Crude oil prices rise to six-week high due to trade hit between Iran and US, Saudi Aramco facilities reportedly hit

Oil prices rose to a six-week high on Monday as tensions in the Middle East escalated after the United States and Iran traded strikes over the weekend.

brent crude oil Futures, the international oil benchmark, rose 1.5% on Monday to $97.73 per barrel, and at one point reached $97.93 per barrel, the highest since July 23. west texas intermediateThe dollar, the U.S. oil benchmark, rose 1.8% to $93.10, also its highest since late July.

“If you attack our assets, you will be attacked too,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf wrote in a post to X on Monday.

The post was in response to an earlier post by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who wrote that the United States would “destroy (sink)” Iranian oil tankers if Iran fired on American ships.

Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities came under a new attack on Monday, the Financial Times reported. The damage to the facility, which houses a 400,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery in the Saudi Arabian city of Jizan, was still being assessed, but the perpetrator of the attack was not immediately clear, the FT said.

Oil markets were already on edge as the conflict escalated over the weekend. U.S. Central Command said Saturday that U.S. forces attacked three Iranian oil tankers after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two naval warships.

Centcom said the three Iranian ships are part of a “multi-billion dollar shadow network” funding Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its regional proxies.

In a statement on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry denounced the attack on the merchant ship as a “war crime” and an act of “economic warfare.”