Good morning. We usually start your week with a list of stories to follow, but it has been a week. So this Friday, we have an end-of-week roundup of news for you as well. The various ways that the war in the Middle East is affecting our lives will be in focus today, along with NASA’s next important mission.

Defence: Canada is seeking an observer role in the Global Combat Air Programme to develop a next-generation fighter aircraft with relations beyond the U.S.

Banking: At RBC’s annual meeting, the lender said it plans to spend up to $1-billion to boost investments in Canadian companies

Technology: After years of restructuring, BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo says they are “back to being a growth company”

It’s usually a cop-out when pundits predict volatility in markets rather than gains or losses. But during a week in energy like this one, it’s the only rational call to make.

It started with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to annihilate Iran’s power system and civilian infrastructure – indeed, its entire civilization – if the Islamic Republic did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas tankers. Ninety minutes before that Tuesday deadline, Trump announced a ceasefire and the beginnings of a deal. Then, doubts about the truce and whether the strait will reopen overtook any sense of relief. Driven by the headlines, oil prices surged to near US$120 a barrel, skidded below US$100, then edged up again.

With no sign of a lasting resolution to the Middle East conflict, here’s my prediction: volatility.

I’m Jeff Jones, The Globe and Mail’s sustainable finance reporter. Since the war started, I’ve been thrust into covering energy, where the story changes on the regular.

Here are five things that show how that uncertainty is affecting our world.

In the market

Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which as much as 20 per cent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows, is virtually the only locale traders are focused on, and that’s what drove crude oil futures to four-year highs. Word of the ceasefire, as sketchy as it was, led Wednesday to the largest intraday drop in prices since the start of the pandemic. On Thursday, international benchmark Brent crude settled up 1 per cent at US$95.92 a barrel.

Up the supply chain

Despite the truce, very little has changed in physical markets that have suffered with the largest-ever loss of oil supply. Precious few ships have transited the strait, and significant production remains offline in the Gulf states after wells were shut-in or infrastructure was attacked by Iranian missiles and drones. Even if ships were immediately able to pass through freely again, it would be weeks before supplies in Asia – where much of that crude is sold – can be replenished. Countries there have been forced to institute a number of emergency measures to preserve fuel.

Beyond the pump

Canada is the fourth-largest oil producer in the world, but that doesn’t make us immune to the global markets where prices are set. At the gas pump, some Canadians have paid more than $2 per litre to fill their tanks, a hefty increase from before the war. That was the most immediate impact, but increasingly, the price of fuel is driving up prices across an economy in which affordability was already strained.

Rideshare drivers have found it almost impossible to make ends meet as fuel costs eat into their take-home pay. Airlines that had not dipped into the futures market to hedge jet fuel costs have tacked surcharges onto ticket prices, raised fares or cut back on routes. John Gradek, an aviation management lecturer at McGill University, predicted a wait of about seven weeks for any dips in the price of aviation fuel to translate into lower airfare.

Down the aisles

Price hikes are now hitting the supermarket. Maple Leaf Foods Inc., Tree of Life, Atlas Food and Beverage Inc. and CTS Food Brokers Inc. are among suppliers that have passed fuel-related cost increases on to retailers. In the case of Maple Leaf, a fuel-related surcharge adds up to $2,200 in additional costs per 20,000-kilogram tractor-trailer of food, my colleagues Mariya Postelnyak, Susan Krashinsky Robertson and Kate Helmore report. In a letter to retailers, the company said it can no longer absorb the cost increases brought about by the war.

The green economy

Wait, wasn’t climate change a problem? Yes it was, and is. Despite the Middle East conflict, major investors are still focused on attracting the tens of billions of dollars needed each year to invest in projects to meet Canada’s net-zero goals, and many of those will involve energy. As I reported this week, a who’s-who of Canadian sustainable finance professionals will develop a long-sought taxonomy to certify green and transitionary investments. After years of false starts, this effort looks to be on track to develop a guidebook that puts Canada among dozens of other jurisdictions competing for sustainable capital.