The global oil price has risen as a new social media video shows a large fire outbreak at a Saudi Aramco storage tank facility in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
As of 5:40 p.m. Nigerian time, Brent, the international benchmark against which Nigeria is measured, was $1.37 higher at $120.4 per barrel, while WTI was $1.28 higher at $113.6.
The blaze at the Aramco site, a competitor of Nigeria National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPC) was captured on video and shared on Twitter and other social media platforms, and it is being blamed on an attack, but company officials were unavailable for immediate comment.
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However, since the beginning of the year, Houthi militants in Yemen have been heavily targeting the kingdom’s energy infrastructure.
Following the increase in security incidents, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on March 21 that it no longer bears “responsibility for any shortage in oil supplies to global markets as a result of the attacks on its oil facilities.”
The world’s largest crude exporter has a policy of keeping 2 million barrels per day (b/d) of spare capacity on hand to act as a supply buffer for markets.
However, Riyadh has rejected calls from the United States and Europe’s consumer nations to increase oil production in response to higher prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
