Palm oil has become the costliest among the four major edible oils for the first time as buyers rush to secure replacements for sunflower oil shipments from the top exporting Black Sea region that were disrupted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Palm oil's record premium over rival oils could squeeze price-sensitive Asian and African consumers already reeling from spiralling fuel and food costs, and force them to curtail consumption and shift to rival soyoil , dealers said.

Crude palm oil (CPO) is being offered at about $1,925 a tonne, including cost, insurance and freight (CIF), in India for March shipments, compared with $1,865 for crude soybean oil.

Crude rapeseed oil was offered at around $1,900, while traders were not offering crude sunflower oil as ports are closed due to the Ukraine crisis.

The Black Sea accounts for 60% of world sunflower oil output and 76% of exports. Ports in Ukraine will remain closed until the invasion ends. read more

"Asian and European refiners have raised palm oil purchases for near-month shipments to replace sunoil. This buying has lifted palm oil to irrational price level," said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm.

"They have the option of buying soyoil as well. But prompt soyoil shipments are limited and they take much longer to land in Asia compared to palm oil," he said.

Soybean production in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is expected to fall because of dry weather.

Price-sensitive Asian buyers traditionally relied on palm oil because of low costs and quick shipping times, but now they are paying more than $50 per tonne premium over soyoil and sunoil, said a Kuala Lumpur-based edible oil dealer.

Palm oil's price premium is temporary, however, and could fade in the next few weeks as buyers shift to soyoil for April shipments, the dealer said.

Most of the incremental demand for palm oil is fulfilled by Malaysia, as Indonesia has put restriction on the exports, said an Indian refiner.

"Malaysian stocks are depleting fast because of the surge in demand. It is the biggest beneficiary of the current geopolitical situation," he said. (Reuters)

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday the war in Ukraine should be stopped and accused the United States, which he called a "mafia-like regime", of creating the crisis.

Iran's top political authority also said the roots of the conflict must be acknowledged.

Khamenei criticised Washington and other Western nations as talks reached a critical stage in Vienna between Iran and world powers about reviving a 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran said on Monday efforts to revive the pact could succeed if the United States took a political decision to meet Tehran's remaining demands, as months of negotiations enter what one Iranian diplomat called a "now or never" stage.

The stakes are high, because the failure of 10 months of talks could carry the risk of a fresh regional war, more harsh sanctions on Iran by the West and continued upward pressure on world oil prices already strained by the Ukraine conflict.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the remaining issue were the extent to which sanctions would be rolled back, providing guarantees that the United States would not quit the pact again and resolving questions over uranium traces found at several old but undeclared sites in Iran.

All parties involved in the talks say progress has been made toward the restoration of the pact to curb Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, which the United States abandoned in 2018. But both Tehran and Washington have said there are still some significant differences to overcome.

"The United States is a regime that lives on crises ..., in my view, Ukraine is a victim of the crises concocted by the United States," said Khamenei.

"There are two lessons to be learnt here. States which depend on the support of the U.S. and Western powers need to know they cannot trust such countries. It is people that matter; if Ukrainians supported their government, the situation would have been different from the current crisis," he said. (reuters)

Navalny's supporters call for civil disobedience against Ukraine war

The movement of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called on Monday for a campaign of civil disobedience to protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Putin declared war on Ukraine and is trying to make everyone think that Ukraine was attacked by Russia, that is, by all of us. But that's not right," the Navalny team wrote on its Twitter account.

"We must show that we do not support the war. We call on Russians to show civil disobedience. Do not be silent."

Navalny, the most prominent opponent of President Vladimir Putin, was jailed last year when he returned to Russia from Germany after recovering from what Western laboratory tests established was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia. Russia denied carrying out such an attack.

Since then, authorities have clamped down even more tightly on his movement, and key figures have fled into exile after being designated by the authorities as "foreign agents".

The OVD-Info group which monitors protests and arrests in Russia said 6,006 people had so far been arrested for anti-war demonstrations since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb.27 in what Putin said was a special operation to demilitarise and "denazify" the country. Ukraine and the West have dismissed that justification as baseless propaganda. (Reuters)

 Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described homosexuality as part of the "moral deprivation" widespread in Western civilisation, during a televised speech on Tuesday.

"There is severe moral deprivation in the world today such as homosexuality and things that one cannot bring oneself to even talk about. Some have rightly called Western civilisation a new age of ignorance," Khamenei said. (reuters)