Oil Jumps Over 4% to 16-Week High as Saudi Pipeline Strike, Red Sea Attacks Tighten Supply

Oil prices climbed more than 4% on Monday to their highest level in 16 weeks, as fresh strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure and attacks on vessels in the Middle East deepened concerns about global supply.

Brent futures gained $4.68, or 4.5%, to trade at $109.29 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose $4.21, or 4.2%, to $104.26. Both benchmarks remained in technically overbought territory for more than a week and were on course for their strongest closes since May 19.

The latest surge followed a Friday attack that disabled Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline, a route that allows Riyadh to move crude to the Red Sea and bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The outage threatens as much as 4% of global oil supply. Riyadh blamed the strike on Iran-backed fighters in Iraq.

With the pipeline down, the Red Sea port of Yanbu will have to rely on storage, which three industry sources estimated can cover five to seven days of exports. Analysts cautioned that the market's relatively measured response reflects an expectation that Saudi inventories will cushion shipments for now, but warned that sentiment could shift quickly if the disruption outlasts that buffer.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said they fired dozens of missiles and drones on Monday at a Saudi military airbase in Khamis Mushait near the border, hitting aircraft hangars, radar systems, runways and ammunition depots. The group also reached the island of Perim on Friday, tightening its control over the Bab el-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.

Gulf states called off a meeting with Iran that had been planned for Monday. Iran separately issued a list of 77 ships it said had violated its protocols for operating in the Strait of Hormuz.

Preliminary ship-tracking data showed commodity vessel transits through Hormuz fell to single digits per day over the weekend, well below a 10-day average of 14. Before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, roughly a fifth of the world's oil supplies passed through the strait.

Refined products also came under pressure. U.S. diesel futures traded around $5.18 a gallon, putting the contract on track to surpass a record $5.14 set in April 2022. The gain pushed the heating oil crack spread, a gauge of refining margins, to an all-time high of about $114 a barrel.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to halt attacks on Russian diesel infrastructure, saying the strikes were causing a fuel shortage that is "hurting the world." Ukraine has said it targets Russian refineries to raise the cost to Moscow of continuing its invasion. Russia was the world's third-biggest crude producer in 2025, behind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and is part of the OPEC+ group.