\n<\/p>\n
The boss of Abu Dhabi\u2019s state-owned oil company has said the strait of Hormuz is \u201cnot open\u201d despite the US-Iran ceasefire agreed earlier this week, as uncertainty over the truce pushed the price of Brent crude towards $100 a barrel on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), said passage through the crucial waterway was subject to \u201cpermission, conditions and political leverage\u201d by Iran. He said energy security and global economic stability depended on the strait being opened \u201cfully, unconditionally and without restriction\u201d.<\/p>\n
Al Jaber wrote on LinkedIn: \u201cThe weaponisation of this vital waterway, in any form, cannot stand. This would set a dangerous precedent for the world \u2013 undermining the principle of freedom of navigation that underpins global trade and, ultimately, the stability of the global economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn estimated 230 vessels sit loaded with oil and ready to sail. They, and every vessel that follows, must be free to navigate this corridor without condition. No country has a legitimate right to determine who may pass and under what terms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran in effect closed the strait, through which a fifth of oil and gas would normally flow, after the US and Israel began their attacks at the end of February. At least 1,400 ships are estimated to be anchored on both sides of the passage between the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.<\/p>\n
Tehran\u2019s 10-point ceasefire plan would reportedly permit Iran and Oman to charge a fee of up to $2m (\u00a31.5m) a ship on vessels moving through the strait.<\/p>\n
Concerns that few ships have passed through the strait since the US-Iran truce was announced pushed up energy prices on Thursday, while stock markets retreated across Asia and Europe as the two-week ceasefire in Iran looked increasingly shaky, with Israel continuing attacks on Lebanon and the US and Iran threatening a return to military action.<\/p>\n
A day after the US and Iran announced an 11th-hour ceasefire, including an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz, many questions remain and there have been signs that the truce has already been broken, causing jitters in the markets.<\/p>\n
Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose by over 4% on Thursday to above $99 a barrel, while New York light crude climbed by 8% to as high as $102.20 a barrel. On Wednesday, Brent had tumbled 13.29%, falling to a four-week low of $94.75 a barrel.<\/p>\n
Gas prices also crept up again, with the month-ahead UK gas contract up almost 1% at 115.23p a therm, having dropped 15% on Wednesday after the ceasefire was announced.<\/p>\n
European natural gas futures rose to \u20ac46.5 a megawatt hour on Thursday, rebounding from a five-week low. They had plummeted almost 15% to \u20ac45.30 a megawatt hour on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Graph showing price of oil<\/p>\n
Andrew Bailey, the chair of the Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors the global financial system, said the war in the Middle East had been \u201ca very big shock\u201d in the past few weeks that had prompted \u201cmuch greater market volatility\u201d.<\/p>\n
Appearing before the EU parliament\u2019s committee on economic and monetary affairs, Bailey \u2013 who is also the Bank of England governor \u2013 said: \u201cAt least we got up yesterday and found the world was still with us, but it obviously is very volatile. Yesterday was a good case in point to illustrate that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that \u201cthe banking system is resilient\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bailey also said, speaking personally, that one of the lessons from the Iran war was that it had changed the economics in favour of renewable energy, to reduce the UK\u2019s reliance on natural gas.<\/p>\n
The UAE and Kuwait said their air defences had intercepted drones from Iran, while Tehran\u2019s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Israel and the US had violated several points of the agreement.<\/p>\n
The Revolutionary Guards threatened a \u201cregret-inducing response\u201d if Israel did not stop its strikes against Lebanon. The Fars news agency reported that the passage of oil tankers through the strait was halted because of Israel\u2019s barrage of strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday, the worst since the war started, killing at least 254 people and wounding at least 837.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that US forces would \u201cremain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with\u201d. He threatened that if it were not complied with, the military action would be \u201cstronger than anyone has ever seen before\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Asian stock markets, Japan\u2019s Nikkei fell 0.7% after Wednesday\u2019s 5.4% bounce, while South Korea\u2019s Kospi lost 1.6% after rising 7.5% the day before, and Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng dropped 0.5% lower.<\/p>\n
European stocks also fell, as the optimism from Wednesday\u2019s rally faded. The UK\u2019s FTSE 100 index closed roughly flat, while the German Dax fell 1.1% and France\u2019s Cac dropped 0.2%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index dropped by 0.1% after Wednesday\u2019s near 4% rise, its best day since 2022.<\/p>\n
US markets were climbing in early afternoon trading on Wall Street.<\/p>\n
There are signs of progress as the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that the vice-president, JD Vance, would lead a delegation to Islamabad, with a first round of talks scheduled for Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
Mohit Kumar, the chief European economist at Jefferies, said: \u201cDespite the fragile nature of the ceasefire, we believe that the truce will hold. Not because we believe that a solution has been found but because of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) principle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have reached a stage where both parties would want a ceasefire as carrying on the war assures a negative fallout for both parties. Trump wants a deal as he does not have support from his Maga base to continue to war. US and Israel have realised that without a solution to cheap drone interceptors and some way to bypass the strait of Hormuz, it\u2019s a war that cannot be won.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The boss of Abu Dhabi\u2019s state-owned oil company has said the strait of Hormuz is \u201cnot open\u201d despite the US-Iran ceasefire agreed earlier this week, as uncertainty over the truce pushed the price of Brent crude towards $100 a barrel on Thursday. Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3929,689,1746,24168,1749,268,3866,269,313,1748],"class_list":{"0":"post-48125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-abu","9":"tag-chief","10":"tag-crude","11":"tag-dhabis","12":"tag-hormuz","13":"tag-oil","14":"tag-open","15":"tag-prices","16":"tag-rise","17":"tag-strait"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}