The head of French oil giant TotalEnergies has warned that a prolonged war in the Middle East would inflict serious damage on global economies.

CEO Patrick Pouyanne made the statement on Sunday during an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN.

“If it’s more than six months, we will have some real impacts. All the economies of the world will be damaged,” he said.

Pouyanne highlighted Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes.

He explained that this has severely restricted the world’s oil supply and triggered concerns over rising inflation and slower economic growth.

Pouyanne noted that in peacetime, around 20 percent of global oil production passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

He pointed out that currently, “what is stuck today, you have 10 million barrels of oil per day which cannot exit” the Gulf.

“And we cannot find the oil elsewhere in the planet,” said the energy boss, who was interviewed on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing.

Pouyanne stated that a conflict lasting three or four months could be managed.

“If this conflict lasts three, four months, we can swallow it. Today we manage to amortise this shock because we have inventories,” he said.

However, he cautioned that a war extending beyond six months would deliver a major blow to the global economy.

“So again, I hope we’ll find solutions quickly for this war,” he said.