The toll of the Iran war on global energy supplies has been clear: Iran’s effective closure of the Straight of Hormuz has dramatically disrupted the transit of millions of barrels of oil a day.

Now, the U.S. has hit military targets on Kharg Island – said to be crucial to Iran’s economy – but so far has not hit key oil infrastructure.

“It would also be a massive escalation if they went after specifically the oil terminal, but this war is proving to be unpredictable,” said Sajjan Gohel, international security director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, in an interview with CTV News.

The island handles about 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports.

The former CEO of the Canada Energy Regulator said targeting the oil terminal could have a major impact.

“If the oil-producing infrastructure in Iran also is damaged, in the long term that means these price shocks could continue for quite a while after the conflict ends,” said Gitane De Silva in an interview with CTV News.

U.S. President Donald Trump has not targeted the energy infrastructure in Iran so far, but said “the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water,” in one of several Saturday social media posts where he vowed to “one way or another” open the Straight of Hormuz.

“Iran has very much decided on energy warfare,” said Gohel.

Iran’s deliberate disruption of the flow of oil through the Straight of Hormuz, which accounts for about 20 per cent of global oil supplies, has caused significant price shocks across global energy markets.

Richard Masson, former CEO of the Alberta Petroleum Commission, said, “I think the whole situation is just continuing to spiral downward.”

But Saturday, Trump made an apparent call on social media for a co-ordinated and collaborative effort to get ships moving though the passage again.

“The countries of the World that receive oil through the Hormuz Straight must take care of that passage, and we will help,” he wrote.

Gohel warned of the potential broadening of the conflict, saying, “This is spreading and it’s roping in more countries as we speak.”

Experts have warned that if the U.S. were to strike oil infrastructure in Iran it would destabilize the global energy market far beyond what we’ve already seen.

‘We don’t have to have reserves’: Carney

Meanwhile, the 32-member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA), of which Canada is a founding member, have agreed to release hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from emergency reserves, in an effort to provide short-term relief to global energy markets.

Industry experts have called the move an important step but warn it won’t fill the void.

“It’s the equivalent of about 3 million barrels a day, whereas there’s between 9 and 10 million barrels a day that aren’t able to transit through the Straight of Hormuz,” said De Silva.

“It could be helpful, but it won’t resolve the problem in the immediate term.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked Saturday why Canada doesn’t maintain a strategic reserve itself.

“The exporters of oil, like Norway, like Canada, we don’t have to have reserves because we’re providing oil to the market,” the prime minister told reporters.

De Silva says setting up a reserve would be costly and notes energy companies themselves keep their own reserves.

“They do have a stockpile that they keep in case of possibly a pipeline outage or other things. So certainly it’s not like if we stop pumping oil today, we’d run out tomorrow,” she said.

“I think there’s a question about right now in this moment, are public funds better spent on that or are public funds better spent on supporting the infrastructure needed to get those goods to market?”