Ed Kalegi

Transits over the past day were led by liquefied petroleum gas carriers, including one headed to India and others with Iranian affiliations.

The Iranian military says major oil producer Iraq is exempt from shipping restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz, a potentially significant move for global crude supplies.

In an Arabic-language video statement published by state-run Islamic Republic news agency, Iran's military spokesman said brotherly Iraq is exempt from any restrictions we have imposed on the Strait of Hormuz.

The declaration has the potential to unleash as much as 3 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil cargoes.

An Iraqi official, however, cautioned that the usefulness of the exemption will depend on whether shipping companies are willing to risk entering the Strait to collect cargoes.

It's not immediately clear if the exemption will apply to all Iraqi oil or just the nation's tankers or indeed how it will be enforced.

The sudden increase in U.S.

gasoline prices felt by American consumers is set to be on full display in key inflation data due out this coming week.

Economists are penciling in a 1 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for March, the sharpest one-month advance since 2022, after the Iran war pushed gas prices at the pump up by about a dollar per gallon.

At the same time, the core CPI, excluding energy and food, probably rose

three-tenths of a percent from a month earlier, according to a Bloomberg survey ahead of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report due out Friday.

The war in Iran isn't just affecting the price of oil.

The price of helium is also soaring, with helium spot prices double since Qatar, which produces more than a third of the world's supply, shut down the world's largest liquefied natural gas facility.

Cliff Cain is president of Pulsar Helium.

33% of the world's supply of helium is gone.

And we've had shortages over the past 20 years with the demand of semiconductors going up for many applications.

You know, everything from our national defense to your cell phones that are in your hands, right?

And we don't have ramp-up capacity just to make helium.

Pulsar helium president Cliff Cain on Bloomberg this weekend.

Helium's not just used for party balloons, it's a critical component in everything from medical services and defense production to the creation of semiconductors as a cooling agent.