Every day a new price hike. „Brent" crude has reached around 85 dollars - the highest level in the past four weeks - while American WTI oil crept close to 80 dollars. Numbers that sound distant to the average citizen, until you pull up at the pump. And then the Strait of Hormuz, thousands of kilometers away, suddenly becomes very close.

The cause of the spike is geopolitical, not market-driven. Renewed tensions between Washington and Tehran have once again fanned the fear that oil supply could be disrupted. The US has reinstated a blockade on exports of Iranian oil, and into the whole story stepped President Donald Trump with an announcement of a possible 20 percent tax on every ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz - the key corridor through which an enormous share of the world's oil flows.

That things aren't as clear as they look is confirmed by the analysts themselves. Commodity strategists at „ING", Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey, point out that „there is little detail on how this would work - or how serious Trump is" about the whole idea. In other words, the market is reacting not to fact, but to uncertainty. And uncertainty, when it comes to oil, is always paid for in advance - out of the consumer's pocket.

Then there's the Balkan reality that rarely gets mentioned in reports like these. When the price of oil jumps on world exchanges, it reaches our pumps with a slight delay - but it reaches them for sure. Every dollar up on the barrel means a few denars more per liter, and that in turn means pricier groceries, pricier transport, a pricier life. The geopolitics between Washington and Tehran are, in the end, paid for by a family in Skopje, Bitola or Strumica.

The question that remains is how long this uncertainty will last and whether the Strait of Hormuz will once again become the epicenter of a global crisis. The Balkans have no say over who controls a single maritime throat on the other side of the world. But they have a feel for the consequences - because every time the big players flex their muscles, the bill is split among everyone, and it's felt most by those counting their denars.