Sept 8 (Reuters) - Oil prices rose to a six-week high on Tuesday after Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen attacked Saudi energy facilities, setting oil installations ablaze and threatening a major expansion of the six-month-old Middle East war.
Brent crude futures rose 70 cents, or 0.7%, to $97.70 a barrel at 10:56 a.m. EDT (1456 GMT), while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose $1.21, or 1.3%, to $92.69. That puts Brent on track for its highest close since July 23 and WTI on track for its highest close since June
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The Houthis attacked four cities in the south of U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, wounding more than 70 people. Houthi-controlled media reported later on Tuesday that Saudi warplanes had carried out four airstrikes in Yemen's Jubah district east of the capital Sanaa.
Oil exports from the Gulf region have been severely impaired since Iran attacked energy infrastructure in the region and ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz following joint strikes from the U.S. and Israel in late February.
Saudi Arabia, the world's second-biggest crude producer behind the U.S., has been circumventing the strait by shipping oil west to the Red Sea. The attacks on Saudi Arabia, however, appear to be among the biggest carried out against that nation, and threaten to worsen the war's global economic effect by disrupting Middle East energy supplies beyond the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
"The price action reflects both genuine physical tightness — tanker flows through Hormuz remain well below normal — and a clear geopolitical risk premium. Right now the risk premium is doing a lot of the heavy lifting," said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade.
Wall Street is also coming to grips with the likelihood that Middle East shipping disruptions will continue into 2027. Goldman Sachs and HSBC raised their crude price forecasts for the rest of 2026 and 2027.
The number of commodity vessels sailing through the Strait of Hormuz totaled seven on Monday, compared with eight on the previous day, Kpler data showed on Tuesday.
Before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, about 20% of world oil supplies passed through the Strait of Hormuz.
Global fuel prices remain high as well due to disruptions at refineries around the world, especially in the Middle East and Russia.
In the U.S., diesel prices reached record highs last week, and Americans faced record-high gasoline prices over the Labor Day holiday weekend.
Senior industry executives predicted global diesel supply will remain tight through winter due to a lack of spare refining capacity, Russia's ban on exports following attacks by Ukraine and the approach of peak winter demand.
In China, the world's second-biggest economy behind the U.S., crude oil imports in August improved from July, but volumes were down 23.4% from a year earlier, according to customs data released on Tuesday. China has restricted refined oil product exports since March to safeguard domestic supplies even as domestic consumption fell because of higher prices.
Oil prices pared some of their gains after U.S. President Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a phone call that he wanted a swift end to the war in Ukraine, though Trump has floated that notion on numerous occasions since returning to the White House in early 2025.
Russia was the world's third-biggest crude oil producer behind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in 2025, according to U.S. energy data, and is a member of the OPEC+ group of producing countries.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that Europe's biggest economy will send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine from its national stocks, warning that Russia was likely to intensify its air campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure as winter approaches.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York, Anjana Anil and Anushree Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Emily Chow in Singapore. Additional reporting by Robert Harvey in London; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Susan Fenton and Mark Potter)
