The war in Iran foreshadowed a new global oil shock. It never happened — and this non-event speaks volumes about the power dynamics structuring today’s energy market, as France questions its own ability to break free from its dependencies.
An Oil Shock That Never Came
Yet the script was already written: a military escalation involving Iran, a major oil player in the Gulf, should have sent crude prices soaring and revived the specter of the 1970s. However, as Causeur notes, the expected shock was nowhere to be found. Far from panicking, the markets absorbed the news without the spectacular jolts observers feared.
This lack of a shock raises questions about the reality of Iran’s power to disrupt global hydrocarbon flows, but above all about the resilience — or hidden fragility — of a global energy system where:
- the strategic reserves of major importing powers were able to act as a buffer;
- alternative producers likely offset some of the tensions;
- financial markets, burned by previous crises, now anticipate geopolitical risks differently.
But this temporary respite must not mask a far more worrying structural reality for France: its chronic dependence on imported energy.
France Confronting Its Fossil and Mining Dependencies
This observation is documented by the state’s own statistical services. According to notre-environnement.gouv.fr, fossil fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — are “in limited quantities” on national territory, and France “must import [them]”. This also holds true, though less widely known, for nuclear fuel itself:
« L’énergie nucléaire [est] produite à partir de l’uranium, un minerai que l’on ne trouve pas dans notre pays. » — notre-environnement.gouv.fr
This paradox is worth highlighting: even the sector presented as the pillar of French energy sovereignty relies on an imported raw material. The difference lies in the nature of this dependence — uranium can be stockpiled, geographically diversified, and accounts for little of the final cost of electricity, unlike oil or gas, whose flows are subject in real time to geopolitical tensions.
On a global scale, pressure on energy resources continues to grow. Primary energy consumption has doubled in 40 years, rising from 83,550 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 1980 to 171,650 TWh in 2021, according to SDES figures cited by notre-environnement.gouv.fr. This structural trajectory places any nation importing its resources on a massive scale in a position of growing vulnerability to geopolitical shocks.
Nuclear Power: Structural Answer or Partial Solution?
Faced with this reality, there is a strong temptation on the French side to make nuclear power the alpha and omega of national energy sovereignty. This is precisely the limitation pointed out by the think tank The Shift Project, which closely followed the parliamentary debate surrounding the programmatic section of the Energy Sovereignty bill, withdrawn in mid-January 2024.
For the organization, basing the country’s energy sovereignty solely on nuclear electricity would be a methodological error:
« Notre pays doit fonder sa souveraineté énergétique sur tous les leviers pertinents de la transition bas-carbone, et non sur la seule électricité nucléaire. » — The Shift Project
The think tank identifies several blind spots in the current approach:
- Securing energy supply is not limited to electricity — non-electric energy must be integrated, as well as the “embedded” energy in imported goods and services, to avoid misjudgments about real reindustrialization capacities.
- The lifespan of energy infrastructure, often exceeding 60 years, requires a long-term vision that current legislation struggles to incorporate.
- The sterile opposition between nuclear and renewable energy must end in favor of a systemic approach combining sobriety, efficiency, and a robust decarbonized mix.
This approach does not challenge the relevance of nuclear power as a pillar of French energy independence — it simply points out that sovereignty is built on controlling all energy flows, not on a single sector elevated to a totem.
The German Counter-Example: An Accepted Dependence on Imports
The German case offers, by contrast, an illustration of precisely what France is trying to avoid. Since phasing out nuclear power, Berlin has chosen a mix heavily reliant on hydrocarbon imports and European electricity interconnections. This strategy, which long seemed viable in a context of cheap and abundant Russian gas, revealed its fragility as soon as traditional supplies were disrupted by geopolitical realities.
The structural comparison between the two national models — the French model, centered on largely decarbonized, domestic electricity production thanks to its nuclear fleet, and the German model, dependent on external flows — crystallizes the European debate on energy sovereignty. While France has a dispatchable production asset on its soil, Germany remains dependent on international decisions regarding gas and imported electricity.
Who Really Controls Global Hydrocarbon Flows?
Ultimately, the lack of an oil shock despite the war in Iran raises a broader question: that of the effective control of global hydrocarbon flows. Gulf producers, financial markets in London and New York, strategic reserves of major importing powers — the decision-making chain that determines the price and availability of oil largely eludes consuming nations, including France.
This reality, by contrast, strengthens the argument in favor of dispatchable domestic energy production. Nuclear power, despite its dependence on imported uranium, offers a level of control over electricity production that neither oil nor natural gas can provide, as their prices and availability depend directly on geopolitical power dynamics largely beyond Paris’s reach.
Sovereignty to Be Rebuilt, Not Decreed
The respite observed in oil prices must not become a pretext for inaction. On the contrary, it highlights the urgency for France to consolidate an energy model that does not rely on a single pillar, but on a deliberate combination of nuclear power, sobriety, and source diversification — otherwise, the next shock might not be absorbed as quietly as the one that has just passed.
