The cost of war will run the numbers from Marketplace.

I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio.

First, there are reports this morning that several cargo ships were hit in the Strait of Hormuz today.

They have not sunk and crews are safe.

There are also reports that Iran previously laid a small number of mines in the critical shipping passage, prompting

the U.S. to bomb several Iranian mine-laying boats earlier this week. All of this has essentially

blocked off the strait to everyone except Iran, which continues to send its own oil tankers to

deliver oil to China. This situation has left entire regions of the globe

competing to get the fuel they need, including liquefied natural gas. A fifth of global supply

has now been taken off the market. Marketplaces Elizabeth Troval reports.

The longer the war continues, the more disruptive it will be to the European and Asian countries that import LNG, says Jameson Cochlin with natural gas intelligence.

You've had such a big chunk of supply taken out. You're probably going to start to see things get pretty rough here by the end of the month, April, May. That's when competition really starts to intensify.

Lindsay Schneider with RBN Energy says while Asia has been disproportionately affected by the loss of natural gas,

this is like a very interconnected global market. So Asia is now buying LNG that would have been going to Europe, while Europe is trying

to refill natural gas inventories that depleted over the winter.

They need to refill that storage so that they don't start next winter in this precarious position.

Eventually, if the war continues, some things got to give, says Lauren

Treszekis with S&P Global Energy.

One way or another, demand has to come down to meet the available supply.

And that would take the form of high prices, prices so high that for poor countries in Asia...

It may not simply not make sense to buy that

guess. It may not work in terms of the economics. He says wealthier countries in Europe and

...