March 23 (UPI) -- More than 40 energy sites in the Middle East have been damaged since the United States and Israel launched a war with Iran, the head of the International Energy Agency said Monday.
Fatih Birol said at the National Press Club in Canberra, Australia, that energy assets across nine countries have been "severely or very severely" damaged. The breadth of the damage and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created a historic global energy crisis.
"Not only oil and gas," Birol said. "Some of the vital arteries of the global economy, such as petrochemicals, such as fertilizers, such as sulfur, such as helium. Their trade is all interrupted, which would have serious consequences for the global economy."
Birol equated the impact on global energy to the twin oil shocks of the 1973 OPEC embargo and 1979 Iranian Revolution, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine combined.
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