We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces.
We express our deep concern about the escalating conflict. We call on Iran to cease immediately its threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the Strait to commercial shipping, and to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 2817.
Freedom of navigation is a fundamental principle of international law, including under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The effects of Iran’s actions will be felt by people in all parts of the world, especially the most vulnerable.
Consistent with UNSC Resolution 2817, we emphasise that such interference with international shipping and the disruption of global energy supply chains constitute a threat to international peace and security. In this regard, we call for an immediate comprehensive moratorium on attacks on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas installations.
We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning.
We welcome the International Energy Agency decision to authorise a coordinated release of strategic petroleum reserves. We will take other steps to stabilise energy markets, including working with certain producing nations to increase output.
We will also work to provide support for the most affected nations, including through the United Nations and the IFIs (International Financial Institutions).
Maritime security and freedom of navigation benefit all countries. We call on all states to respect international law and uphold the fundamental principles of international prosperity and security.
I suspect that, for natural gas and Europe, the problem here is gonna be similar to the issue when Russia cut natural gas off. You might be able to ramp up extraction in Africa or the US or South America or whatever. But you’re going to have a hard time getting more liquefication capacity near extraction online rapidly, to convert it to a form that can be viably moved to major natural gas importers. That’s something like a 4-5 year time window to build out more capacity, from past reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_production
Looking at that, the major natural gas producers in Europe, outside Russia, are Norway (#8 globally) and the UK (#22 globally). Those guys are directly on the European pipeline network. If they can ramp up their production and have pipeline capacity, they can get it to the rest of Europe.
But outside of that, there’s only so much liquification capacity.
US gasoline and diesel prices promptly rose after the conflict kicked off, because the market for those is global. Anyone in the world can buy oil and transport it without much trouble, so prices tend to be correlated around the world. But the natural gas market requires scarce, specialized liquification and regasification facilities for long distance transport and as a result is fragmented, decoupled. Henry Hub (US natural gas) prices aren’t up. The major European natural gas index (TTF) is well up. The two diverging will mean that there isn’t a way to move adequate natural gas between the two. That’ll cause European consumers to be disproportionately hit by natural gas price increases.