Iran war puts focus on petrochemicals used in numerous products and a driver of climate change

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The Iran war has exposed deep vulnerability in the global economy: dependence not just on oil, gas and coal for fuel, but on petrochemicals that underpin everything from food production to plastic packaging.

As disruptions ripple through energy markets, the war is highlighting how fossil fuels are embedded far beyond transport and electricity. In the short-run, the widespread reliance will lead to higher prices for myriad products, while long-term the pollution that comes from petrochemicals will exacerbate climate change.

A two-week cease fire announced late Tuesday is a hopeful sign that the war, and energy disruptions, will abate. But no matter when it finally ends, for many environmentalists to energy experts, ultimately the war is a stark sign that the status quo needs to change.

“We cannot continue relying on fossil fuels neither for energy nor for material,” said Delphine Lévi Alvarès, global petrochemicals campaign manager at the Center for International Environmental Law. “We cannot continue relying on fossil fuels for absolutely everything around us.”

Petrochemicals are expected to be a central topic of discussion in Santa Marta, a northern coastal city in Colombia, where governments will gather from April 24-29 for an international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Experts say discussions will center on reducing demand because the sector is a major driver of future fossil fuel use. Indeed, environmentalists have long argued that fossil fuel companies, realizing that electric vehicles and green technologies like solar threaten their industries, see petrochemicals as a place for their products.

Petrochemicals are primarily made from oil and gas and used to manufacture a wide range of everyday products, from plastic packaging and synthetic clothing to fertilizers, paints and medical equipment. Unlike fuels that are burned for energy, petrochemicals are turned into materials, making them a less visible but still deeply engrained in daily life.

Much of the global petrochemical industry is concentrated in the Persian Gulf region of the Middle East, including major producers of fertilizers and the chemicals used to make plastics.

Petrochemicals already account for a significant share of global oil use and are expanding rapidly, even as some countries cut fuel use in power and transport.

Fredric Bauer, a senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden who studies industrial transformation in chemicals and plastics, said the sector is increasingly central to the fossil fuel system.

“Petrochemicals are not just a sort of byproduct or something that happens on the side,” Bauer said.

He said that petrochemicals account for 15%-16% of oil demand and are among the fastest-growing uses, with new industrial facilities increasingly designed to maximize chemical production rather than fuels.

For consumers, that demand is largely invisible. Petrochemicals are built into everyday products such as plastics, fertilizers and synthetic materials, making their role in the economy easy to overlook.

Beyond fuel markets, disruptions to oil and gas flows can quickly ripple through industries that rely on petrochemical inputs — particularly agriculture, which depends heavily on fossil fuel-based fertilizers.

Bauer said that the Middle East plays a key role not only in exporting oil and gas, but also in supplying petrochemical feedstocks and fertilizers such as ammonia and urea. Any disruption during planting seasons can cascade into global food systems.

“It’s not just a disruption in the global trade of oil,” he said. “It’s also a disruption in the global trade of chemicals.”

That, he warned, can translate into higher food prices and broader economic strain.

Trisia Farrelly, an environmental anthropologist at the Cawthron Institute in New Zealand, said that the crisis underscores how exposed global systems remain after decades of dependence on fossil fuels.

“For me, this is like another COVID wake-up call,” she said, pointing to risks for food security and livelihoods tied to rising costs and supply disruptions.

She said that agriculture is one of the hardest sectors to transition away from petrochemicals, given its reliance on fertilizers, pesticides, plastics and fuel.

While reducing petrochemicals could significantly cut fossil fuel dependence, experts say there is no single solution.

Farrelly said that cutting petrochemical use — particularly in plastics — would “certainly” reduce reliance on fossil fuels. But she cautioned against assuming that alternatives like bio-based plastics can simply replace them.

“We need to be regulating out nonessential plastics,” she said, arguing that reducing demand is essential alongside any material substitution.

International negotiations on plastics pollution in recent years have failed to reach an agreement, in large part because major oil producing countries have balked at any attempt to put a limit on the production of plastics.

Bio-based plastics are generally more expensive to produce than conventional plastics made with fossil fuels and chemicals, limiting their adoption at scale, according to the European Commission Joint Research Center, the European Union’s science and knowledge service. They currently account for about 0.5% of global plastics production, the center said.

Farrelly said that shifting to alternatives without proper safeguards risks creating new environmental and social problems, particularly if it drives land use change or increases demand for agricultural inputs.

Bauer said that the same applies across the sector. Renewable energies like solar, wind and geothermal can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from production, but replacing fossil-based feedstocks is far more difficult. Recycling can help, he said, but only alongside reductions in overall consumption.

Lévi Alvarès said that reducing reliance on petrochemicals will also require changes in consumption, pointing to steps such as using fewer heavily packaged goods, supporting local food systems and connecting more directly with farmers and producers that rely less on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

The petrochemical industry says demand is likely to remain strong, arguing that its products are essential to modern life and the energy transition.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents U.S. chemical manufacturers, told The Associated Press in a written response to questions that petrochemicals are used in products ranging from medical devices and semiconductors to building materials and packaging, and are also key to renewable technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles.

