A gas shock – not an oil shock – from the Iran war looks more threatening | Nils Pratley
The price of oil grabs most of the energy-related attention during conflicts in the Middle East for understandable reasons: oil is the commodity on which the world runs (still) and analysts have roughly reliable models for what every $10 per barrel increase in cost does to global growth and inflation.So, on that front, one can say we’re still a long way from “oil shock” territory.Monday’s rise to $79 a barrel, up 9% since the end of last week, is sizeable, especially as the price was $62 at the start of this year, but remember that $125 was seen shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and $100-plus was then sustained for three months.A gas shock, however, looks a real and present threat.European wholesale gas prices rose 50% as QatarEnergy, the world’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) halted production after being targeted by Iranian drone strikes.
That is 20% of the world’s LNG going offline at a stroke, which would be a fundamental change in the market if sustained for a long period.And the key point is that Qatari LNG cannot be diverted via pipeline, as Saudi oil can be to a degree; it has to go through the pinchpoint of the strait of Hormuz, where shipping has more or less stopped.A Goldmans Sachs analyst said the price rise for gas in Europe could hit 130% if flows through Hormuz were disrupted for a whole month – “a threshold that triggered large natural gas demand responses during the 2022 European energy crisis”.Stifel’s analyst put it more bluntly: “Attempting regime change in Iran risks a repeat of Europe’s 2022 energy crisis, just worse the second time around.”Europe – and Asia – are indeed in the eye of the LNG storm because they are the big buyers of the frozen gas.
About a quarter of Europe’s gas supply came as LNG in 2025; Britain’s average has been 21% over the past five years, according to government statistics.Meanwhile, gas storage levels in Europe are low after a cold winter.The US, by contrast, sits pretty as an LNG exporter after its shale gas revolution over the past couple of decades.For the UK, there is a small consolation in being less reliant on Qatari LNG than in 2022.Qatar supplied about 6.
5% of UK LNG imports over the past year, says the energy analyst Cornwall Insight, compared with about 69% from the US since 2023.LNG, though, is also a global market in which it is not unknown, especially at times of crisis, for cargoes to be diverted mid-transit from Asia to Europe, or vice versa, because they can get a better price on the other side of the world.As in 2022, higher wholesale prices for gas quickly translate into higher consumer bills.The key variables, of course, will be how long Qatari production is shut, and how long Hormuz is effectively closed.Even the difference between a week and a month matters.
In terms of numbers, UK gas was 75p a therm last Friday and hit 114p on Monday.It would still have to go 250p – and stay there for a while – to match the intensity of the 2022 crisis.But suddenly it is not unimaginable, as Stifel warns, that household energy bills could spike again, causing a fresh set of problems for a government (like the last one) that has placed the reliability and affordability of LNG at the heart of its energy policy.In its “security of supply” report last year, the government highlighted declining domestic North Sea production of gas but said “over the next four years specifically, we expect this changing supply mix to coincide with a robust, oversupplied global LNG market”.That market looked neither robust nor oversupplied on Monday.
Seth Meyers on Team Trump’s Iran threats: ‘These guys speak like they’ve been hit on the head’
On Thursday night, late-night hosts remarked on the Jeffrey Epstein investigations, the threat of a US attack on Iran and Donald Trump nominating a wellness influencer as the next US surgeon general.Meyers focused on the president’s criticisms of a landmark 2015 deal between Iran and world powers in which the country agreed to curb their nuclear program. “I’ve been making lots of wonderful deals, great deals,” Trump said. “That’s what I do. Never in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran
How to keep free entry to UK museums and galleries | Letters
I believe that national museums should be free for all. Your report (Is the UK’s golden era of free museum entry coming to an end?, 21 February) quoted me from a Daily Telegraph article that selectively used parts of a much longer interview. I said in principle that people would be willing to pay; however, I then outlined all the reasons this would not work financially, practically and ethically. I do not wish to be represented as a mouthpiece for those who wish to introduce charges.Nick MerrimanHastingleigh, Kent There is an easy answer to the budget difficulties faced by many UK art galleries and museums: identity cards
‘You’re sweet – and I’m old!’: Billy Porter and Sam Morrison on teaming up for a comedy about love and death
The Emmy-winning singer and actor was so struck by the standup’s autobiographical one-man show Sugar Daddy that he signed on as producer. The pair discuss ‘bears’, blood sugar and bridging the divides between generations of gay menSugar Daddy is a one-man show about “love, grief and insulin” by the 31-year-old standup Sam Morrison. An autobiographical monologue that turns tragedy into comedy, it tells of how Morrison fell in love with Jonathan, who was 24 years his senior, after meeting him at a gay bear festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2021, two and a half years into their relationship, Jonathan died from Covid.For the last four years, Morrison has been performing Sugar Daddy around the world; next month he brings an updated version to London’s West End
‘Seems I’m not dead’: Magda Szubanski says she is in remission after treatment for stage four cancer
Magda Szubanski has revealed the “fantastic news” she has finished chemotherapy and is in remission from a rare, aggressive cancer she was diagnosed with nine months ago.Wishing her fans a “Happy Mardi Gras” in a video on Instagram on Friday, Szubanski said: “I wanted to share the fantastic news, which is that I’ve completed chemo, and I am now in remission. So phew, big relief.“It’s not a cure, but because I’ve got a good remission, that hopefully means that I will … keep the cancer at bay for a good long time.”In May the 64-year-old actor and comedian said she had stage four mantle cell lymphoma, an uncommon and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and said she had shaved her head ahead of treatment
Seth Meyers on Trump’s State of the Union address: ‘A vehicle to attack anyone who doesn’t bend the knee’
Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s extremely long State of the Union address and a bombshell new report on redactions from the Jeffrey Epstein files.Donald Trump arrived to his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening with low expectations and even lower goodwill, with his approval rating hovering somewhere around a dismal 36%. “So the polling was bad before the speech and bad after the speech,” Seth Meyers reported on Wednesday evening, “and on top of that it was long and boring,” clocking in at a record one hour and 47 minutes.Or, if you’re Republican, it was “the best State of the Union speech that I’ve seen”, to quote the House speaker, Mike Johnson. Ted Cruz went one step further, calling it “majestic”
‘The sky’s the limit’: Newcastle Art Gallery unveils its ‘divisive’ $48m expansion with a blockbuster opening show
On Friday night, the Newcastle Art Gallery (NAG) is throwing open its doors and filling the road and park with giant fluffy doughnuts, live music, dancing and art in a free-for-all street party – themed “industrial disco” – that has been 16 years in the making.For the NAG team, and Novocastrians more broadly, this is a significant moment, marking the long-awaited completion of the $48m gallery expansion project, which went from being “very divisive” in the community to something that’s generating “a remarkable buzz and excitement,” according to Jeremy Bath, the CEO of Newcastle city council.Now the largest public gallery in NSW outside of Sydney, it opens with the major exhibition Iconic Loved Unexpected, displaying 500 artworks from its 7,000-strong collection. Displayed over the 13 gallery spaces (eight of which are new, in a floor space that’s more than double that of the 1997 building), it’s a star-studded showcase of the gallery’s $145m collection, including Australian greats Emily Kam Kngwarray, John Olsen, Margaret Preston, Brett Whiteley, Daniel Boyd and Margaret Olley.It’s the headliners who will draw the crowds, but the gallery – led by the NAG director, Lauretta Morton – has been intentional in championing lesser-known local artists, too
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