The Power Brief

The US-Iran war lasted 112 days, cost an estimated $80 billion, and closed the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint for 20% of global oil supply — for the duration. Gas prices fell below $4 when the deal was signed and Hormuz reopened, but Iran immediately announced maritime fees for transit. Every nation still importing oil through that strait is now paying a geopolitical tax to Iran on top of the oil price. The war made the case that the renewable buildout is not a climate story — it is a sovereignty story. The sun does not have a shipping lane. It cannot be sanctioned.

The synchronized decline of the United States and Russia oil & gas energy regime is being read as global disorder. It is not. For the stable middle power that has kept its own house in order and is decoupling from fossil fuels, the collapse of the two legacy patron states that control global oil flows is the most significant geopolitical opening since decolonization.

We used our Zorora deep research tool to take a deep dive into what might happen to capital markets and different asset classes in what looks like an increasingly likely structural global retreat from the US Dollar. The framework was built before Hormuz risk jumped from scenario planning into live pricing — and the data says something most Western commentary ignores: the US is one of the most exposed nodes in its own system, because dollar plumbing is so concentrated in US rails, US legal venues, US reserve demand, and US asset markets. The GCC holds roughly $2.5 trillion in USD-denominated assets. If the security bargain that made that recycling rational comes permanently unbundled, sovereign wealth reallocation stops being portfolio optimisation and becomes a regime-survival problem. An unexpected winner in that reallocation? Emerging market venture capital.

The most important sentence in the International Monetary Fund’s January 2026 World Economic Outlook is not the headline number. It is not the modest upgrade of global growth to 3.3%, nor is it the diplomatic warning about "trade tensions." It is a quiet, terrifying admission tucked inside the technical appendix on productivity:"Global growth... depends on the speed of adoption and improvements in AI readiness globally. A sharp reassessment of AI-driven productivity gains could trigger market corrections." Combine that with leaders like Canadian PM Carney and German Chancellor Merz openly declaring this week at Davos the end of the American Empire, and the new geopolitical chessboard is becoming clear - Russia, US and China as unilateral poles, The western OECD countries as a "middle power" coalition, and then the rest of the world in patchwork of regional and cross regional trading/defense coalitions. Our energy value chains are ultimately inputs in a grand AI arms race in which great powers are increasingly committed to unilateralism, regardless of political capital.

Several countries across Africa, most prominently South Africa, spent 2025 laying the regulatory and grid distribution frameworks for the future robust intraday and day-ahead electricity trade. And with Gigawatts of solar, wind and green hydro projects commissioned across the continent, the immediate market opportunity is in the low 10 digits in USD terms. In this final edition of The Power Brief in 2025, let's review the year end and look forward to the market opportunities that await Asoba in 2026.