The rise in oil prices had several causes, not least the growing demand for energy, as for other commodities, in China. But interruptions, actual or feared, to the supply of oil played a big part too, interruptions that were exacerbated by a war in a country with large oil reserves – Iraq – that is in the neighbourhood of many other oil producers. The popular uprisings from 2011 onwards in the so-called “Arab spring” then added to the concerns about oil supply.
