Iran intensified its attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbours’ energy sites Thursday, hitting a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea and setting Qatari liquefied natural gas facilities and two Kuwaiti oil refineries ablaze as it struck back following an Israeli attack on its main natural gas field, a major escalation in the Mideast war that has sent global fuel prices soaring.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, spiked to $114 a barrel as global fears of an energy crisis rose, up more than 57% since Israel and the United States started the war Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran.
A ship was set ablaze off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and another was damaged off Qatar, underscoring the ever-present danger also facing vessels due to Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported.
Saudi Arabia had begun pumping large volumes of oil west to avoid the strait and ship it from the Red Sea, but the security of that route was called into question after Iran’s drone hit the country’s SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu.
Qatar, a key source of natural gas for world markets, said firefighters put out a blaze at a major LNG facility after it was hit by Iranian missiles.
Production had already been halted there after earlier attacks but it said the latest wave of missiles caused “sizable fires and extensive further damage.”
Damage to the facility could delay Qatar in getting its supplies to the market even after the Iran war ends.
A drone attack on Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery sparked a fire but caused no injuries, the state-run KUNA news agency reported.
The refinery is one of the biggest in the Middle East, with a petroleum production capacity of 730,000 barrels per day. Shortly after, a drone attack set ablaze the nearby Mina Abdullah refinery, officials said.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi said they were forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field, calling Iranian overnight attacks on the sites a “dangerous escalation.”
Missile alert sirens sounded in multiple other areas around the Gulf, and Israel warned of incoming Iranian fire multiple times.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all denounced the Iranian attacks, with Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat saying assaults on the kingdom meant “what little trust there was before has completely been shattered.”
But Iran showed no signs of relenting, with Saudi Arabia intercepting six drones in Riyadh and Eastern province before saying that the SAMREF refinery was hit.
The Saudi Defence Ministry said damage assessment was underway at SAMREF, a joint venture between the kingdom’s oil giant Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil.
In Israel, more than a half dozen waves of Iranian attacks targeting large parts of the country sent millions of people to shelters. The strikes caused damage to buildings but no significant casualties were reported.
The Iranian attacks came after Israel hit South Pars, the Iranian part of the world’s largest gas field located offshore in the Persian Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar.
With some 80% of all power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the attack directly threatens the country’s electricity supplies.
Natural gas is also used to supply household heating and cooking across the Islamic Republic.
Hitting the gas field is a “clear expansion of the conflict,” the New York-based Soufan Centre said in a research note.
