B1 · Intermediate
13 min
foodgeopoliticseconomicscurrent eventshistory
El precio del petróleo y el precio de la comida
Oil Prices and the Price of Food
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So here is a sentence I did not expect to read yesterday: Slovenia, a small, pleasant, largely unremarkable EU country, became the first member state to introduce fuel rationing.
Because of a war in Iran.
Bueno, mira, Eslovenia no es tan aburrida, Fletcher.
Well, look, Slovenia isn't that boring, Fletcher.
Pero sí, la noticia es importante.
But yes, the news is important.
El problema es que los conductores de los países vecinos fueron a Eslovenia a comprar gasolina más barata, y las gasolineras eslovenas no tenían suficiente combustible.
The problem is that drivers from neighboring countries went to Slovenia to buy cheaper fuel, and Slovenian gas stations didn't have enough.
Right, so it became a regional fuel arbitrage situation.
Prices spiked across Europe after Trump's ultimatum to Iran, and Slovenia just happened to be sitting at a crossroads with cheaper petrol than its neighbors.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y cuando Trump anunció el ultimátum a Irán, el precio del petróleo subió mucho.
And when Trump announced the ultimatum to Iran, the price of oil went up a lot.
El barril de Brent llegó a más de cien dólares.
The Brent barrel reached more than a hundred dollars.
Ayer bajó un once por ciento porque Trump dijo que las conversaciones con Irán fueron buenas.
Yesterday it dropped eleven percent because Trump said the talks with Iran went well.
Pero el daño ya estaba hecho en Eslovenia.
But the damage was already done in Slovenia.
I mean, here's what gets me.
We're talking about this as an energy story.
But I want to talk about it as a food story.
Because oil prices and food prices are, historically, almost the same conversation.
La verdad es que sí.
That's true.
El petróleo está en todo el sistema de la comida.
Oil is in the entire food system.
Los tractores necesitan petróleo.
Tractors need oil.
Los camiones que transportan la comida necesitan petróleo.
The trucks that transport food need oil.
Los fertilizantes, muchos de ellos, se producen con gas natural.
Fertilizers, many of them, are produced with natural gas.
Cuando el petróleo sube, todo sube.
When oil goes up, everything goes up.
The extraordinary thing is how invisible this connection is to most people.
You go to a supermarket, you buy a tomato, and you have no idea you're essentially buying a small packet of fossil fuel that happens to be red and edible.
Bueno, ese tomate viajó muchos kilómetros.
Well, that tomato traveled a lot of kilometers.
En España, muchos tomates vienen de Almería, en el sur.
In Spain, many tomatoes come from Almería, in the south.
Y van en camión a toda Europa.
And they go by truck to all of Europe.
Francia, Alemania, Países Bajos.
France, Germany, the Netherlands.
Cuando el diésel es caro, el tomate es caro.
When diesel is expensive, the tomato is expensive.
I covered the 2008 food crisis.
I was in Cairo at the time, and I remember bread riots.
Actual bread riots.
And part of that story was oil at a hundred and forty dollars a barrel pushing fertilizer costs through the roof.
Sí, en 2008 el precio del trigo subió más de un ciento por ciento en un año.
Yes, in 2008 the price of wheat rose more than one hundred percent in a year.
No fue solo el petróleo.
It wasn't only oil.
También fue la sequía en Australia y la especulación financiera.
There was also the drought in Australia and financial speculation.
Pero el petróleo fue una parte importante del problema.
But oil was an important part of the problem.
Look, let's go back further.
The 1973 oil embargo.
OPEC cuts supply, prices quadruple.
And within eighteen months, you have a global food price shock.
The same mechanism, different decade.
A ver, en España en 1973 la situación era diferente porque todavía estaba Franco y la economía era muy cerrada.
Well, in Spain in 1973 the situation was different because Franco was still in power and the economy was very closed.
Pero en Europa occidental el impacto fue muy fuerte.
But in western Europe the impact was very strong.
La gente no podía comprar comida cara y tampoco podía usar el coche los domingos.
People couldn't afford expensive food and also couldn't use their car on Sundays.
Era una crisis total.
It was a total crisis.
No-drive Sundays in the Netherlands.
I've read about that.
People literally cycling on the motorways because the roads were empty.
There's something almost poetic about that, even if the cause was grim.
Mira, el problema hoy es similar pero más complicado.
Look, the problem today is similar but more complicated.
En 1973, la agricultura en Europa era más local.
In 1973, agriculture in Europe was more local.
