It would be easy to blame this conflict on crude prices flirting with two-year highs.

In fact, the price of crude incorporates more than the current civil war in Syria and repressive coup in Egypt. It’s also reflecting power struggles in other Mideast hotspots thought until recently to be under control, namely Libya and Iraq.

A new report from the US Energy Information Administration suggests Mideast crude supply disruptions are at their highest level since Arab Spring began more than two years ago. The main culprit has been Libya, where a weak central government  has been unable to solve pay protests blocking oil exports from its ports and tribal power plays disrupting pipeline flows through the interior.

Libyan production was entirely offline for much of 2011 amid a civil war that ultimately deposed longtime dictator Moammar Khadafi. But Iranian crude was still flowing freely then, whereas now international sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program have its crude output down an estimated 600,000 barrels per day, even as Libyan unrest has removed another million barrels a day from the market.

Source: US Energy Information Administration

Add in the loss of production from the growing lawlessness in Nigeria’s swamps and a worrisome uptick in unplanned outages in turbulent and faction-riven Iraq, and the total supply disruption from OPEC exceeded 2 million barrels a day (bbl/d) last month, more than offsetting higher Saudi production. Outside of OPEC, Syria, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen were unable to deliver another 500,000 bbl/d of their normal output. That’s a loss of nearly 3 percent of daily global demand from disorder in the Middle East and Africa.

The good news is that countries outside of OPEC — chiefly the US — are expected to boost their output by 2 million bbl/d this year. Also, global demand is due for a seasonal drop of 2.1 million bbl/d from the July levels in September, according to the EIA.

But there’s no denying the fact that untapped production capacity — which matters so much to crude prices in the near term — is unusually modest, and therefore offers a smaller safety margin should Mideast hostilities heat up and take yet more crude off the market.

This leaves crude traders in New York at the mercy of events in Tripoli, where the government has just issued arrest warrants for the leaders of the strikes that have halted shipments. How much use these will be to a government whose writ seldom extends beyond the ministry doors is another matter.