By Nicole Jao <\/p>\n
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose nearly 5% on Friday after the U.S. and Iran stepped up attacks across the Gulf, with shipping threatened by a \u200cpotential Red Sea closure on top of the restricted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. <\/p>\n
Brent \u200ccrude futures rose by $3.98, or 4.73%, to $88.21 a barrel by 2:16 p.m. ET (1816 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were up $3.80, or \u200b4.81%, at $82.75. <\/p>\n
For the week, both benchmarks were headed for a 16% increase, with Brent on track for a third consecutive weekly gain and WTI set for its second. <\/p>\n
Diesel refining margins reached record highs on Friday, with low-sulphur gasoil futures touching $66.25 over Brent crude. <\/p>\n
The Middle East is a major diesel exporter and the Hormuz closure, as \u200cwell as attacks on oil refineries, \u2060have tightened fuel markets and bolstered prices globally. <\/p>\n
The collapsed truce between the U.S. and Iran has resulted in a sharp decline in oil flows in the strait as \u2060Iran targets vessels transiting through it. Before the Iran war, about 20% of global oil supplies flowed through the waterway. <\/p>\n
The two foes expanded fighting on Friday, with the U.S. striking bridges and an airport in Iran and Tehran \u200bhitting a \u200bpower and desalination plant in Kuwait. Iran said it \u200blaunched more strikes on U.S. facilities in \u200cthe Middle East, including the first direct attack in Syria, after a sixth straight night of U.S. strikes on Iranian military facilities. <\/p>\n
Iran has pressed the Houthis to close the Red Sea route if the U.S. attacks Iran’s power infrastructure. <\/p>\n
“Given that so much of Saudi Arabia’s exports have been redirected to the port of Yanbu via the East-West Pipeline to avoid Hormuz, any such development is a threat indeed,” Tamas Varga, analyst \u200cat PVM Oil Associates, wrote in a note. <\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia has \u200bdiverted more than 70% of its normal daily crude exports to \u200bthe Red Sea port of Yanbu since \u200bthe beginning of the war. Shipments from Yanbu averaged 4 million barrels per day \u200cin recent weeks, up from around 973,000 \u200bbpd in the same period \u200blast year. <\/p>\n
Qatar’s defence ministry said its armed forces thwarted an Iranian missile attack early on Friday and the interior ministry said a child was wounded by shrapnel resulting from interception operations. <\/p>\n
In a \u200bdifferent conflict zone, Ukraine’s military said \u200cit struck a Russian oil refinery in the Yaroslavl region on Thursday. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nicole Jao \u200bin New York, Robert Harvey in London, Mohi Narayan in New Delhi and Helen Clark \u200bin PerthEditing by David Goodman, Philippa Fletcher, Rod Nickel) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nicole Jao NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose nearly 5% on Friday after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,5897,202944,9891,172000,81158],"class_list":["post-808497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-oil-prices","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-u-s-west-texas-intermediate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}