Hoy todo es muy global.
Today everything is very global.
La comida viaja miles de kilómetros y necesita mucho petróleo en cada paso del proceso.
Food travels thousands of kilometers and needs a lot of oil at every step of the process.
Right, so we've actually made ourselves more vulnerable.
The globalization of food supply chains, which was supposed to make food cheaper and more reliable, has also made it more exposed to exactly this kind of geopolitical shock.
Es que sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Y los fertilizantes son un ejemplo muy bueno.
And fertilizers are a very good example.
Rusia y Bielorrusia producen mucho potasio, que es necesario para los fertilizantes.
Russia and Belarus produce a lot of potassium, which is needed for fertilizers.
Cuando llegaron las sanciones por la guerra en Ucrania, los agricultores europeos pagaron mucho más por sus fertilizantes.
When the sanctions came after the Ukraine war, European farmers paid much more for their fertilizers.
The thing is, I talked to a wheat farmer in Kansas a couple years back, and he told me he spent more on fertilizer in 2022 than he did in the previous three years combined.
His phrase was, he said: the war came to my field.
Esa frase es muy buena.
That phrase is very good.
Y es muy verdad.
And it's very true.
En España, muchos agricultores pequeños tuvieron que dejar de cultivar en 2022 porque los costos eran demasiado altos.
In Spain, many small farmers had to stop cultivating in 2022 because the costs were too high.
No era posible ganar dinero.
It wasn't possible to make money.
Fue una crisis silenciosa.
It was a silent crisis.
A silent crisis.
That's exactly the right phrase for it.
Because unlike bread riots in Cairo, a Spanish olive farmer going under doesn't make the front pages.
But the cumulative effect is enormous.
Bueno, en España el aceite de oliva fue un problema muy visible.
Well, in Spain olive oil was a very visible problem.
El precio subió muchísimo en los últimos años.
The price rose a lot in recent years.
En 2023 y 2024, muchas familias españolas cambiaron a otros aceites más baratos.
In 2023 and 2024, many Spanish families switched to other cheaper oils.
Para nosotros, eso fue un shock cultural, no solo económico.
For us, that was a cultural shock, not just an economic one.
I remember you telling me about that.
And I remember thinking, the day Octavio buys sunflower oil is the day I know the apocalypse is real.
Did you actually switch?
No, no, espera.
No, no, wait.
Jamás.
Never.
Pagué más, pero no cambié.
I paid more, but I didn't switch.
Hay cosas que no son negociables.
There are things that are not negotiable.
Pero mi madre sí cambió, y eso fue muy triste para mí.
But my mother did switch, and that was very sad for me.
Ella usó aceite de oliva toda su vida.
She used olive oil her whole life.
Here's what gets me about that story.
The olive oil price spike was partly drought, yes.
But it was also energy costs driving up production and distribution costs.
We keep coming back to the same thing.
La verdad es que sí.
That's true.
Y ahora el informe de la Organización Meteorológica Mundial dice que el calor del océano llegó a niveles récord en 2025.
And now the World Meteorological Organization report says that ocean heat reached record levels in 2025.
Eso significa más sequías, más problemas para la agricultura.
That means more droughts, more problems for agriculture.
La crisis del clima y la crisis del petróleo van juntas.
The climate crisis and the oil crisis go together.
So you've got a double pressure.
On one side, climate change is making growing food harder and more unpredictable.
On the other, fossil fuel dependence means every geopolitical tremor in a place like Iran hits your grocery bill.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y la solución que los gobiernos europeos hablan siempre es la misma: más energía renovable, más agricultura local, menos dependencia del petróleo.
And the solution that European governments always talk about is the same: more renewable energy, more local agriculture, less dependence on oil.
Pero los cambios son muy lentos y la guerra llegó muy rápido.
But the changes are very slow and the war came very fast.
I mean, Slovenia is a perfect illustration of that gap.
They're in the EU, they have all the green energy targets and farm-to-fork strategies, and yesterday a guy from Austria drove across the border to fill up his tank and emptied their gas stations.
A ver, eso pasa en las fronteras siempre.
Look, that always happens at borders.
Cuando vivo en Madrid, la gente de Portugal venía a comprar gasolina en España cuando el precio era diferente.
When I lived in Madrid, people from Portugal came to buy fuel in Spain when the price was different.
Es humano, ¿no?
It's human, right?
La gente busca el precio más bajo.
People look for the lowest price.
Sure, it's rational behavior.
