The upheaval in Iraq threatens to exacerbate a three-year-old trend in which unusual geopolitical disruptions have become the new normal. A key impact—high oil prices when analysts say bulging new supplies should be sending them far lower. + That is because much of the geopolitical turmoil has been in or involved oil-producing countries. “We are witnessing the failure of the petro-state,” Citigroup’s head of commodity research, Edward Morse, told Quartz. + Up until 2011, an average of 500,000 barrels of oil a day was off the market at any one time for maintenance and other reasons, a volume that triggered no perceptible price volatility. Temporary aberrations like Hurricane Katrina took 1.5 million barrels off the market in 2005, and the 2003 attack on Iraq removed 2.3 million barrels a day. + But starting in […]