Brent holds above $100 as Iran-US attacks threaten supply disruption

Houston (TIP): Brent crude futures breached $100 a barrel for the first time since late July, as Iran and the US hit tankers in the biggest wave of attacks on shipping since the war began, threatening to worsen the ongoing impairment of energy supplies from West Asia.
Front-month Brent crude rose $3.40, or 3.5%, to $101.32 a barrel while US West Texas Intermediate crude rose $3.45, or 3.7%, to $96.48 a barrel, highest since early June. Since late May, oil benchmarks have generally traded well below the $100-per-barrel psychological threshold, reflecting expectations that the conflict would remain on a low simmer. That calculus has been shifting of late with the resumption of strikes.
Iran also said it had fired ballistic missiles at a base used by US forces in Jordan. Attacks by both sides since the end of August have shattered a month of relative calm, with the US and Iran hitting military, shipping and energy assets.
The Revolutionary Guards said they would sharply escalate their response to any further attacks, hitting 20 targets if the enemy struck two or three. Iran would soon release maps of a new, enlarged off-limits zone at sea that would extend as far as Chabahar on the far reaches of Iran’s coast near Pakistan, the Guards said.
Recent days have also seen an escalation in fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen, a second theatre of war that threatens global energy supplies from West Asia.
The US said it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers overnight, releasing video of ships ablaze before they sank. The US military’s Central Command called its attacks a response to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeting a US Navy warship twice with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. No Americans were harmed, the US said.
Washington has announced a new policy of attacking Iranian tankers in retaliation for fire that threatens its warships, and says it has hit 10 so far over the past week.
Iran said it fired on two US ships and eight tankers in response. One seafarer was killed aboard the oil products tanker Hercules Star while at anchorage off Dubai and another crew member was missing, the vessel’s charterer, Peninsula, said. The British maritime security agency UKMTO described a vessel in the vicinity that was listing, possibly taking on water after being struck by a projectile. Two Iraqi port officials said a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of fuel oil, the New Andros, had caught fire after being struck by a drone in Iraqi waters. There were no reports of casualties among the 22 crew.