Brent crude rose above $110 a barrel in early trade on Thursday after deadly Houthi attacks near Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oil field and on Dammam’s airport led the United States to order some diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia.
Brent was up $1.81, or 1.7%, at $110.63 a barrel at 7:36 a.m. UAE time, The National reported. US West Texas Intermediate crude gained $1.37, or 1.4%, to $98.52.
Brent had settled largely unchanged on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Two people were killed and two injured on Wednesday when debris from a drone intercepted by Saudi air defenses struck a contractor’s vehicle outside a processing plant at Shaybah, the Saudi Ministry of Energy said. Operations were unaffected.
Shaybah, in the Empty Quarter near the UAE border, produces about 1 million barrels of crude a day.
Hours later, an attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam killed one person and injured eight, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation said.
The US State Department ordered non-emergency government employees and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, citing Houthi attacks on civilian airports and critical infrastructure.
ING analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said in a note that the US order suggested “little improvement in Middle East tensions, and possibly further escalation.”
Oil flows from the Gulf have held up despite the attacks. Middle East flows through the Strait of Hormuz have recovered to near pre-war levels, according to data firm Kpler, while ING cited the chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. as saying Kuwait is exporting as much crude as before the war.
US crude stocks fell by 3.06 million barrels to 412.5 million barrels last week, the US Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.
