Financial Times:
Qatar’s energy minister has warned that war in the Middle East could “bring down the economies of the world”, predicting that all Gulf energy exporters would shut down production within days and drive oil to $150 a barrel.
Saad al-Kaabi told the FT that even if the war ended immediately it would take Qatar “weeks to months” to return to a normal cycle of deliveries following an Iranian drone strike at its largest liquefied natural gas plant. Qatar, the world’s second-largest producer of LNG, was forced to declare force majeure this week after the strike at its Ras Laffan plant.
While Qatar only exports a small proportion of its gas to Europe, the energy minister said the continent would feel significant pain as Asian buyers outbid Europeans for whatever gas is available on the market, and as other Gulf countries find themselves unable to meet their contractual obligations.
“Everybody that has not called for force majeure we expect will do so in the next few days that this continues. All exporters in the Gulf region will have to call force majeure,” Kaabi said. “If they don’t, they are at some point going to pay the liability for that legally, and that’s their choice.”
The Middle East war had bolstered the case for investment in clean energy sources and battery storage, Microsoft said, as nations rushed to secure oil and gas supplies.
Microsoft’s global vice-president for energy Bobby Hollis, responsible for buying power for the tech group worldwide, said the oil and gas price surge had underscored the need for renewable energy in power supply as protection from volatile fuel costs.
“Wind and solar as, as part of that mix, is a huge benefit from the standpoint of price stability, because once you install it you have more certainty around what that actual cost profile looks like,” he told the FT.
Hollis, who previously worked at Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and Apple, said the lesson had been learnt from Russia’s war on Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis in 2022. “I think Europe recognised that when they came out of the Ukraine crisis, about looking at how they could get more diversity in their fuel supply and in their energy mix.”
Climate policy advisers and analysts also cited the benefits of the surge in sales of cheap solar panels in Germany and Hungary, and heat pumps in Italy and Poland, following the squeeze on Russian oil and gas after the Ukraine invasion. Linda Kalcher, who has served as an adviser to European climate policymakers, said that while some governments might see a need to boost gas storage, the policy debate would turn once again to redoubling efforts on renewable energy sources including nuclear.
“Europeans are still importing 90 per cent of their fossil fuels, so that’s an extremely high exposure to the vulnerability of global markets,” she said.
Sam Reynolds, a specialist in LNG and Asia’s energy sectors at green think-tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), said that the “commodity market shocks completely undermine the case for LNG as an affordable, reliable ‘transition fuel’, particularly for emerging markets.”
IEEFA’s Reynolds noted that following Russia’s war in Ukraine, many countries in Asia had already begun re-evaluating the build-out of LNG import infrastructure, including Pakistan, which had instead started importing large amounts of solar panels. “
Emerging markets in Asia are widely expected to be the largest growth markets for LNG demand globally, but — depending on the duration of the Iran conflict — they could once again find themselves at the mercy of global commodity markets and geopolitical uncertainty,” he said.
“I expect that the current conflict, if not de-escalated quickly, could once again cause countries in Asia to reconsider LNG plans, potentially hindering the long term growth of demand that the industry is counting on.”
Daniel Yergin in Financial Times:
Current oil prices in the $90s are far from the worst-case scenario. But right now, the world is looking at the biggest disruption in oil production in history as well as a resounding shock to global gas markets. The key question for global energy markets now is the duration of this explosive war.
Below, Fox News going full North Korea on the “good news.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/08/gop-senator-mocked-green-energy-crap-his-home-runs-on-it-00791293
The added heat from flaming hypocrites in office.
Oh that Kudlow. The “Good News” is that the American taxpayers are having their tax money spent on potential liabilities for insuring large, slow-moving vessels full of flammable materials as our taxpayer-funded navy and air force provide cover for same flammable vessels, as they sail through a narrow strait past the Iranian Guard.
And this good news needs to be shouted as good news so we don’t wonder who decided to spend billions of American taxpayer dollars to start a pointless war with Iran.
Of course we don’t want the taxpayers to think about how great the drop of LNG flow out of the region happens to also be good news for American producers who can now maximize profits by selling stuff to offshore buyers instead of leaving too much supply to sell less-profitably to American consumers and businesses.
OFF TOPIC but this article on Oilprice.com has an interesting take on rural power co-ops getting stuck with stranded assets of the transmission/distribution wiring type, as cheap solar delivers itself to every panel out in sparsely-populated regions of the country. Including links has been iffy for me recently so just searching Oilprice.com with the title should turn it up.
They also include, in two paragraphs, one of the most concise discussions of why commercial utilities had zero interest in rural electrification, making the federal program necessary (and the right thing to do, in my opinion as a city-dweller)
“Solar and Storage Could Reshape Rural Electricity Markets
By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles – Mar 08, 2026, 10:00 AM CDT
– Rural electric cooperatives may face disruption from cheaper on-site renewables.
– Co-ops serve about 12% of the U.S. population but operate over 40% of the nation’s power lines.
– Financial pressure could grow across the system, as co-ops remain tied to long-term fossil power contracts with generation providers while renewable alternatives become cheaper for rural customers.”
Dammit, Peter, why did you put me in a position to listen to any of that idiot Kudlow’s bogus talking points?
Trump has been horrible for US domestic oil production (and is proven to have lied about US production numbers), you don’t add crude and refined fuels production in the same bar graph, insurance companies didn’t “break their contracts” (because they always know to put in contractual exceptions in case of war), and tanker captains should ignore any reassurance that Trump-the-liar makes about protecting them from Iran’s drones (and that they need real insurance coverage to be welcomed into any modern port).
The Invisible Siege: How Insurance Markets, Not Missiles, Closed the Strait of Hormuz
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-invisible-siege-how-insurance