Topic: Is energy prices about to shoot up? - page 4. (Read 1102 times)

Algeria taking Palestine side will cause tension in that area as well which they will also barricade their fleet close the Gibraltar strait. since they are taking this war as religious war, Algeria is a Muslim dominated country and pretty sure they will be with Iran.

once they declare war, none will ever go through that route and those inside the Mediterranean sea are trapped. for now we might be seeing the gradual rise of energy prices and we can only be sure whether the gas prices will sky rocket or not when the war breaks already.

Thanks for your insightful analysis of the evolving geopolitical situation in the Middle East. I agree with your perspective that existing  threats are likely to persist  and Iran will not involve in this war. It is evident now that global economy is now held hostage by regional conflicts and their impact on oil prices is a major concern for the whole world. In order to safe world economy from recurring such unfortunate scenarios, a lasting solution would involve reducing reliance on fossil fuels and embracing renewable energy resources.

One of the good things in every conflict is that the weasels show their true faces. Although it was not a surprise to know all dictatorships like UAE stand with the terrorist organization but making it clear as day is good news. Of course this all makes the next step easier, which would be the consequences of supporting terrorism, sending fuel for the bombers of Gaza and arms to be used in ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Sending fighter jets, bombs and fuel for tanks and aircraft used in bombing civilians is not going to have any effect on the global oil market whatsoever. If anything it could decrease the global supply (as part of the supply is now going to "fuel" war) and could destabilize the market even more.

I am also paying attention to the conflict issues in this area and am also sensing some changes in energy prices, but at the moment I only see a small impact on food prices, and fuel prices don't vary too much where I live.

Unlike the period between the conflict between Russia and Ukraine when fuel prices were more volatile, or perhaps in the near future we will also have to accept price increases of many different things when the conflict may arise spokes are wider.

Another question I have been discussing with others is whether WW3 is happening or about to start?

Because as far as I know, tense issues, especially in Asia, are becoming more and more complicated. Earlier this week, there were some statements from the president of North Korea about possible support for Hamas, or tough statements. with Japan.

And if the conflict really continues and widens further, energy prices will certainly increase a lot, hopefully this will not happen.

The UAE showed its civilized face and chose to side with Israel. This means that one of the largest suppliers of oil to the world market will not play into the hands of supporters of destabilization of the energy market and will be able to become an element of stabilization of the oil market. 

UAE condemns Hamas attack on Israel and hostage-taking
The UAE's stance differs markedly from the comments of most other Arab countries in the region, which held Israel responsible.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uae-calls-hamas-attacks-israel-serious-grave-escalation-2023-10-08/

I have understood from the isreali-palestinian war that  it is more from a religious point of view, or that's the way they reported it and want it to be. If care ain't taken, this could result in WW3 as speculated and by then I doubt anyone would be bothered about the prices of gas, rather, to survive the times and secure the trade routes from total destruction.

I believe that unlike what we experienced during the start of the Russia-Ukranian war, wherein gas prices skyrocketed due to trade routes being blocked or restricted, this Isreali war might soon be faced with such proposition of having to resort to alternative sources of energy inorder to survive. Sure the prices of energy will increase once other countries get involved and the war escalates further rather than dissipate with negotiations or agreement.

First to understand the significance of the Fridays speech by the Hezbollah leader it's enough to say that during the hour long speech that an estimated 3 billion people  across the globe watched simultaneously, there was a deafening silence and ceasefire in West Asia.

I don't want to get into the details of what was said because it would turn this into a military and political topic. But the part that involves economy is both good news and bad news:
- Good news: despite the speculations over the past couple of days this was a very calculated speech that outlined the situation precisely and left every possibility open as operations will continue happening and expanding but without entering the new phase of the war which is a significant expansion and heavier attacks.
In fact oil price even reacted to this by going down a little which is good news for economy.

- Bad news: is that the conflict is expanding at the same pace as before since the genocide has not stopped and United States regime is desperately trying to keep the carcass of Israel alive. After the speech yesterday we have the simultaneous attack on Israeli and American positions from 5 fronts. In decreasing order of intensity: Palestine (Gaza and West Bank), Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and finally Syria.

On another news we have Algerian parliament passing a law that unanimously voted to support Palestine militarily. This allows President of Algeria to enter the war against Israel if he chooses to. To understand the significance of it specially on economy you have to look at where Algeria is located. That is another strategic chokepoint, Strait of Gibraltar, which is another access point Europe has to open seas for trades. If the war expands it will also affect the international trades going through this strait which has a significant effect on the economy.

This is also significant regarding energy price and shortage. Algeria has acted as one of the sources to cover part of the EU gas shortage after Russian exports to Europe decreased. They exports most of their natural gas to Europe through 4 LNG terminals and the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline. If we enter this phase, a "gas embargo" on Europe is a possibility.

