Europe has only six weeks’ supply of jet fuel left owing to Iran war, says energy chief
Europe has only six weeks of jet fuel left before shortages will hit because of the Iran war, according to the head of a global energy watchdog.Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said there would be flight cancellations “soon” if oil supplies from the Middle East were not restored within the coming weeks.“I can tell you soon we will hear the news that some of the flights from city A to city B might be cancelled as a result of lack of jet fuel,” he told the Associated Press.KLM, part of the Air France-KLM group, said on Thursday it would cut 160 flights in the coming month because of high kerosene jet fuel prices.Although less than 1% of its schedule, the cancellations underline the financial pressures on the airline industry.
The Dutch airline said: “This concerns a limited number of flights within Europe that, due to rising kerosene costs, are currently no longer financially viable to operate,There is no kerosene shortage,“KLM expects a busy May holiday period and is making sure passengers can travel to their holiday destinations as planned,”The US-Israel war on Iran has caused turmoil in global energy markets since the first strikes at the end of February,In retaliation, Iran has effectively closed the strait of Hormuz, a vital export route for oil from the Gulf.
The US and Iran last week agreed a two-week ceasefire, but talks on ending the war failed over the weekend,Indirect talks brokered by Pakistan are continuing,Brent crude oil futures prices, a global benchmark, remain more than 30% higher than they were before the war,The rapid increase in petrol prices has put pressure on the US president, Donald Trump,However, there have not yet been outright shortages of jet fuel as shipments that set off before the war continued to arrive.
The final cargoes have now made it to Europe,Birol said Europe had “maybe six weeks or so [of] jet fuel left”, AP reported,His comments add to those of Airports Council International Europe, a lobby group that last week wrote to the EU’s energy and transport commissioners saying the bloc was three weeks away from shortages,Airports and airlines tend to have about six weeks of fuel supplies in normal times, according to people in the industry,However, the Iran war has dragged on long enough that any extra reserves in the system are being used up, and other suppliers do not have enough capacity to replace supplies that come through the Gulf.
“In the past there was a group called Dire Straits,” said Birol.“It’s a dire strait now, and it is going to have major implications for the global economy.And the longer it goes, the worse it will be for the economic growth and inflation around the world.”The impact will be “higher petrol prices, higher gas prices, high electricity prices”, Birol told AP, with some parts of the world “hit worse than the others”.Some airlines have cancelled flights that would be loss-making because of higher fuel prices, particularly if they did not have hedging arrangements in place to insure against big increases.
However, even those who have hedged are considering flight cancellations.Air France-KLM has hedged 87% of its fuel exposure, but still decided to cut the flights because of the costs it would otherwise have to bear.It focused cancellations on busy routes between Amsterdam’s Schiphol and London and Düsseldorf, on which passengers can be easily booked on to other flights.Airlines in the EU and UK can make adjustments to flight schedules without paying compensation as long as passengers are offered alternatives more than two weeks in advance.The British airline easyJet on Thursday said it had no concerns about fuel supplies for the next month.
Kenton Jarvis, the easyJet chief executive, said: “We have visibility to the middle of May and we have no concerns.”
