On Digi24, Eugenia Gusilov provided insights regarding the price increase of Brent crude. While at the beginning of September 2024 the price was 70 dollars per barrel, at the beginning of October 2024, a barrel of Brent appreciated by 10 dollars, reaching the threshold of 80 dollars per barrel on Monday, October 7. The reasons behind this price hike on the international market are exclusively related to the dynamics between Iran and Israel and the fear of an escalation of this conflict.

On the production side, even if Iran's oil infrastructure were to be hit, Saudi Arabia currently has the full capacity to fully compensate for the loss of Iranian oil from the world market. Iran accounts for a maximum of 4 percent of global production, around 3 million barrels per day, while Saudi Arabia has a production capacity of 13 million barrels per day, of which only 9 million barrels per day are currently utilized. Therefore, Saudi Arabia alone can entirely substitute Iranian oil if it were to be taken off the market, as it has an unused spare production capacity margin of 4 million barrels per day.

The discussion also covered the differences in the cost structure for the main oil producers, namely Russia, the USA, and Saudi Arabia, and thus the different threshold at which a barrel of oil becomes profitable for each of these three major producers.