates, who will soon be replaced by language models anyway. But an algorithm cannot extract crude oil from the North Sea. Only brave companies like BP and Equinor can do that, and they require a stable, predictable climate of international violence to make the math work.
This government must stop listening to the hysterical demands of the British public, who selfishly clamor for affordable energy and a safe climate. Those are luxury goods, best enjoyed by those of us who have earned them. The real necessity is protecting the profit margins of our energy partners. One can only hope that this pause in Project Freedom is merely a temporary lapse in judgment, and that the administration will soon return to the serious business of enriching my lunch companions.