Iran has responded to US and Israeli attacks by launching a series of counterstrikes against states across the Middle East, with serious consequences for the oil and gas industry and the global economy.
Map of Iranian strikes in the Middle East
Tehran has attacked oil facilities in neighbouring countries, while shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz – the crucial bottleneck at the mouth of the Gulf – has all but ground to a halt.
The seaway between Iran and Oman – barely more than 20 miles (32km) wide at its narrowest point – is an unavoidable choke point through which about 20% of the world’s oil supplies travel out into the Indian Ocean and on to the rest of the world.
While Iran has not officially shut down the channel, it does not need to do so. Such are the jitters among oil and shipping companies – not to mention their insurers – that traffic has more or less come to a standstill. On Monday evening, Iran said it “would burn any ship” trying to pass through Hormuz.
Shipping activity in Strait of Hormuz
A visualisation of marine traffic through the strait shows the flow of vessels petering out over the weekend, with clusters on either side where tankers have dropped anchor as they await to see how events unfold.
Such fears are well-founded, with at least three tankers damaged and one seafarer killed over the weekend. Dubai’s Jebel Ali, the world’s busiest container port outside Asia, suspended operations before reopening after falling debris from an aerial interception started a fire at one of its berths.
The number of cargo vessels navigating the strait had already slumped from more than 50 a day to just seven on Sunday, according to Lloyds List, the London-based shipping intelligence publisher.
Iranian forces claimed on Monday to have hit the Honduras-flagged fuel tanker Athe Nova in the strait with two drones, leaving it ablaze. Tehran also struck a port facility in Oman and a ship north-west of Muscat, as the Iranian military broadcast radio warnings to ships intending to cross the strait of Hormuz.
Amid the unfolding chaos, the price of a barrel of oil jumped by more than 10% to above $80 (£60) a barrel over the weekend before settling slightly lower on Monday.
Crude oil price
Donald Trump has said he does not expect the fighting to last more than a few weeks, but some pundits are predicting that if there is a prolonged conflict then the price of a barrel of Brent crude could soar to $100 (£75).
Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at City Index, suggested the US crude oil price could be pushed to $90 a barrel by supply worries if traffic through the strait does not resume.
Oil flows could be further throttled by attacks by both sides on extraction and refining facilities in the region, with Tehran targeting the infrastructure of US allies with a series of strikes.
The Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco shut its Ras Tanura refinery on the country’s east coast – which processes about 550,000 barrels a day – early on Monday after it was struck by debris from intercepted Iranian drones.
Smoke rises from Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia
The conflict has also disrupted supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG). QatarEnergy, the world’s largest supplier, was forced to halt productions on Monday after a drone attack, apparently by Iran.
Qatar provides about 20% of the world’s LNG, which has become a more crucial source of gas as Europe tries to wean itself off Russian supplies. The conflict sent European gas prices soaring on Monday to their highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
European oil prices
Although European gas prices remain well below their 2022 peak, and the oil price is only at the level it was two years ago, further sustained increases would add to pressure on western economies that were only starting to shake off the worst of the Ukraine invasion inflationary shock.
Only last week in his State of the Union address, Trump was claiming inflation and gas prices were falling. Any jump in the cost of living could harm his party’s chances in this autumn’s midterm elections.
The inflationary risk also casts a pall over the UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, when she delivers her annual spring statement on Tuesday.
For the moment, the impact is relatively modest. Jim Reid, a Deutsche Bank analyst, points out that Monday’s daily oil price spike, which reached 8.2% by mid-afternoon on Monday, was only the 38th largest daily increase since 1990.
The longer the Iran crisis continues, the greater the risk of more pronounced price rises, triggering a domino effect that engulfs almost every aspect of the economy. More expensive oil would mean rising prices at the petrol pumps and on global fuel markets, feeding through to the cost of any goods transported by air, sea or road.
“With many households still carrying debt from the last gas crisis, the spike in prices is a worrying sign that bills for both homes and businesses could rise again,” said Jess Ralston of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank.
Analysts at the British asset manager Quilter reckon that a $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil can add up to 40 basis points (an additional 0.4%) to consumer inflation. It can also shave off up to 30 basis points from global GDP growth, if the crisis persists.
Energy-hungry economies paying more for oil and gas could also hand a welcome morale boost to Russia, whose vast oil and gas reserves fund its war chest for the assault on Ukraine. Last week, Kirill Dmitriev, an investment adviser to Vladimir Putin, gleefully predicted that oil would soon hit $100.
