This is one outlet's own report from Fortune — the article as it was filed.
AIPROPX ReportFortune · 2h ago
Fuel prices stemming from a war in Iran is reshaping daily life for people in the U.S. and Chile to Turkey and Nepal
Across seven countries, seven people woke up to days that no longer looked the way they once did.
The war in Iran began months ago and thousands of miles away. But its effects quickly ricocheted across the world — oil markets first, sending fuel prices higher. Then the shock moved outward — into farms, factories and family budgets. Into the fabric of life.
The global economy remains tethered to fossil fuels that also drive climate change. A severe shock to that system could push 45 million more people into poverty, the United Nations Development Program warned.
For those far from the battlefield, the war arrived not as missiles or air raids, but through the disruptions of everyday life: businesses that no longer worked, goodbyes filled with fear, and livelihoods pushed closer to the edge.
Here are a few of their stories.
The Philippines: Bathing with laundry soap
WHO/WHERE: Edgar Funelas, Manila
DAY OF DISRUPTION: April 10
Funelas bathes beside his vehicle, moving quickly before the city wakes. He pours water over his head from a green pipe. Behind him, his jeepney stands still and worn. His 10-year-old daughter is asleep inside.
He uses laundry soap — harsher, but cheaper — to wash his body and his clothes in the same motion, stretching what little money he has. Even before the war in Iran, he was living on the margins. A fire took their home and their belongings, forcing them to move into the brightly colored minibus he drove.
He’d hoped to be able to rent a room by now. Then diesel prices surged and he could no longer afford the fuel to run his jeepney.
He hasn’t earned a single peso in days. There will be no breakfast. Hunger gnaws, but it’s the small rituals of privacy that he misses most: to be able to wash out of sight, to sleep behind walls, to keep his desperation from being laid bare.
That morning, after rinsing himself, he hopes to find work as a dispatcher at a nearby jeepney terminal — organizing the line of vehicles, calling drivers forward in turn, and packing passengers into each jeep.
For weeks, he and his daughter have been eating only what others can spare. She has already left school. At night, he drinks water and leaves the food for her, so she can go to bed with a full stomach.
Before the war, he made about $8 a day driving, sometimes twice that on good days. Now, for each vehicle he fills, he will earn about 16 cents — barely enough to buy a piece of bread.
“This is what we do. Coping and hoping prices will get lower. Hoping that the war will end. And to try to find ways to earn, so we can at least eat.”
United States: Balancing budget and family
WHO/WHERE: Marlyn Garcia, New York
DAY OF DISRUPTION: June 30
On a Tuesday morning, Garcia, 25, steps out of a food pantry with two bags filled with rice, pasta, fresh produce and other staples. The groceries will help feed her family through another week.
The food is free — a small reprieve for a household budget strained by higher gasoline prices after the war in Iran. But Garcia also has to calculate her days: doctor’s appointments, her 3-year-old son’s occupational therapy session, picking up her daughter, making dinner.
And before any of that, there is parking. Finding a street spot can take up to an hour. Each slow lap around the block burns fuel as the meter keeps ticking.
She came to New York from the Dominican Republic as a child and spent part of her teens in the city’s shelter system with her mother. Today she works part time as a breastfeeding peer counselor in the Bronx. Her partner, Steven Espaillat, lost his job as a legal assistant in March and now picks up Uber shifts while searching for permanent work.
Their Toyota Camry has become indispensable. Three adults share it. Garcia and Espaillat use it the first half of the week; her mother-in-law uses it the second. That Monday, she bought gas at $3.97 a gallon ($1.05 per liter). With fuel prices in flux, every mile now has to be planned.
The family lives in a rent-stabilized apartment that costs $800 a month. Government food assistance helps fill the refrigerator. Higher gas prices are eroding their savings and she has begun taking every extra shift she can, especially those she can work from home.
Garcia still hopes to start graduate school, inspired by her son’s developmental needs to help families like hers. She reminds herself that others have it worse. But the arithmetic of survival keeps getting harder.
Still, she keeps making the numbers work because of the two small children waiting at home. “It’s summer so they always want an ice cream and I want to make sure I have that extra cash there for them,” she says. “They shouldn’t be able to suffer because of whatever is going on around the world.”
Nigeria: Trying to keep the generator running
WHO/WHERE: Oluwatosin Awodunmila, Lagos
DAY OF DISRUPTION: June 5
Awodunmila and her husband, co-owners of a printing business in Somolu, a mixed-income residential suburb in central Lagos, arrive early as usual, after dropping their two children at school.
The street is silent, partly because the day is just beginning and partly because there was no electricity. The machines in the shops are off.
Awodunmila scans the shop and the leftover projects to make — lip gloss, key holders, paper bags. But she has to wait for electricity, which hardly comes nowadays. The other option is to fire up the medium-sized generator outside the shop. But since the war began, the price of fuel per liter has nearly doubled from 800 naira to 1,400 naira (60 cents to $1).
This jump in price has brought business to almost a halt. In Nigeria, the retail price of fuel determines the price of everything else. If they use the generator, the profit margin thins to almost nothing. They had decided not to increase the price of their service to keep their customers.
So they wait for electricity and sit, like on this morning, while customers lodge complaints about slow delivery. On Monday, four days e...
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