Stock markets rattled and energy prices soar after strikes on Qatar gas hub

Oil and gas prices rose sharply and stock markets slid back on Thursday after Iranian strikes hit energy infrastructure in the Middle East, including Qatar’s main gas facility.

Brent crude was trading at just over $108 a barrel on Thursday evening, having risen as high as $119 earlier in the day.

UK gas prices were 154.8p per therm, an increase of 11.3% from a day earlier. They had peaked close to 183p on Thursday.

The FTSE 100 closed at 10,049, a fall of 2.4%, while shares in Paris and Frankfurt also dropped, as investors become increasingly concerned over the potential economic impact of a prolonged conflict.

In Japan, the Nikkei share index closed down 3.4%, while the three main indexes in the US ended the day modestly lower.

Bonds on both sides of the Atlantic fell as fears of a surge in inflation continue. The UK is heavily reliant on imported natural gas, and the rise in British gilt yields on Thursday was far sharper than for German or US bonds.

Bonds are essentially government debt. The buyer eventually receives the value of the bond back, plus interest – the yield – at regular intervals.

UK bonds, known as gilts, are purchased mainly by financial institutions like pension funds, as they are seen as a relatively safe investment.

Bond yields going up usually means that investors are worried about turbulence in the economy because the government is taking on more debt.

Yields on two-year gilts were on track on Thursday for their biggest daily increase since Liz Truss’s mini budget in 2022.

One reason sharp movements in bond yields matter to individuals is because they can have an impact on the mortgage market, with higher yields potentially making mortgage deals more expensive.

The jump in oil and gas prices came after Iran’s South Pars gas facility – one of the world’s largest natural gas fields – was hit on Wednesday evening.

Iran retaliated by targeting Ras Laffan, a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Qatar, causing “extensive damage”, raising concerns over the global energy supply.

QatarEnergy, the country’s state-owned energy company, said the required repairs to the facility will reduce output by 12.8m tons of LNG for three to five years.

The country, which produces a fifth of the world’s LNG, had halted production earlier in March in response to the conflict.

Nick Butler, former head of strategy at BP, told the BBC’s Today programme that the strike on Ras Laffan would “almost certainly cut off a level of supply of LNG to the world market”.

“I think the worry now is that the market is expecting things to get worse. That in their view, Mr Trump has opened a Pandora’s box, and he’s lost control of what is happening day-to-day in the region.”

He said the gas in Ras Laffan “can’t be substituted very quickly at all, and maybe not for a very long time”, which will push up prices.

As well as dashing hopes of interest rate cuts around the world, the conflict is set to have a drastic effect on the global economy, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has warned.

In its forecast for global trade this year, the WTO predicted growth in global goods trade would slow from 4.6% last year to 1.9% this year, but if higher oil and gas prices were sustained, then that could be just 1.4%.

“The global economy is full of uncertainty at this point in time, I think that’s the biggest issue,” WTO Director General Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the BBC.

She added that interruptions to oil and gas markets were also harming fertilizer supplies and this could reduce food availability and push up prices. Thailand, India and Brazil were particularly vulnerable, she said.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the country will show “zero restraint” if its infrastructure is attacked again.

“The ONLY reason for restraint was respect for requested de-escalation,” he wrote on X.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iranian energy fields, which he said Netanyahu agreed not to do.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday the US was considering suspending sanctions on Iranian oil as it looks for ways to keep oil prices in check.

The move would affect about 140 million barrels of oil already on the water, he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.

It adds to other US efforts to boost oil supplies, including the suspension of sanctions on Russian oil and moving to relax shipping rules to ease shipments of oil and other commodities between US ports.

The world consumes about 100 million barrels per day of oil.

Earlier efforts by world leaders to ease price pressures, including an unprecedented release of oil reserves, have done little to reduce prices.

Meanwhile, Iran has also suspended the flow of gas to Iraq to shore up domestic supplies, a senior Iraqi official told Reuters.

The vast majority of Iran’s gas supply – 94% – is used domestically, according to data from the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.