Industry Advisory Council Meeting: Stabilizing Energy Markets in a Disrupted World

The International Energy Forum's Industry Advisory Council (IAC), convening in person on 29-30 June 2026 at the InterContinental Hotel in Bucharest, Romania, in conjunction with the IEF Executive Board Meeting serves as a pivotal platform for candid dialogue among senior executives from across the energy value chain to help prioritize the focus of the government led IEF energy dialogue.

The IAC is hosted in Romania, a key European Energy Hub bridging a rapid transition toward decarbonization, by replacing coal with gas, renewables, and nuclear. Romania also leverages the EU internal markets and Black Sea LNG for energy market security. The IAC's Bucharest meeting is timely and relevant against the backdrop of Europe's vulnerability to supply disruptions and its global leadership on multilateral non-discriminatory trade, climate change mitigation measures, push for clean industrial competitiveness, and green transition partnerships world-wide.

Building on the findings of the February 2026 IAC in Riyadh held in conjunction with the 16^th IEA-IEF-OPEC Symposium on Energy Outlooks chaired by HRH Prince Bin Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud, Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia, this Bucharest meeting will prioritize collective strategies to mitigate the Hormuz shock's cascading effects, foster stable markets, and ensure equitable transitions that prioritize energy security without unduly compromising affordability or sustainability while recognizing regional complementarities and policy trade-offs.

In the wake of Hormuz's closure, IAC deliberations will review investment, trade, and technology choices for global energy security, connectivity, and resilience to stabilize markets in a disrupted world. Convening under the Chatham House Rule, the meetings will be structured in four key sessions to discuss impacts and short-term crises response and reinforce global market functioning and stability through options to stimulate investment, diversify infrastructure, improve fiscal predictability and regulatory clarity and cohesion.

Session structure

• Opening by IEF Secretary General: Host Country Keynote by Ministry of Energy of Romania
• Session 1: Stabilizing Post-Hormuz Markets: Impacts and Responses to Meet Energy Demand in a New High-Risk Environment
• Session 2: Energy Security, Connectivity, and Resilience: Improve Global Market Functioning or Find Energy Solutions Closer to Home?
• Session 3: Access to Electrons, Molecules, and Minerals: Trade-Offs to Keep Shared Goals within Reach
• Session 4: Fuel Security, Decarbonization, and Affordability: Policy and Sustainable Financing Impact on Energy Investment and Trade
• Closing Plenary: Meeting the Moment in a Disrupted World: IAC Recommendations to IEF17 Ministerial on Dialogue and Data

Held ahead of the IEF17 Ministerial hosted by Saudi Arabia on 11 October in Riyadh, the IAC will take stock and integrate industry insights to shape a forward-looking Ministerial agenda, generating actionable recommendations to navigate market fragmentation, derisk investments, and deliver reliable, clean energy for all stakeholders in a post-Hormuz world (please see the draft agenda including session introductions and IEF scene setter).

Setting the Scene

The global energy landscape has been profoundly disrupted by the unprecedented and sustained closure of the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a severe supply shock that has sent oil prices soaring, constrained crude oil, products, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows, exposing vulnerabilities in hydrocarbon (especially jet fuel and other middle distillates) and further essential commodity markets such as fertilizer, aluminum, and helium. This crisis underscores the world’s economic reliance on interconnected markets and the degree to which elevated risk and uncertainty is now the norm. The importance of producer-consumer dialogue cannot be overstated. Inclusive, engagement and data sharing safeguard global energy security, market stability, and transitions to reach shared goals in an era of increased geopolitical adversity, market volatility, and more diverse energy and climate policies.

Beyond Hormuz, population growth, urbanization, industrialization, technology advancements and the compelling need to share energy prosperity more fairly, while reducing greenhouse gas and other harmful emissions, will continue to drive energy demand and innovation forward. These call for equally unprecedented energy investment, trade, and technology decisions in both emerging and developing economies. Having suffered three successive shocks, the global energy system will not return to yesterday's new normal. Though many lessons have been learned from earlier crises not all have been fully addressed. This supply shock challenges producers and consumers to recalibrate investment, trade, and technology choices relating to energy security, connectivity, and resilience and stabilize markets in a disrupted world.

Global industry leaders are confronted by the daunting challenge of safeguarding reliable energy access for billions while navigating skyrocketing trade and investment costs. In addition to escalating input prices, industry must deal with disrupted and lengthened shipping routes, as well as ever more distinct and diverse compliance requirements ranging from environmental and social governance to sustainable financing criteria and sanctions due to rising energy, climate, and security demands. Energy and climate policy post Hormuz are taking on added foreign policy and security considerations too. This includes a reinvigorated dash for home-sourced renewables and nuclear, rightly making the reinforcement of networks, and diversification of infrastructure, supply chains and sources (including bioenergy hydrogen and sustainable fuels and critical minerals) key priorities in advanced economies.

Developing economies are more severely affected, priced out of LNG and oil markets for the second time by the buying power of developed economies now that LNG and oil market abundance has turned to scarcity overnight. Reducing exposure to international energy and commodity markets by doubling down on developing local energy resources and resilience is the first risk management response in the global south as well. Increased investment in local oil, gas, renewables and critical minerals in the developing economies of Africa, and beyond, will benefit global energy security through the added diversity it offers. However, responses will also favor greater reliance on domestic coal and delay decarbonization in exactly those world regions that drive global energy demand growth.

With developing and advanced economies prioritizing opposing energy policy and technology pathways; a dash for cutting-edge clean technologies versus reliance on resource and affordable technology availability, the fall-out from the current crisis risks creating a division in global energy markets and a loss of technology neutrality. Without IEF dialogue deepening understanding, future energy policy settings will further erode global energy market efficiencies and policy predictability halting much needed energy trade, investment, and innovation to meet future energy demand.

To stabilize markets in a disrupted world, deeper and more inclusive dialogue engagement and data sharing is needed. Policy makers should acknowledge that energy security remains a shared responsibility in which the transparent and predictable functioning of global energy markets is central for cost effective crises responses, energy trade, investment and innovation to deploy at scale and speed.

Rather than an untimely and costly retreat to regional market solutions and technology preferences, producers and consumers should enhance dialogue on energy security sustainability and affordability, reducing unnecessary hurdles and reestablishing policy clarity. To overcome persistent cost of living and energy access/poverty crises, structural underinvestment in an aging resource base and public infrastructure due to public financing and regulatory constraints, industry and private sector financing should be empowered to follow through more decisively with energy investments, trade opportunities, infrastructure expansions and the innovative solutions that the world needs today.

Key Documents

• Draft Agenda