The group said that companies are working to cut emissions through efficiency improvements, recycling and new technologies, and rejected the idea that demand must fall, calling petrochemicals “foundational” to sectors such as health care, food production, clean water and infrastructure.

Lévi Alvarès, the campaign manager from the Center for International Environmental Law, said that petrochemicals have become so embedded in daily life that many people don't realize how much they rely on them, but individuals and communities can begin by rethinking consumption and engaging more closely with local systems.

“It is not a choice of the consumer,” she said, noting that many people are constrained by what is available, but can still start to look at everyday products differently.

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The Shell Polymers Monaca Plant, a petrochemical plant, operates in Monaca, Pa., Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

FILE - A worker sorts through empty bottles at a plastic recycling factory in Lahore, Pakistan, Aug. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary, File)

A gas company operates near submerged trees in Manaure, Colombia, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

FILE - A farmer applies fertilizer to her land in Limuru, Kenya, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Jackson Njehia, File)

Part of the Shell Polymers Monaca Plant, a petrochemical plant, operates in Monaca, Pa., Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon reeled Thursday after the deadliest day in more than five weeks of renewed war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, as rescue workers in Beirut and elsewhere searched for survivors and Israel warned of escalation.

Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, warned that continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon would bring “explicit costs and STRONG responses,” while insisting that a two-week ceasefire in the Iran war extended to Lebanon. Israel has disagreed.

Israeli strikes on Wednesday without warning killed at least 203 people and wounded more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said. Israel's military said it targeted Hezbollah sites, but several strikes hit densely packed commercial and residential areas during rush hour, leading to widespread civilian casualties. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called the attacks “barbaric.”

Israeli strikes continued targeting southern Lebanon on Thursday. Israel also said it had killed an aide and nephew of Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem, Ali Yusuf Harshi, in the strikes. Hezbollah did not immediately comment.

In Beirut, people waited anxiously on the ragged edges of search and rescue work, covering their faces from the dust. Exhausted firefighters sat on a charred car amid collapsed buildings.

Lebanese Civil Defense spokesperson Elie Khairallah told The Associated Press that a wounded woman was found alive under the rubble overnight in the seaside neighborhood of Ain Mreisseh, and a man was found alive in his collapsed apartment building in the southern suburbs.

Mohammad Chehab, a Syrian man from Deir el-Zour, said six of his 10 family members had been found dead in a destroyed building.

“They’ve been searching all day” for the rest, he said.

At hospitals, survivors and doctors described the carnage.

“I thought I was dead. What happened? A big flash of light struck my face and eyes and I found someone flying over and landing next to me. He was dead,” said Rabee Koshok from his bed at Makassed hospital in Beirut. He had been in the commercial district of Corniche al Mazraa when a strike hit a nearby building.

Dr. Wael Jarrosh said the hospital had received around 70 injured patients within 10 minutes of the blasts. Two people died and five remain hospitalized, including three in intensive care, Jarrosh said.

“This has destroyed us psychologically,” the doctor added. “We have to stay prepared so that we can serve our families and the injuries that come in.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said strikes would proceed “with force, precision and determination." Israel's military has accused Hezbollah members of moving out of the group’s main areas of influence in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, and blending into civilian areas.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon will file an urgent complaint with the U.N. Security Council, calling the attacks a “blatant violation” of international and humanitarian law.

Salam added that the Lebanese cabinet has ordered security forces to tighten control over the capital by “enhancing the state’s full authority across Beirut and restricting arms to legitimate forces.”

Even before the renewed war, Lebanon's government had been seeking Hezbollah's disarmament. The issue has inflamed tensions among Lebanese who are deeply divided over Hezbollah and its arsenal.

“All the targeted areas are safe residential Lebanese areas,” said Melhem Khalaf, a reformist legislator representing Beirut, while watching a bulldozer clear rubble. “What we are witnessing is a massacre against civilians.” Khalaf was critical of Israel’s strikes but also of Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon back into war.

More than a million people have been displaced by the war, many from the south and Dahiyeh. Israel's military has issued sweeping warnings for the population to leave those areas, followed by heavy bombardment.

The Israeli army has also launched a ground invasion in the border region. The death toll in Lebanon has reached 1,739, the health ministry said, with 5,873 wounded.

Meanwhile, the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria returned to service Thursday, five days after the Israeli military warned of plans to strike it, alleging that Hezbollah was using it to smuggle military equipment. Lebanese and Syrian authorities denied the claim.

More than 200,000 people have fled Lebanon into Syria since the war resumed.

Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalists Kareem Chehayeb and Hussein Malla in Beirut and Ghaith AlSayed in Jdeidet Yabous, Syria, contributed to this report.

A Lebanese civil defense worker looks on as an excavator operates on the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A Lebanese civil defense worker looks upward near the site of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Men inspect the damage to their home destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Lebanese civil defense workers inspect the rubble at the site of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A rescue worker holds money recovered from the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit a day ahead in an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)