Cormac McGarry

Well, literally nothing has changed overnight.

We've got the same picture on the water, specifically in the Strait of Hormuz today, that we have had for the last two weeks and pretty much for the last two months.

So for the last two weeks, the U.S.

has been blockading Iran.

And for the last two months, Iran has been pretty much blockading everyone else.

Nothing major has changed.

What seems to have spurred this oil price spike is a report from Axios saying that U.S.

President Trump is going to be briefed today, probably tonight, Irish time, on potentially new military options for the U.S.

to take in the Strait of Hormuz region.

There's nothing necessarily new there.

I would imagine the US president gets briefed on an almost daily basis on military options in the Strait of Hormuz.

So some of this could be down to speculative economics.

It could be down to actual prices catching up with real supply problems.

It's not necessarily down to what's happening militarily on the water.

Roughly speaking, Ireland doesn't completely rely on Middle Eastern oil and gas, but it does rely on the world's supply of oil and gas.

So with the Strait of Hormuz effectively cut off, including Iran, that's about 20% of the world's supply.

So no matter who we're importing from, that's going to affect the price.

And so if you just think about this in terms of mathematics and volume,

Ireland consumes about 150,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

That is actually a small amount of what one ship carries.