How the disaster in Japan will drive up energy prices

Panic hit the markets last night. First some EU official who should have known better shot his mouth off about an impending 'catastrophe' in Japan. Markets sold off hard. His department then admitted that his views were based as much on media reports as anything else – in other words, he knew nothing more than the rest of us. More worryingly, the US nuclear regulator said that things were worse than the Japanese were letting on. They don't want their people going anywhere within 50 miles of the Fukushima reactors. The Nikkei seems to have regained a touch of composure this morning. It ended down just 1.4% compared to earlier falls of 4%. And the yen has stabilised a little after surging wildly last night, although it remains at post-war record highs against the dollar. So as investors, what can we gather at this stage?