Unfortunately I don't think this statement is indicating the end or any kind of serious ceasefire. The goal of this statement is purely to affect what Hezbollah is going to say and do at 15:00 (local time) today, which is the deadline Hezbollah dictated. I bet the video released as a reminder of how they easily attacked Sa'ar warship back in 2006 had a significant effect.
How much does an aircraft carrier like USS Ford cost? $13 billion + cost of 50-60 aircraft + 4500 personnel? That's enough dissuasion.

After all it all comes down to the costs. US Senate just approved to waste more than $14 billion of taxpayers money on Zionists! That's on top of the billions they are already paying Israel. I already covered the effects on energy market.
I'm sure those in Washington can come up with a much better and more detailed version of what I posted here that covers more than just CENTCOM region. After all United States is at war with the rest of the world, the costs is so much higher that what I can cover inside one post:
The proxy war with Russia, the proxy war with China, the proxy war with Iran, proxy wars in Africa and now an actual armed conflict they are caught in inside a prison called Gaza.

The cost is not only economical. US military is getting the worst of it, specially after yesterday where they sustained largest losses over the past 28 days.

On top of it all we also have Russia advancing in Ukrainian soil because US literally pulled everything back from troops and proxies to weapons they were supposed to use to stop Russian progress!

Yeah.
The absurdity of it is that the 9000+ Palestinians who were murdered by Israel over the past 28 days are Semites too!

Regardless of your personal position, there is no justification for what Hamas has done, killing children, women and anyone who came across its path, and abducting hundreds who are now being held hostage. Fighting for one's country does not justify crimes against civilians, no matter what war we are talking about.

This should be a discussion about the economic effects of the war, so I will refrain from commenting on politics in the future.

My gratitude for explaining this whole situation to idiots like myself who don't watch news and thus have no clue what's going on in the world--and I'm dead serious, I'd no idea any of this was happening.

Ah, that word terrorist....it's just lost its meaning over the years (if it ever really had one).  I'm not picking any sides politically, but boy oh boy if you called any Israelis terrorists in the US you'd probably be called an anti-semite and so forth, because it's taboo to criticize their government or anything about them basically.  Again, I'm ignorant of world affairs so I couldn't choose a side even if I wanted to; just saying that you'd never, ever see a phrase like "Israeli terrorist" in the Western media.

Now, about those energy prices.  My guess is that the effect of all of this conflict would be pretty hard to predict.  Economists have tried to in the past (with respect to gas prices, for example) and they've turned out to be entirely wrong.  So I'm hoping if shit goes totally south in the region shown in the OP, it'll spur a move toward energy sources that wouldn't be affected by war in the middle east, in Asia, or anywhere else.  Kind of like how lab-made diamonds might cure all of the corruption that's infested the diamond market for many, many years.

As per the latest reports, over 9000 Palestinians died in this attack; among them are 3760 children and 2326 women. Over 7000 Palestinian children have been injured since 7th October. How can a person justify the killing of innocent civilians? They are bombing hospitals and refugee camps; this is a war crime. Why the World is not saying anything about this?
WHO said in a statement that it is almost impossible to bring humanitarian aid to the people in Gaza.

Israel is committing a genocide. Netanyahu invoked the theory of 'Amalek' to justify the killing of Gaza residents. He said;

“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. 1 Samuel 15:3 ‘Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass’."

This statement is proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 

The USA has continuously backed and supported Israel in the past few weeks of this war, but President Biden's latest statement about a "humanitarian pause" marked a shift in the position of the White House. 

We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

I'm curious whether you think when Ukrainians attack Russian invaders in their own homes they are also committing crimes? If not then why do you think Palestinians attacking Zionist invaders in their own homes is a crime?

Actually without the intervention of United States this conflict would have ended more than 10 days ago. The Zionist regime would have been forced to stop the genocide and release thousands of men, women and children being tortured in their prisons and stop the settlements from expansion. Now the Israeli terrorists have to answer for the 8000+ civilians they've murdered.

The reason I say it would have ended in first days is that internally Israel has been falling apart (it's the 8th decade curse). If you followed the news over the past couple of years you could see how things have been progressing. For example each Zionist "government" could barely last a year before falling apart and being replaced. Or the fact that over the 40+ weeks leading to October 7 there has been mass protests against the regime by Israelis every day since they too consider their prime minister to be a criminal who needs to be hanged. Most important of all was the armed forces that had completely fallen apart as everyone was abandoning their posts.
From early days US military officers entered the occupied Palestine and took over the Israeli military and started the operations. As I said in my last post US troops are also in the front line attacking Gaza from land.

