How a missile attack on a Qatari gas plant ends up raising domestic rice prices Bangladesh? The answer is fertilizer, an unpleasant product that nevertheless sustains much of what the world eats.
Qatar burns natural gas to produce ammonia. Ammonia is converted to urea. Urea enters the ground and from the ground comes the grain.
Urea prices in Southeast Asia have already risen more than 40 percent since Qatar’s LNG plant went offline. As of Monday, April and May shipments were trading above $700 a tonne, the highest since the third quarter of 2022 when Russia war in Ukraine international distribution of goods.
The Gulf currently accounts for about 45 percent of global urea exports.
