Irans Oil Industry after comments by President Biden. Welcome to business today, live from new york, i m ritika gupta. Share prices in the us have been searching after great news regarding the us economy. The strike on the East Coast ports has also been suspended. It is not all positive news, though. Oil markets are still reeling from a comment by President Biden on thursday that the White House is discussing whether to support an attack by israel on Irans Oil facilities. This is how one of the key benchmarks Brent Crude was trading in the last 15 minutes if it stays at these levels it will be up around 10 per cent this week. One Oil Market Watcher told us he is astounded by the president s comment. In over 15 years of covering the energy markets, reporting them and dare i say, trading on the markets as well, i have never seen anything. This is quite unprecedented. Whether its off the cuff or not, for a sitting us president , just a little over four weeks from the american president i
First time in nine years. Campaigners in weber welcomed the move, while others are cautious. An inquest has been opened into the deaths of four people who died when a Luxury Yacht sank off the coast of sicily. Hello, im geeta guru murthy, welcome to Bbc News now. Irans supreme leader has defended his Countrys Missile Attack on israel earlier this week as totally legitimate. Leading Friday Prayers in tehran for the first time in five years, Ayatollah Khamenei said it was the minimum Punishment Israel deserved. Overnight there were more israeli Air Strikes on lebanon including one near a Border Crossing which israel says targeted a tunnel used by hezbollah. Our diplomatic correspondent Caroline Hawley has the latest. This was designed as a show of strength from a regime deeply humiliated by a series of devastating blows to its allies. Hezbollah and Hamas Supporters gathered first to commemorate the hezbollah leader hassan nasrallah, killed in an israeli Air Strike a week ago today. Free
fast getting depleted. then there s the tourism industry which employs 2 million people but is sitting idle with the world continuing to shun the pyramids and cruises down the nile. that s $1 billion of lost revenue every month. growth has crawled to a standstill. meanwhile, tens of thousands of workers emboldened with a new sense of freedom are staging strikes to demand better pay. confronting them would mean work stoppages. appeasing them would cost money. and the state s coffers airport aren t exactly overflowing. then there s oil. the revolutions of the middle east have sparked a cycle of pain in the crude markets. look at three countries that have been hit hardest by people power movements egypt, tunisia, syria. they are all oil importers. egypt then will go from growth in 2010 to shrinking gdps this year. now, look at the neighbors who managed to stave off the wave of protests through a mix of bribery and appeasement. qatar, saudi arabia, kuwait.
and finally, the two top presidential candidates in egypt, two former office mates now rivals. let me first give you some of my own thoughts, having spent some time in cairo and actually listened to president obama s speech from here in tahrir square. the president s speech was remarkably comprehensive. it described the events that we now call the arab spring, explain their causes and consequences. he placed the united states squarely behind the democratic wave everywhere. though he didn t specifically mention one country. saudi arabia. the place where america s interests and values most obviously clash. i don t blame him. street protests in saudi arabia might warm our hearts, but they could easily lead to $250 a barrel oil and a global recession. that s a tough one. obama outlined specific policies to help the arab revolutions get consolidated. all good stuff. and he also talked about the need for a resolution of the israeli/palestinian conflict. with two states based on 1
think what the government wants to do is issue the bills just to gauge where they stand and then they can take it from there. so we ll have to wait and see what happens and then tomorrow, andrew, for instance, we can go back and gauge from there what the situation is in egypt s economic situation. indeed we will. thanks very much for that update. joining us from cnn abu dhabi with the latest there. we ll continue on this theme about the egyptian economy. we ll be talking to the country s finance minister later on in the program and asking him about why they re so confident that they can get the t-bills away and also when to expect an opening of the stock exchange. charles? yeah. look forward to hearing his answers on those questions, andrew. let s take a look at what s happening on the crude markets. oil trading crude oil futures trading close to flat. up two cents there.