Albo strikes gas for noodles exchange with Singapore

While indicating that Australia may use its exports of coal and LNG to secure supplies, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pressed for ongoing fuel commerce with important allies like Singapore.

Not that it matters much, given Singapore imports nearly three-quarters of its oil from the Gulf and has no reserve. Is Albo guaranteeing it sends noodles?

The government is preparing backup measures, including the potential for gasoline rationing, according to Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

Birol advocated for demand-reduction strategies including working from home and carpooling.

Due to its reliance on Australia for the majority of its natural gas, South Korea has a stake in providing fuel to Australia, according to Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Matt Thistlethwaite.

Such implicit threats are no bad thing at this juncture, but it would be remiss of me to remark on some positive developments today beyond the Canberra morons.

Good luck navigating through the fog of Trump’s war. His lunacy makes things impossibly opaque, but he did, at least, refrain from committing the war crime of bombing Iranian power infrastructure.

Donald Trump’s decision to back down from his threat to destroy Iran’s power infrastructure came after US allies and Gulf countries privately warned him of the dangers of following through with his threat.

Trump said he was giving Iran a reprieve from his threatened action, pointing to new talks with Tehran that he believed could broker a deal to resolve the conflict.

The president’s decision was also seen as an effort to calm markets rattled by his threats and the ongoing conflict, with Trump acknowledging the link between the talks and the potential impact on oil prices.

Iran has now denied it is talking to Trump on five separate occasions as Trump keeps talking down oil. I very much doubt Trump is talking to anybody other than the mirror, but given Iran’s most important weapon is the oil price, we can expect very regular fake talks to squeeze the longs.

There is some less-bad news for the crisis as well. JPM reckons that by April, the many efforts to shift oil dynamics will have halved the shortage to only 10x the size of the Ukraine War shock.

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Albo’s bludgers will have contributed precisely zero to this global effort, but we will, within two weeks, as diesel supplies run low and miners and agriculture progressively turn off.

Our neighbourhood remains the focal point of the shocks. Astonishingly, Atlantic basic stocks are still rising.

Driving unprecedented price disparity.

Albo is exploring the possibility of having Australia towed to the North Atlantic, provided no LNG contracts are broken.