The price of Brent oil soared above $126 a barrel on Wednesday, its highest level since 2022, after Donald Trump warned the US blockade of Iranian ports could last months and peace talks remained stalled.<\/p>\n
Surging more than 13% in 24 hours, Brent crude hit a record price since the war began on 28 February. Not since Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has Brent topped $120, with the price then peaking at $139.<\/p>\n
Oil markets have been spooked this week as Donald Trump appeared willing to maintain the US Navy blockade of Iranian ports<\/a>, with Iran responding by keeping the strait of Hormuz all but shut<\/a> to other oil tankers.<\/p>\n US-Iran talks set for Islamabad in Pakistan over the weekend failed to materialise<\/a>, so the stalemate grinds on.<\/p>\n Trump on Wednesday said Iran \u201cbetter get smart soon\u201d and in a meeting with oil executives discussed what steps could be taken to \u201ccontinue the current blockade for months if needed,\u201d according to a White House official.<\/p>\n US officials hope the blockade will force Iran to cap its oil wells and shutter production once its oil facilities, such as Kharg Island, have filled to the brim. Analysts are unsure how long that could take.<\/p>\n \u201cThe blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing,\u201d Trump told Axios. \u201cThey are choking like a stuffed pig.\u201d<\/p>\n The war is about to enter its 10th week, despite Trump\u2019s initial projections of a 4-6 week conflict before Tehran would buckle. Global oil supplies drop by nearly 20 million barrels every day the strait is choked off.<\/p>\n Oxford Economics warned in a blog post<\/a> that a six-month impasse in the strait could send oil prices as high as $190 by August.<\/p>\n The economist Paul Krug, a former New York Times columnist, said he believed most analysts have been \u201cfar too sanguine\u201d about the effects of a prolonged Hormuz crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my view, a full-on global recession is more likely than not if the strait remains closed for, say, another three months, which seems all too possible,\u201d he wrote on his Substack<\/a> on 20 April.<\/p>\n In 2008, during the global financial crisis, oil surged to record highs, with crude briefly hitting about $147. Two weeks after the US and Israel launched their first strikes on Iran, Tehran said the world needed to prepare for $200 barrels of oil.<\/p>\n Beyond ramping up the cost of petrol<\/a>, the effects of the supply shock have cascaded through the global economy, causing inflation to rise and sparking some fears of a looming global recession.<\/p>\n US inflation soared in March<\/a>, with prices up 3.3% over the year. Across the Atlantic, Britain is facing a \u00a335bn economic hit<\/a> and the risk of a recession in 2026 because of the war, a thinktank warned.<\/p>\n While Congress was questioning the US defense secretary<\/a>, Pete Hegseth, over the war\u2019s rising costs and strategy<\/a>, Iran\u2019s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, spent the day making phone calls to India, Kenya and Poland, trying to shore up support in his country\u2019s staring contest with the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The price of Brent oil soared above $126 a barrel on Wednesday, its highest level since 2022, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-639941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639941","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=639941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}