Iran is now hitting the oil and gas production - not export - sites in the Gulf states. Now Israelis doing the same in Iran.
I have commented previously on the plants in Asia producing basic production elements such as ethylene, fertiliser etc shutting down declaring "force Majeure"*, expect that to multiple rapidly.
Israel struck Iranian natural gas infrastructure at the South Pars natural gas field, the largest in the world. The largest natural gas processing facility in Iran was reportedly hit, along with additional gas infrastructure in Asaluyeh.
Iranian state media said on Wednesday that parts of the South Pars gas field and facilities in Asaluyeh were hit in a US-Israeli attack. “A part of the South Pars and Asaluyeh oil and gas facilities was targeted by the Zionist-American enemy,” Mizan news agency reported.
BREAKING: They just hit the factory.
Israeli strikes set fire to Phase 14 processing facilities at South Pars today. Iran’s oil ministry and Tasnim confirmed the blaze. Partial production suspension. An estimated 12 million cubic metres per day of gas output affected.
South Pars is the largest gas field on Earth. It produces 70 to 80 percent of Iran’s total gas output. That gas is not just fuel. It is the hydrogen feedstock for the Haber-Bosch process that synthesises ammonia, which becomes urea, which becomes the nitrogen that half the planet’s agriculture depends on. South Pars gas feeds Iranian fertiliser production at its molecular root.
The Hormuz permissioned chokepoint was already blocking the shipping route. Now the strikes are hitting the production source. The war is attacking the nitrogen supply chain at both ends simultaneously.
This is the escalation that collapses every remaining optimistic scenario.
The hopeful case for the global food system was always: the strait reopens, fertiliser flows resume, planting windows are partially salvaged. South Pars burning removes even that. If the strait reopened tomorrow morning and every provincial command stood down and every insurer reinstated cover by afternoon, the gas field that feeds the feedstock that feeds the ammonia that feeds the urea is on fire.
The molecule cannot ship because the strait is blocked. The molecule cannot be produced because the factory is burning. Two chokepoints on the same supply chain. Both compromised on the same day of the same war.
South Pars shares its geological reservoir with Qatar’s North Dome field. Qatar’s output is steady. Qatar’s fertiliser production is unaffected. But Qatar’s exports also transit through Hormuz. Qatar’s urea also requires passage through the permissioned chokepoint that the Mosaic Doctrine’s 31 provincial commands control via sealed packets and VHF radio.
The world’s two largest producers of the gas that becomes the nitrogen that grows the food are now compromised at different points on the same chain: Iran at the source, Qatar at the route......
* e.g.