Energy crunch may inflate prices

Europe situation seen imperiling ongoing fragile global economic recovery

Continuing geopolitical tensions like those involving Russia and Ukraine have further tightened global energy supplies and are expected to push commodity prices higher, which will make the ongoing fragile global economic recovery more challenging, analysts said on Friday.

Any escalation in hostilities will likely pose a significant risk to commodity exports and supplies and further inflate already elevated prices across energy classes and metals, said JPMorgan in a report.

Russia's impact on the global energy balance is far-reaching and oil is among the commodities most likely to see an impact should the situation intensify, it said.

With a more than 10 percent market share, Russia is one of the largest global oil producers. While it is the world's largest producer and exporter of fuel oil, Russia is also an important producer of aluminum, nickel, palladium and copper.

Luo Zuoxian, head of intelligence and research at the Sinopec Economics and Development Research Institute, said the potentially explosive situation in Europe carries massive risks for a world economy that is on its way to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic shocks. It will accelerate inflation, rattle markets and slow the world's economic recovery by sending already elevated energy prices ever higher.

The rise in international bulk commodity prices has increased firms' production costs and made the global economic recovery from COVID-19 more challenging, he said.

China is unlikely to face a shortage of oil and gas, although the rapid domestic economic recovery has been fueling the growth in oil prices in China. However, the rising oil prices will inflate costs for China's manufacturing sector as the country is highly dependent on oil imports, he said.

He also suggested China should continuously develop its new energy industry while encouraging investment in low-carbon technologies, energy conservation and emissions reduction, to reduce the percentage of fossil fuel in its energy mix.

Oil prices finished higher on Thursday with both the US crude benchmark and Brent exceeding $100 a barrel in intraday trading.

Gu Shuangfei, deputy director with the consultancy department of Nanhua Futures, said low capacity, low investment and low inventory have been keeping oil prices high ever since the outbreak of COVID-19. The Russia-Ukraine situation is only expected to further increase the global oil price in the near future.

Meanwhile, prices of commodities like aluminum, nickel and zinc have also surged.

Zhu Yi, a senior analyst with metals and mining at Bloomberg Intelligence, a market monitor, said aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange have touched a historic high and may rise further.

China's aluminum supply has been recovering slowly from last year's power shortage, and European smelters cut output on high power costs, she said.