Interestingly enough they could not move an inch into Gaza without massive casualties so far! In other words it is not possible to "take full control of Gaza Strip" ever. And that's without the other arms of the Resistance intervening.
In about 8 hours the face of the battle can change entirely

It is interesting to know that ideology is only part of it, Iran's policy that is also in the constitution is "helping the oppressed". For example Venezuela is not even an ideological country and Iran has greatly helped the country specially after US that controlled lots of infrastructures in Venezuela (like the electrical grid) left the country and sabotaged everything behind them. It was Iran that helped rebuild the electrical grid, reactivate the sabotaged power plants, etc.

Or the massive amount of gasoline Iran sent to Venezuela to help the energy crisis that had halted all transport there was after US not only sanctioned Iran heavily because of that help! but also after US even threatened to attack or seize these tankers!
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/12/6/biggest-iranian-flotilla-yet-en-route-to-venezuela-with-fuel
That is in addition to the Venezuelan refineries that US sanctioned and sabotaged to cripple this Latin American country was fixed and brought back online by Iran.

It doesn't stop there either. There are loads of examples like this.

Middle Eastern countries have never been free from conflict and to this day the Middle East remains the center of conflict, both between countries and conflicts within countries. And currently the impact of the conflict in the Middle East has begun to be taken into account by the world, especially the business world. Because the conflict that occurred in the Middle East has had a major impact on the manufacturing industry, causing oil and gas prices to increase. Oil and gas are basic needs, so this has an impact and can trigger price increases in other industrial and economic sectors.

We will never know when this conflict will be resolved and when this conflict will subside. So prepare ourselves to face global economic challenges and the threat of inflation amidst an unstable economy. The series of events started with the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak which caused the global economy to stagnate and slow down, Russia's attack on Ukraine which caused energy and food prices to become unstable, and now we are faced again with the turmoil of the Middle East conflict which has resulted in an energy crisis. So once again prepare ourselves to face all the challenges and threats that exist.

Thanks for clarifying all these points in detail. You and I don't have very different views.
What can actually be concluded from all these overlapping elements of different war fronts is that Iran is actually leading the real confrontation movement against the occupying Zionist entity. The Lebanese Hezbollah is an Iranian creation. The Syrian regime is also supported by Iran, in addition to having a military presence in Syrian territory (Revolutionary Guards), and the Houthi group in Yemen is also an Iranian creation. Literally, it means that Persian Shiite Iran is the one supporting the cause of the Sunni Arabs instead of them. I do not want to give an ideological coloring to the Palestinian issue, but it cannot be overlooked that the Palestinian people are predominantly Sunni Muslims with Christian and Jewish minorities.

I can agree that the East and the West look at the new situation in a completely different way, but that does not surprise me at all considering that everyone has their own interests in all of this. It's just bad for me that civilians are the hardest hit by all of this, especially children who are not guilty of anything - and as someone who somehow survived the merciless bombings in the aggression against my country 30+ years ago, I can only say that anyone who goes to war in that way cannot be called anything other than a war criminal, because the killing of thousands of children cannot be justified in any other way. I am far from justifying what Hamas did, but crime is not answered by committing even more crimes.

However, I thought a little about how Israel failed to prevent that attack from happening at all, and I can't shake the impression that they didn't know, not only that it was going to happen, but also that someone was arming Hamas so abundantly. I would venture to say that one of the sponsors is Russia, which wanted (and managed) to shift the focus from the war in Ukraine to another issue, and they failed to do so by provoking an armed rebellion in Kosovo shortly before the attack on Israel.

Another reason why I think that Russia actually did itself a favor and gave Israel a reason for such brutal revenge is that it remains neutral about the war in Ukraine all the time, even when President Zelinsky (who is Jewish) begs them for help.

However, although we should certainly be concerned about the economic consequences that may arise from a war in that part of the world, without the intervention of some external factors, I do not see that this conflict can last longer than a few months, when Israel will very likely take full control of the Gaza Strip.

Some parts of the world will certainly suffer much more economically than others if the situation gets complicated, but after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, many countries have realized that they have to start providing alternative routes for the supply of energy, as well as that they should become as self-sufficient as possible.

Honestly , I really hope they won't because things in my country are already way to expensive for most of our citizens. Another rise in energy prices would simply bring people out in the streets but I'm sure that won't change anything because we will not be the only ones affected by this. On the other side , the war Ukraine - Russia already made Romanian prices to go up in all sectors so I really hope the conflict from Israel and Hamas would not have the same effect and I do hope a solution will be available for the world soon.

A slight hike in global oil prices was observed after the Israel and Hamas fighting erupted because of the concerns over the effects of this war on the energy-producing Middle East. European natural gas spikes up by 14% while global oil pumped 4%.

Although both Israel and the Gaza Strip are not major players in oil production, the price hike could be due to the fear that this conflict will spread to the rest of the Arab countries. The Middle East accounts for 31% of global oil production and 18% of gas production.

