Oil, gas and borrowing costs surge as fears over Middle East escalate

BREAKING: Oil jumps to $105 a barrel as fears grow the Iran war will not be resolved quickly, sending gas prices and UK borrowing costs to multi-decade highs.

A hundred and five dollars a barrel, and nobody's calling the top.

The Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut, so Gulf oil and gas simply aren't reaching world markets. Then the Houthis grabbed the port of Mokha on the Red Sea, which makes shippers even more nervous. Wholesale gas in the UK went over two hundred pence a therm for the first time since late 2022, and Europe's storage is running low right when everyone needs to fill up for winter.

That feeds straight into bills. The price cap already rises 3.6 percent in October, and if this holds, January hurts too. Filling the car is where most people will feel it first.

And bond markets have noticed. UK ten year yields are the highest since 2007, the thirty year since 1998, which means dearer mortgages and dearer government debt at the worst possible moment. President Trump himself said he doesn't expect the fighting to end before the November midterms. So this price isn't a spike. It's the new weather.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.