But it creates these cascading local shortages that are, honestly, a preview of what food supply disruptions look like.
The shelves don't empty because of some grand catastrophe.
They empty because of a thousand small rational decisions.
Sí, eso pasó con el papel higiénico en 2020, ¿recuerdas?
Yes, that happened with toilet paper in 2020, remember?
No había escasez real.
There was no real shortage.
Pero la gente compró mucho porque pensó que iba a haber escasez, y entonces la escasez llegó.
But people bought a lot because they thought there would be a shortage, and then the shortage arrived.
Con la comida puede pasar lo mismo.
The same can happen with food.
The psychology of scarcity is genuinely fascinating to me.
And terrifying.
I reported from places where food insecurity was chronic, not a panic-buy panic.
And the difference between a country that manages it and one that doesn't is often just thin margin of institutional trust.
Bueno, en España durante la Guerra Civil, la comida fue un arma política.
Well, in Spain during the Civil War, food was a political weapon.
El gobierno controlaba la distribución y algunas regiones comieron mucho mejor que otras.
The government controlled distribution and some regions ate much better than others.
Eso es una lección que los españoles mayores todavía recuerdan.
That is a lesson that older Spaniards still remember.
Right, and food as political weapon, that thread runs through everything.
The Soviet famines.
The siege of Leningrad.
The Yemen blockade.
And now, more subtly, a war in Iran making it more expensive for a grandmother in Ljubljana to buy pasta.
Es que la pasta viene de Italia, pero el trigo para la pasta puede venir de muchos países.
The thing is, pasta comes from Italy, but the wheat for pasta can come from many countries.
Antes de la guerra en Ucrania, Ucrania era uno de los mayores productores de trigo del mundo.
Before the war in Ukraine, Ukraine was one of the largest wheat producers in the world.
Cuando la guerra empezó, el precio del pan subió en África, en el Medio Oriente, en muchos lugares.
When the war started, the price of bread went up in Africa, in the Middle East, in many places.
The extraordinary thing is the distance of that connection.
A missile hits a grain storage facility in Odesa and six months later a family in Tunis can't afford bread.
The chain is that long and that fragile.
Y ahora con la guerra en Irán, el problema es diferente pero similar.
And now with the Iran war, the problem is different but similar.
Irán no es el mayor productor de comida del mundo.
Iran is not the world's largest food producer.
Pero controla el Estrecho de Ormuz, donde pasa mucho petróleo.
But it controls the Strait of Hormuz, where a lot of oil passes through.
Y ese petróleo mueve los barcos que transportan la comida de todo el mundo.
And that oil powers the ships that transport food around the whole world.
The Strait of Hormuz.
Twenty percent of the world's oil passes through a channel that's, what, thirty-three kilometers wide at its narrowest point.
I have been on a boat through there.
It is not a place that inspires confidence.
Mira, cuando los precios del petróleo bajan un once por ciento porque Trump dice que las conversaciones con Irán fueron bien, eso también es la comida.
Look, when oil prices fall eleven percent because Trump says the conversations with Iran went well, that is also the food.
Es decir, los mercados de comida y los mercados de petróleo reaccionaron al mismo mensaje el mismo día.
That is to say, food markets and oil markets reacted to the same message on the same day.
Which brings me back to where we started, because here's the thing: Slovenia rationing fuel is a strange little headline.
But it is a window into something much bigger.
The entire architecture of modern food is one geopolitical crisis away from becoming visible.
La verdad es que la gente no piensa en esto cuando compra en el supermercado.
The truth is that people don't think about this when they shop at the supermarket.
Pero todos los precios en ese supermercado tienen una historia geopolítica detrás.
But every price in that supermarket has a geopolitical story behind it.
La aceituna, el pan, la pasta, la carne.
The olive, the bread, the pasta, the meat.
Todo.
All of it.
So next time you pick up a bottle of olive oil and you wince at the price, remember: you're not just buying olive oil.
You're buying the accumulated cost of droughts, tanker routes, fertilizer contracts, and whatever Trump said on Truth Social that morning.
Bueno, sí.
Well, yes.
Y por eso es importante entender estas conexiones.
And that is why it is important to understand these connections.
La comida no es solo cultura y placer, aunque también es eso.
Food is not only culture and pleasure, although it is also that.
La comida es política, es geografía, es historia.
Food is politics, geography, history.
Y hoy, con la guerra en Irán, es también periodismo de última hora.
And today, with the war in Iran, it is also breaking news.