The Middle East is the hub of oil production and has major oil producers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia and one of the main transit routes, "the Strait of Hormuz" (the world’s most important oil chokepoint). This conflict could disrupt the main energy supply routes. Yemen's involvement in this war could mean that the conflict is spreading to other countries. Yemen's Houthis, however, are a rebel group which controls Yemen's capital. 

Two key factors in this conflict are;

1) Whether or not Iran directly gets involved in the conflict. Amid increasing tensions and direct confrontation, Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz (chokepoint for nearly a third of seaborne oil).
 
2) Hezbollah (a Lebanon-based armed group) starts an attack on Israel.
It is reported that border tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have been on the rise for the past few days. 

In the past, the World has seen a global effect of the Israel and Palestine war in 1973 when Egypt and Syria got involved in the fight, and all Arab oil-producing nations cut the oil supply and imposed an embargo on the US and its allies. This caused a major oil price surge in the world within a few months. However, the situation is different this time, but who knows the long-term consequences?

Morgan Stanley said in a note on Monday that the near-term risk to oil supply was low, but that could change if the conflict spread to other countries.

In conclusion, if the conflict remains localised and the major oil-producing nations or transit routes are not affected, we may see a slight fluctuation in global energy prices. However, if the conflict spreads to neighbouring countries, it will not only impact oil production but also affect transit routes.

Who exactly do you mean?
All producers outside West Asia are already producing at max capacity and beyond, not to mention that over the past year there has been a higher demand than supply. It is impossible to cover any kind of shortage specially if we are talking about a massive 40-50% shortage!

That's correct. What I meant was that the relationship between Iran and the international resistance is not a hierarchy where Iran runs them or they are Iran's "proxy". Instead it is an alliance with an unbreakable bond. Obviously Iran as the strongest member of the resistance supports all of them.

Ansarollah didn't start supporting Palestine two days ago, they've been doing it for a while now. Last year they were also threatening to bomb the terrorist positions when there was another bombardment of Gaza. This year they acted on those threats.
They also are not targeting Tel Aviv, that is not in the list of targets for heavy attacks yet anyway. The light rockets from Gaza is enough for now. Instead Ansarollah is targeting a very strategic location in occupied Palestine that has never been targeted before. The southmost region called Eilat and the ports there. Specially since the fuel for the terrorists tanks and aircrafts is heading to that port coming from Baku with the help of Turkey.
I believe there has been 3 attacks already and they've all hit their targets successfully as reported by eyewitnesses; that is despite the Saudi + US + Egyptian + Jordanian attempts to stop them.

They are also targeting other bases of Israeli terrorists elsewhere such as the base in Eritrea they hit hard this past week.

You see it's like separation of concerns.
Palestine is involved in the land attack as the ground forces and have already repelled 8 attempts to invade Gaza (3 of which were US commandos or more specifically the Delta Force) and slaughtered the invaders.
Lebanon is slowly bombing all terrorist bases from the north and progressing every day.
Syria is focusing on occupied Golan Heights and have been bombing terrorist positions there.
Yemen is focusing on the South as I said above.
The rest (Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Africa, etc.) are focusing on US bases.

It can be said that Iran is the only power in the region (perhaps in the world as well) that provides military and logistical support to Palestinian groups fighting against Israeli tyranny. This has been and continues to continue since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which declared its unconditional loyalty to the cause of the Palestinian people.
Iran supports the Syrian regime to continue extending its influence over the region and prevent Israel from expanding in its lands and even in its alliances, since Israel succeeded in winning over both Egypt and Jordan as peaceful neighbors in exchange for many concessions. On the northern front, Iran supports Khazbollah, which controls the entire south of Lebanon on the Israeli border. Then, two days ago, the Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen announced their support for the Palestinians and actually began firing long-range missiles. Had the American and Saudi defenses not confronted them, they would have reached Tel Aviv.
Iran prefers these proxy wars to direct confrontation because this is not in its interest at the present time.

Ok, actually, many news outlets are saying that Iran supports this group. Well, aren't they both the same thing? If they are friends, they must be supporting each other as they both have the same purpose here.
You are right, this should not be a difficult decision to make, but KSA has already been in some deals with Yemen for some time, and they were trying to make some pieces, but I prefer not to take sides because if they do, things can become a little bumpy for the overall economy, and I don't care that much because help should be given to the needy, war should be stopped, and terrorists should be in jail. All I am saying is that if Yemen or the Axis of Resistance is making moves, then do not disturb them and let them make.

Actually, they (the KSA) were trying to get a defense pact in order to make peace with Israel so that they could sell more oil to Washington as inroads are off from China. This pact deal was going to occur on September 29, but just after a few days, war started and this meeting is still on hold. I don't know or have anything to say about whether the KSA is really going to accept Israel, but they did make a condition there that they should go easy on Palestine. I mean, yeah, they did sayIndeed