{"id":465312,"date":"2026-03-09T04:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T04:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/465312\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T04:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T04:22:12","slug":"iran-war-could-bring-down-global-economy-after-warning-oil-could-reach-150-a-barrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/465312\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war \u2018could bring down global economy\u2019 after warning oil could reach $150 a barrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The widening Iran<\/a> crisis could \u201cbring down the economies of the world\u201d and send oil prices<\/a> soaring, Qatar<\/a>\u2019s energy minister warned as US and Israeli<\/a> bombs pounded energy facilities<\/a> in Tehran<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Gulf state\u2019s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, said it would take his country \u201cweeks to months\u201d to return to its normal delivery pattern after an Iranian drone strike at its largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant \u2013 with Europe likely to suffer a price spike as a result. <\/p>\n

His prediction came as Goldman Sachs<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

A video grab shows fire erupting at an oil depot in Iran’s capital Tehran (UGC\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The attack appeared to be the first on an energy facility since the beginning of the war, raising the prospect of a wider assault on infrastructure in the region. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf this war continues for a few weeks, GDP growth around the world will be impacted. Everybody\u2019s energy price is going to go higher,\u201d Mr Al-Kaabi told the Financial Times<\/a>. \u201cThere will be shortages of some products and there will be a chain reaction of factories that cannot supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that Europe would feel the pinch as Asian buyers outbid Europeans for whatever gas remains on the market if other countries in the region declare a force majeure.<\/p>\n

The crunch in supplies also threatens to hugely increase the price of gas for UK consumers, with warnings that the UK is particularly exposed to a price spike due to a lack of storage. <\/p>\n

Around 30 per cent of Britain\u2019s electricity comes from gas-fired power plants \u2013 compared with \u200b17 per cent in Germany and just 3 per cent for France \u2013 and it is used for heating in more than 70 per cent of homes. <\/p>\n

New data published by National Gas showed that its gas stores were at 18 per cent of their former capacity on Friday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

On Sunday evening oil prices eclipsed $100 per barrel for the first time in more than three and a half years. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, was at $101.19 shortly after trading resumed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, up 9.2 per cent from its settlement price of $92.69 on Friday.<\/p>\n

\"Cars<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Cars drive down a highway as smoke billows after overnight airstrikes on oil depots in Tehran (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Analysts said that the impact of Iran\u2019s blockade already appears to be<\/a> 17 times larger than the April 2022 peak hit to Russian production, following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

A nearly complete shutdown of the strait means the region\u2019s giant oil producers \u2013 Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait<\/a> \u2013 have had to suspend shipments of as much as 140 million barrels of oil \u2013 equal to about 1.4 days of global demand \u2013 to global refiners.<\/p>\n

As a result, oil and gas storage at facilities in the Middle East<\/a> Gulf are rapidly filling, forcing oil fields in Iraq to cut oil production. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are most likely to cut next, analysts, traders and sources said.<\/p>\n

Soaring oil and gas prices have already pushed up costs for companies reliant on energy imports, threatening their margins, and raised the spectre for policymakers and investors of a fresh bout of inflation.<\/p>\n

Around 40 per cent of the world\u2019s plastic is produced from crude oil, meaning price volatility would impact the cost of consumer goods from packaging to furniture and manufacturing, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these effects last longer, everyone will start to feel them,\u201d agreed Young Liu, chair of Foxconn, the world\u2019s largest electronics maker and a key partner to Nvidia.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

A government building in Kuwait is engulfed by flames after a reported drone attack (Social media)<\/p>\n

Prof Mohamed El-Erian, of the University of Pennsylvania, told the BBC that the UK would be \u201chit from multiple sides\u201d by shocks to energy prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce again, we see the UK more vulnerable to external shocks than otherwise that in turn is going to translate into higher mortgage rates. So the average person will get hit from multiple sides, unfortunately,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average person is going to face higher energy prices, but also higher mortgage rates, and slowly but surely, noticeable increases in a broad range of goods and services because of supply chain disruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

A prolonged price hike could call for the \u201crecession playbook\u201d, Morgan Stanley warned. Goldman Sachs analysts said a temporary spike in oil prices to $100\/b could slow global growth by 0.4 of a percentage point.<\/p>\n

As prices continued to soar, Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Saturday that a commercial oil tanker was set ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz after being struck by an Iranian suicide drone.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

A family sits against the backdrop of a dockyard off coast city of Fujairah, in the Strait of Hormuz (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

They claimed the Prima, sailing under a Maltese flag, had ignored repeated warnings not to enter the strait.<\/p>\n

The IRGC also said they hit a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media reported on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Tehran\u2019s oil storage also suffered shocks on Sunday as Israel targeted facilities in the capital. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-465312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}