Just as the global economy seemed to be shaking off its fever from this year's energy crisis, the temperature is rising again and the prognosis is worsening. The price of crude oil has pushed past $100 this month and inflationary pressures are mounting in the US, the EU and the UK. Fuel price protests have broken out from Syria to Guatemala, while India and the Philippines have introduced emergency energy-saving measures.

The summer was characterised by what many see in retrospect as a false sense of security. In June the US and Iran signed a deal to extend their fragile truce and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the world's main oil chokepoint, allowing over 130 tankers to escape the Gulf and deliver their cargoes to the world. The deal soon collapsed, and there now seems little prospect of a speedy end to the conflict, even as the Russia-Ukraine war puts further pressure on energy prices.

Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at accounting firm RSM US, warns the world has entered "oil shock 2.0". He adds that central banks will need to "slow down the global economy if they want to push the inflation genie back into the bottle". But the energy price shock is not what many people think it is. Global growth has defied many economists' forecasts, partly because the oil and gas trade turned out to be unexpectedly resilient after the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, warned in March that the world was facing "the greatest global energy security threat in history". But although countries began preparing for shortages of key fuels, prices never broke through previous records because of a co-ordinated release of 400mn barrels of strategic reserves, the withdrawal of China from buying crude and the robustness of the global trading system.