World Bank expects commodity prices to rise 23% this year as the Middle East war disrupts energy and shipping

The World Bank said on Wednesday that global commodity prices will rise 23% in 2026, Pakistan's Dawn reported. It cited higher energy prices, disruption to cargo shipping during the Middle East war, problems with grain shipments from the Black Sea, and strong demand for safe-haven assets.

The European Union (EU) is bearing much of that cost. Its monthly bill for imported petroleum is now about €10 billion higher than in 2025, and experts do not expect it to fall soon, Euronews reported. The shortage covers refined products as well as crude. A decade ago European countries closed refineries while Gulf states built new ones, OilPrice noted, and it said many of those Gulf refineries have since been damaged in the war, so their fuel output will not return quickly.

Producers outside the Gulf are gaining. Vista Energy, the Argentine shale company run by Miguel Galuccio, exported 70% of the crude it produced in the Vaca Muerta formation, Clarín reported. Its third-quarter operating profit rose 78% from a year earlier to $841 million, and Clarín named higher oil prices as a main driver.

The World Bank's 23% figure captures two separate forces. Part of it reflects the physical destruction of energy and shipping capacity. Part of it reflects a decline in the purchasing power of the dollar and euro, the currencies in which oil, grain and precious metals are priced. When prices rise together across largely unrelated goods, currency depreciation is doing some of that work, not scarcity alone.