It will take more than £600m a year to boost UK industrial competitiveness | Nils Pratley
It is “bold action” to boost UK competitiveness, claimed the government. Not everybody shared that assessment of the British industrial competitiveness scheme (Bics), the long-awaited plan to cut electricity bills for UK manufacturers by up to 25% – or, at least, to cut them for a subset of firms that are aligned with the eight chosen sectors of the “modern” industrial strategy.“Gas intensive industries in the UK have been shamefully ignored by the government in this announcement – it’s a total disgrace,” said Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, banging the drum for the likes of ceramics-makers and brickmakers that aren’t deemed modern enough for support. Employer bodies mostly did the polite thing of welcoming government assistance of any form before using phrases such as “drop in the ocean”.And, it’s true, £600m a year across 10,000 companies isn’t much
IMF chief Georgieva warns ‘everyone will feel the impact’ of energy price shock, as UK growth beats forecasts – as it happened
Over in Washington DC, the International Monetary Fund is holding a debate on the global economy.IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva says the world economy is facing another, large, shock:double quotation markThe world economy has been, very resilient over the last few years, facing shock after the shock. And this resilience is tested yet again, this time by a shock that is large.Twenty percent of oil and gas is stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, depriving primarily Asia, but also Europe, and other parts of the world of a vital resource. It is global
NAACP lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s xAI of polluting Black neighborhoods near Memphis
A new lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of illegally spewing toxic pollutants into residential neighborhoods on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi.The suit, filed on Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act due to emissions from its makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, which powers its datacenter there. The NAACP, represented by the environmental groups Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, says xAI has been polluting areas with homes, schools and churches, including in historically Black communities, by using dozens of methane gas generators without permits.The organization is seeking to force the company to stop operating its unpermitted turbines in Southaven.“A data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community’s health,” Abre’ Conner, the director of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP, said in a statement
Fisa surveillance vote sparks fierce debate as Congress splits on warrantless monitoring
A controversial law that grants the US government sweeping powers for warrantless surveillance is set to expire next week. Replacing it has inspired fierce debate within the White House and Congress, including a scheduled vote cancelled the day of.A coalition of progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans is pushing for reform of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), but they face strong bipartisan opposition from lawmakers advocating for an 18-month renewal with no changes, in line with Donald Trump’s demands. House GOP leaders delayed a procedural vote on a clean extension of Section 702 on Wednesday, after the chamber’s rules committee approved the measure on Tuesday night. Republican leadership was expected to bring the measure to the floor on Wednesday but canceled the scheduled vote, amid dissent from privacy advocates in their own party
LIV and let die: golf rebels count cost of Saudi cutbacks and other sports fear worst | Matt Hughes
Public Investment Fund withdraws support for rebel tour and other sports could be hit too with Newcastle United uncertainThe reverberations of an unscheduled meeting of LIV Golf executives in New York this week have been felt way beyond their swanky offices in Hudson Yards, on the west side of Manhattan.A slowdown in Saudi Arabia’s lavish spending on sport, which is conservatively estimated to have cost the kingdom more than $10bn in the past five years, had been expected, but its Public Investment Fund’s withdrawal of financial support for the rebel tour – which was first mooted to LIV execs on Monday – has caused shockwaves throughout the wider industry.Significantly, the possibility of PIF’s withdrawal was not even addressed in an email sent by the LIV chief executive, Scott O’Neil, to his staff on Wednesday evening, which has left many of them more fearful for their jobs. Such concerns are not limited to golf, with other sports administrators fearful that similar cuts in Saudi’s budget could be coming their way.While LIV was the primary vehicle through which Saudi launched their ambitious attempt to become a leading global sports destination and promoter five years ago, with more than $5bn invested on the rebel tour, the arch disruptors were by no means the sole beneficiaries
Portcullis gets royal breeders dreaming at Newmarket’s ancient first rite of spring
Captain Cook was a few months away from landfall after his first circumnavigation of the earth when the first Craven meeting was held on Newmarket heath in the spring of 1771.It is older than any of the Classics, and old enough too to have the great Potoooooooo – who got his name when a stable lad was unsure how to spell potatoes – on the Craven Stakes’s roll of honour in 1782. For a quarter of a millennium250 years, the first meeting of the year on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket has been Flat racing’s first rite of spring.“It’s what keeps everybody going,” Jason Singh, the marketing director of the famous bloodstock auction house Tattersalls, said here on Thursday, “and I speak as a breeder and racehorse owner myself as well as a sales company employee.“Every year, at this time of year, everybody has got hopes that the next horse they’ve bought is going to be the next superstar, and until it’s not, it could be
Stephen Colbert to Trump: ‘Why would you start a beef with the pope?’
‘This craving to go viral is tiresome’: the artists sick of the pressure to promote on social media
Sir Neil Cossons obituary
V&A censored catalogues after demands by Chinese printer
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Jesus photo denial: ‘Do you even care about lying to us any more?’
Cultural venues in England to share £130m under Arts Everywhere scheme