A tanker approaches a pier at a PT Pertamina facility at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta in February. Conflict in the Middle East and rising fuel prices are driving energy shocks across Asia. | Bloomberg The dizzying changes wrought by energy shocks are only ever seen in the rearview mirror. When the 1973 and 1979 oil crises first swept the world, analysts assumed the future would be business as usual. Crude demand from Western Europe would remain broadly stable throughout the 1980s, according to a declassified 1982 analysis for the Central Intelligence Agency. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development forecast in 1978 that its imports would rise to 35 million barrels by 1985. Things didn’t turn out that way. Faced with a sevenfold increase in the cost of crude, Europe began a radical shift. A vast fleet of nuclear reactors in France, home boilers powered by North Sea gas in England and a controversial pipeline connecting Germany to immense Siberian gas fields, shredded earlier forecasts.…
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