A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
It's the first day of oil trading since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, and oil markets are up more than 6%. NPR's Julia Simon reports there's more trouble ahead for global energy markets.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: On a normal day, you can go online and see dozens of oil tankers going in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway is the key shipping route for the Persian Gulf, primarily controlled by Iran. Normally, about 20% of oil and oil products from Qatar, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia go through that strait, but not right now. Now, barely any ships are passing through. Raad Alkadiri is with the consultancy firm 3TEN32 Associates. He says markets are now seeing huge disruptions of Middle Eastern oil flows.
RAAD ALKADIRI: There is a great deal of consternation in the markets about how and when that's going to recover.
SIMON: And it is not just oil. About 20% of global liquefied natural gas - or LNG - also goes through the Strait of Hormuz on big ships. Qatar is a huge LNG producer. If Iran attacks Qatar's LNG terminals, that would also impact global supplies. Anne-Sophie Corbeau is an international gas expert at Columbia University. She says many countries have some extra oil in storage, but it's a different story with liquefied natural gas.
ANNE-SOPHIE CORBEAU: The big problem is that in the LNG world, I mean, there is no such thing as spare capacity. So this is absolutely massive. It's going to impact everybody who is importing LNG.
SIMON: Natural gas prices rose in early trading today. Continued high prices, energy experts say, would be bad for electricity bills in the U.S., which relies a lot on natural gas plants. But experts say high natural gas prices are great for U.S. energy companies that export LNG. In recent years, many more countries have adopted solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles. They've done that in part so they're less vulnerable to oil and natural gas price shocks. Here's Paasha Mahdavi, oil expert at UC Santa Barbara.
PAASHA MAHDAVI: This is a reminder that a better and safer world is possible - one in which we do rely on renewable resources that no one country can threaten or stop.
SIMON: He says renewable energy and batteries is a climate and energy security solution. No one knows how long the war with Iran will last.
Julia Simon, NPR News.
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