By Shadia Nasralla
LONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Oil prices were near six-week highs on Monday as tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran on vessels sailing in the Strait of Hormuz and other areas kept crude oil flows in the Middle East low.
Brent crude futures were down 9 cents or 0.1% at $96.19 a barrel at 0822 GMT, having earlier hit their highest point since July 24 at $97.93.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude also hovered near a recent six-week high at $91.03 a barrel, down 45 cents.
Brent rose
around 8% last week, while WTI gained nearly 10% after the U.S. and Iran resumed attacks.
U.S. forces struck three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, the U.S. Central Command said, including one off the coast of Kharg Island, near Iran's key oil export hub.
The navy of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Saturday it targeted three oil tankers that were travelling through unauthorized routes in the Strait of Hormuz as well as three additional U.S. vessels in other areas.
The Saturday attacks represented a "major escalation," said Marisks, a maritime intelligence firm.
"Commercial tankers are now being deliberately used as instruments of reciprocal economic pressure, substantially weakening the previous distinction between military confrontation and commercial shipping," it added.
An average of 10 commodity ships transited the Strait of Hormuz per day over the past 10 days, the lowest since May, data from analytics firm Kpler showed on Monday.
"If tanker traffic begins to slow materially, the market could price in a much larger supply shock. And there are already signs that this is happening," said Priyanka Sachdeva, head of market insights at Phillip Nova.
Goldman Sachs said oil prices may rally to as much as $120 a barrel if attacks on shipping rise.
A restricted zone will be announced outside the Strait of Hormuz in the coming days, said Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, according to state media.
OPEC+ kept its oil output policy unchanged for October at a meeting on Sunday, the producer group said in a statement, as it needs to agree on new quotas before deciding its next output steps.
(Additional reporting by Florence Tan and Sam Li; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Thomas Derpinghaus)
