Iran attack’s impact on power prices<\/a><\/p>\nAustralia is a gas “superpower”, but its citizens continue to pay the price through their electricity bills for the country failing to protect them from the fallout as the Middle East unravels again.<\/p>\n
The roughly 35 per cent increase in the WTI crude oil price this week marks the biggest weekly gain in the history of the futures contract dating to 1983.<\/p>\n
Brent’s weekly gain is the largest since April 2020 which was during the COVID-19 emergency.<\/p>\n
“We are marching closer each day to $100 for a barrel of oil,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Investment Management.<\/p>\n
“That has caused much greater volatility and anxiety.”<\/p>\n
Iranian media reported on Monday that the Strait of Hormuz was closed and Iranian officials had threatened to attack any ship trying to pass through the narrow passage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A number of tankers have already been hit since the war broke out.<\/p>\n
The surging price of oil has also raised concerns about global economic growth.<\/p>\n
“Rising oil prices, if persisted, have sparked fear of a global \u201cstagflation\u201d scenario through two channels,” AMP economist My Bui said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“One, higher commodity prices, with oil up to $150\/barrel in case of a prolonged war, and supply disruption could raise household energy costs and manufacturing input costs, while reducing households demand for discretionary consumption.”<\/p>\n
“[Meanwhile] higher geopolitical risk and economic uncertainty will force households and businesses to delay big purchases, holding back investment plans while adopting higher borrowing costs.”<\/p>\n
The US government gave details on Friday about a plan that President Donald Trump announced earlier to offer insurance guarantees and naval escorts to ships crossing the strait, but it had little effect on the market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US crude oil has posted its biggest weekly gain in futures trading history. The war in the Middle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,5467,99,5466,130875,260177,260818,260819],"class_list":{"0":"post-523643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-brent","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-crude-oil","13":"tag-nrma","14":"tag-peter-khoury","15":"tag-us-crude","16":"tag-west-texas-crude"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}