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The U.S. military has directed 27 vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port since the beginning of its blockade around the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on X on Monday. (Reporting by Katharine Jackson and Doina Chiacu; editing by Michelle Nichols) [Read more]

OTTAWA - The annual rate of inflation accelerated to 2.4 per cent in March as the war in Iran sent fuel costs soaring, Statistics Canada said Monday. That’s a jump of more than half a percentage point from the headline inflation rate of 1.8 per cent in February, though economists had widely expected the March figures to come in a tick higher. Iran’s move to close of the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. and Israeli attacks and ongoing uncertainty over ceasefire talks has sent global [Read more]

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained at a virtual standstill on Monday with just three crossings in the space of 12 hours, according to shipping data. The oil products tanker Nero, which is under British sanctions for Russian oil activities, left the Gulf and was sailing through the Strait, according to satellite analysis from data analytics specialists SynMax and tracking data from the Kpler platform. Two other ships - a chemical tanker and a liquefied petroleum gas [Read more]

A consistent theme in global oil markets since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran is that the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz will be short-lived, and therefore so will the disruption to the supply of crude and refined products. That expectation has consistently been reflected in pricing for crude oil futures, which have risen sharply since the conflict began on February 28, but are still well short of the highs reached in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In effect, the [Read more]

China's crude oil imports from its biggest supplier, Russia, were 10.07 million tons in March, or 2.37 million barrels per day, up 14% year-on-year, according to customs data published on Saturday. * Imports from Brazil surged 154% to 5.03 million tons in March, or 1.18 million barrels per day. * Imports from China's second-biggest supplier, Saudi Arabia, were 5.86 million tons in March, or 1.38 million bpd, down 31% from the same period last year. * Imports from Malaysia, the largest [Read more]

Oil prices rebounded more than 6% on Monday after tumbling more than 9% on Friday on news the Strait of Hormuz is closed again after both the U.S. and Iran said the other party had violated their ceasefire deal by attacking ships over the weekend. Brent crude futures jumped $6.11, or 6.76%, to $96.49 a barrel by 2327 GMT and U.S. West Texas Intermediate was at $90.38 a barrel, up $6.53, or 7.79%. The U.S. military had seized an Iranian cargo ship that tried to run its blockade, U.S. [Read more]