Trump cites Pearl Harbor to woo Japan; oil market foresees lengthy recovery

(Originally published March 20 in “What in the World“) A president who will live in infamy.

Trump leaned on Japan Thursday to help re-open the Strait of Hormuz. “I expect Japan to step up because, you know, we have that kind of ⁠relationship and we step up for Japan,” Trump said while meeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the White House Thursday. If that wasn’t enough to make Takaichi uncomfortable, Trump made her visibly squirm with his response to a Japanese journalist who asked why he hadn’t informed allies about his plans to attack Iran: “We wanted surprise… Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s threat to “massively blow up” the world’s largest gas field did not calm oil and gas markets. Trump made the threat after Iran attacked Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility, in retaliation for Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field. Qatar is ordinarily the third-largest exporter of LNG, after the U.S. and Australia, and Ras Laffan accounts for roughly 20% of global liquefied natural gas supplies.

But Qatar had been forced by the war to shut down LNG exports before the attacks; restarting them could now take months. Qatar’s energy minister said the damage to Ras Laffan had reduced Qatar’s overall export capacity by 17% until it can be repaired in three to five years. Such damage assessments are now driving daily oil and gas price fluctuations, as traders assess how long it will take to resume normal production and shipments if and when Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is lifted.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, publicly reiterated a warning Riyadh reportedly made to Tehran almost two weeks ago, that attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities could prompt it to retaliate, joining the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.