The widening Iran crisis could “bring down the economies of the world” and send oil prices soaring, Qatar’s energy minister warned as US and Israeli bombs pounded energy facilities in Tehran.
The Gulf state’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, said it would take his country “weeks to months” to return to its normal delivery pattern after an Iranian drone strike at its largest liquefied natural gas (LNGi plant – with Europe likely to suffer a price spike as a result.
His prediction came as Goldman Sachs bank warned the price of oil could jump to as much as $150 per barrel by the end of March, hitting British consumers and businesses hard.
Tehran was engulfed in thick black smoke on Sunday after American and Israeli jets struck four oil depots in the capital, sending fireballs into the sky.
New data published by National Gas showed that its gas stores were at 18 per cent of their former capacity on Friday.
In its separate analysis, Goldman Sachs found that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen to just 10 per cent of usual levels in recent days, driving up prices to $91.89 per barrel on Friday, up from around $72.50 before the war erupted – a jump of 27 per cent.
Analysts said that the impact of Iran’s blockade already appears to be 17 times larger than the April 2022 peak hit to Russian production, following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A nearly complete shutdown of the Strait means the region's giant oil producers - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait - have had to suspend shipments of as much as 140 million barrels of oil - equal to about 1.4 days of global demand - to global refiners.
Tehran’s oil storage also suffered shocks on Sunday as Israel targeted facilities in the capital.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the conflict.
The Israeli attack on oil storage sites in Tehran sent up pillars of fire, in what appeared to be the first time a civil industrial facility had been targeted in the war.
