Iran demands crypto fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
(…) “Everything can pass through, but the procedure will take time for each vessel, and Iran is not in a rush,” he added.
Decisions on the conditions for passing the strait are taken by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Hosseini’s remarks suggest Iran will require any tankers to use the northerly route close to its coastline, raising questions over whether western or Gulf state-linked vessels will be willing to risk transit.
Later on Wednesday Iran said it was halting the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
Before the halt Hosseini said that any tanker passing must email authorities about its cargo, after which Iran will inform them of the toll to be paid in digital currencies.
He said that the tariff is $1 per barrel of oil, adding that empty tankers can pass freely.
“Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,” Hosseini added.
“If any vessels try to transit without permission, [they] will be destroyed,” said the broadcast, which is in English, according to a recording shared with the FT. (…)
Allowing Iran to continue to control the crucial waterway is likely to be highly unpalatable to Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.
It also raises questions for Opec+, the oil producers’ group, with analysts warning that handing Iran control of Hormuz could fundamentally alter the balance of power within the organisation by giving Tehran a potential veto over rival members’ exports. (…)
Industry executives estimate that 300 to 400 ships are waiting to exit the Gulf as soon as it is possible to pass safely, with one describing it as a “car park”. (…)
Martin Kelly, head of advisory at maritime intelligence group EOS Risk, said that there was “no way” that the backlog of ships waiting to get out could be cleared in two weeks.
Around 10 to 15 ships might be able to transit the strait per day as the process was “quite time-consuming”, he said, down from 135 ships before the war.
Iran War Cease-Fire Can’t Undo the Middle East’s Energy Hangover The conflict could leave lasting economic damage. ‘We’ve never seen anything like this.’
Iranian missile and drone strikes have hit dozens of refineries, oil fields and natural gas export terminals across the region, ensuring a prolonged squeeze on global oil-and-gas markets even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens.
The sheer complexity of rebuilding these damaged energy facilities translates into an extended stranglehold on global supply—and higher oil prices. With refineries offline, even if producers pump crude, markets will still suffer shortages of refined products such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. Conversely, damaged export facilities mean hydrocarbons cannot be safely loaded onto tankers.
As a result, elevated oil prices reflect more than just the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck, which usually handles a fifth of global oil supplies. They are now anchored by the hard reality of diminished capacity.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Harri Kytömaa, an engineer at consulting firm Exponent who investigates industrial disasters, referring to the scale of the damage. (…)
“Supply strains will persist even if a cease-fire in the Middle East allows for a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,” said Henning Gloystein, Eurasia Group’s managing director for energy.
He estimates that about a third of the Gulf region’s oil refineries have been damaged by airstrikes, a loss of capacity that “will take several months at least to repair once hostilities end.”
The International Energy Agency estimates more than 40 crucial energy assets have been damaged, causing the largest supply disruption in history. Research firm Rystad Energy last month pegged energy infrastructure repair costs in the region at over $25 billion, covering engineering, construction, equipment and materials.
The fallout extends beyond energy, as restarting aluminum plants in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain that were struck by Iranian drones and missiles could take a year or more, locking in parallel upward pressure on metals prices. (…)
Some of the most devastating impact to energy infrastructure has fallen on liquefied natural gas.
At Qatar’s Ras Laffan, one of the world’s biggest LNG facilities, Iranian strikes knocked out some 17% of its capacity. Rystad Energy said a full restoration potentially would extend to around 2030 and repairs cost around $10 billion. (…)
Also at Ras Laffan, Shell’s highly profitable Pearl gas-to-liquids facility was struck so heavily that one of its two production lines will be closed for at least a year, according to the company.
Ports have also been targets. The U.A.E.’s Fujairah, a hub for oil loadings outside the Strait of Hormuz, has been repeatedly hit by Iranian drones, and operations have been on and off for days. Fujairah is also a center for oil storage, trading and ship refueling. (…)
Bidding for equipment and engineers’ time with the rest of the energy industry will push up costs, he added. (…)
Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s March 17-18 meeting, released Wednesday in Washington, showed policymakers wrestled with starkly differing scenarios for the US economy following the outbreak of the Iran war, and the policy reactions that might follow.
Most officials worried a protracted war could hurt the labor market and warrant lower interest rates. At the same time, many policymakers highlighted the risk to inflation that might ultimately warrant rate increases. (…)
Echoing those concerns, the minutes noted the “vast majority” of officials thought it may take longer to return inflation to the Fed’s 2% goal. (…)
In projections released after the meeting, policymakers signaled an expectation for one interest-rate cut in 2026, unchanged from their December forecasts. Investors are skeptical the Fed will cut at all this year, according to federal funds futures markets.
Most officials at the March meeting said they expected the unemployment rate to remain little changed, though the majority agreed that risks to the labor market were skewed to the downside. (…)
Some officials also highlighted the possibility that, with inflation already running above target for five years, “longer-term inflation expectations could become more sensitive to energy price increases.”
(…) Dombrovskis said the conflict could shave 0.4 percentage points off EU output this year if the war is short-lived, and 0.6 percentage points in 2026 and 2027 if the conflict drags on.
The shorter scenario would also grow inflation by 1 percentage point this year, while the more severe scenario could add as much as 1.5 percentage points both this year and next, Dombrovskis told EU lawmakers. (…)
“It is crucial to keep in mind that our room to maneuver here is more limited than before given previous shocks” and “the urgent need for additional defense spending,” Dombrovskis said.
Support measures “should be targeted, have a clear end date and not increase aggregate demand for oil and gas at a time when savings are needed,” he added.
The US Data Center Boom Is Hitting a Transformer Crunch More than half the US data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed.
(…) Almost half of the US data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled. One big reason is the shortage of electrical equipment, such as transformers, switchgear and batteries. They are needed not just for powering AI, but also for building out the grid that is seeing increased consumption from electric cars and heat pumps. US manufacturing capacity for these devices cannot keep up with demand, and the scarcity has caused data center builders to rely on imports.
(…) America’s AI prowess on computer chips and cutting-edge software is being hamstrung by the country’s inability to manufacture the electrical parts. “There’s not enough domestic capacity to go around, so people are pretty much forced to go to the export market,” says Benjamin Boucher, senior analyst with Wood Mackenzie. (…)
Electrical infrastructure adds up to less than 10% of the total cost of the data center, but it’s impossible to build the operation without it. “If one piece of your supply chain is delayed, then your whole project can’t deliver,” says Andrew Likens, Crusoe’s energy and infrastructure lead. “It is a pretty wild puzzle at the moment.” (…)
That means the US needs crucial parts from China to dominate it in the AI race, while China needs advanced chips from American companies to stay in the race.
Approximately 12 gigawatts of data center capacity is expected to come online in the U.S. in 2026, according to data by market intelligence firm Sightline Climate cited by Bloomberg. Yet only about one-third of that capacity is currently under active construction because of various constraints.
