Reuters Videos <\/p>\n
Fri, March 20, 2026 at 6:52 PM EDT <\/p>\n
STORY: Iraq has declared force majeure on all oilfields developed by foreign oil companies according to three energy officials with direct knowledge of the decision.It comes after military operations in the region disrupted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, halting most of the country’s crude exports.About 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies travel through the strait.’Force majeure’ is used \u200bto describe events outside a company’s control, such as a natural disaster, which usually \u2060releases it from contractual obligation without penalty.Iraq’s oil ministry ordered a full shutdown of production at affected areas, with no compensation arising from the measure under contract terms according to a letter dated March 17th that was seen by Reuters.International oil prices settled at their highest level in nearly four years on Friday, as the three-week-old U.S.-Israeli war with Iran escalated.The ministry said it would review the situation periodically and invited companies to urgent talks to agree on essential operations, costs and staffing under the force majeure conditions.The drop \u200bin production and exports is set to strain Iraq’s already fragile finances \u200cas \u2060the state relies on crude sales for nearly all public spending and more than 90% of its income. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reuters Videos Fri, March 20, 2026 at 6:52 PM EDT STORY: Iraq has declared force majeure on all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[13741,13740,3372,94,1632,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-29025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-direct-knowledge","9":"tag-energy-officials","10":"tag-force-majeure","11":"tag-iraq","12":"tag-oil-ministry","13":"tag-strait-of-hormuz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116264089829598663","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}