Everyone is watching the price of oil. The tickers, the headlines, the gas station signs clicking upward like a broken odometer. But there’s a quiet crisis unfolding — one that will hit your grocery bill.

The reason comes down to one overlooked dependency.

Paradigm’s Matt Badiali has been tracking natural resources through booms, busts and geopolitical shocks for decades.

When U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran started in late February, he didn’t just reach for an oil chart. He reached for a fertilizer chart. “The war in Iran is the most important thing in the world today,” he says. “It's the equivalent of an economic nuclear war.”

It starts with a molecule called urea.

Urea is the primary form of nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen is what allows modern agriculture to feed eight billion people — grain yields can increase 50 to 100% with sufficient nitrogen application.

“The limiting factor is what we use to make urea,” Matt says, “and that's natural gas.”

Your Rundown for Monday, March 16, 2026...

Collateral Damage, Measured in Metric Tons

Iran targeted Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex early in the conflict — the world’s largest urea production facility, capable of producing six million metric tons per year.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, produces roughly 17.2 million metric tons annually, and Iran itself produces around nine million.

“In total, those three states account for nearly half of the world’s annual urea production,” Matt notes. “And all three are offline right now.”

Prices are already responding. Urea is up 25–35% since the war began. “It will only get worse from here,” he adds.

Paradigm’s macro strategist Jim Rickards frames the energy picture underneath all of this: “About 20% of both the world’s oil and — what’s less reported — the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) moves by ship from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.” The strait which is effectively closed.

“Although Qatar supplies roughly 20% of global LNG, the country has now declared force majeure — unforeseen circumstances which prohibit fulfilling its gas contracts. With that supply off the market, and the U.S. unable to fill the gap alone, a global natural gas shortage is underway.

“Europe is particularly exposed,” Jim concludes.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine offers an instructive parallel. That natural gas crunch shut down 70% of European urea production and sent prices from $200 per metric ton in 2020 to $1,050 by April 2022.

European producers BASF and Yara fell 50% and 40% respectively as input costs outran what the market would bear.

Matt expects a similar breaking point this cycle: “Natural gas prices can reach the point where Yara can’t produce urea at a profit. That happened in 2022. I expect it to happen again in 2026.”

The opportunity, he argues, sits on the other side of the Atlantic. U.S. natural gas is up only 14% since late February — modest by comparison — giving American producers a meaningful cost advantage.

CF Industries (CF), for instance, surged 180% between August 2021 and early 2022 on exactly this dynamic, and Matt sees the setup repeating. “This trade has room to go higher,” he says, “as the real damage to urea prices hasn’t settled in yet.”

The price of oil might be making headlines while the price — and shortage — of fertilizer goes underreported.

Market Rundown for Monday, March 16, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.90% to 6,745.

Oil’s down almost 3% to $95.72 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.65% to $5,026.80 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s up 3.20% to $73,800.