Mounting fears that widening clashes in the Middle East could further disrupt energy supplies briefly pushed the price of oil to about $110 a barrel on Friday, while U.S. diesel prices climbed above $6 a gallon.
On Friday, the Saudi Arabian Energy Ministry said a critical pipeline that carries oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea had been “targeted several times” the day before and was shut down as a precaution.
Concerns over disruptions to oil supplies because of the U.S. war against Iran broadened this week with reports that the Houthi militia had seized a strategic Red Sea island and a port city, which could further choke shipping in the area. A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry told Iranian media outlets on Friday that Persian Gulf states planned to meet with Iran on Monday in Oman to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
The price of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, surged early Friday before easing to about $105 a barrel in early afternoon trading. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. standard, traded as high as $104 a barrel before falling to about $99.
Worries over diminishing energy supplies have prompted governments and consumers to cut back on their use. On Friday, the International Energy Agency lowered its forecast for global oil demand this year, expecting a drop of 2.5 million barrels a day, a more severe decline than it had previously predicted.
“The continuing impasse in negotiations between the United States and Iran delays the prospect of a normalization of flows into next year,” the agency said in a report, adding that demand for oil is expected to rebound in 2027, “narrowly offsetting this year’s losses.”
The rise in oil prices “pales in comparison with those for refined products, where market tightness is now most acute,” the I.E.A. wrote in its report.
The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel jumped to $6.06, according to the AAA motor club, up 60 percent since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. The national average for gas prices rose to $4.30 a gallon, an increase of 44 percent since the war began.
The jump in energy prices has stoked fears of broader inflation. On Friday, a report showed that consumer prices in the United States rose at an annual pace of 3.4 percent in August.
Higher prices for energy products like gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil are putting a squeeze on consumers and could become a headache for Republican lawmakers, who are trying to retain control of Congress in the midterm elections in November.
Iran has effectively blocked most ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war, about a fifth of the world’s crude oil flowed through the strait.
With assistance from the U.S. Navy, a few tankers have been able to get through, but Iran has signaled in recent days that it was willing to be more aggressive in exerting control over the strait.
Oil refineries in the Africa, Asia, Europe and North America have also increased production of diesel, gasoline and other fuels to make up for the loss of supplies from the Middle East and Russia, where refineries have been taken offline by attacks from Ukraine.
But demand for energy is still outstripping supply. As a result, governments, businesses and farmers are having to pay more for the diesel they need to run trucks, farm machinery and other heavy equipment.
And homeowners who use heating oil, which is similar to diesel, are growing concerned about their monthly bills as winter nears. Prices for heating fuel are up 52 percent year over year, according to the August inflation report.
Fuel accounts for as much as 30 percent of food costs in the United States, said Kate Gordon, a former senior adviser in the Department of Energy and now the chief executive of California Forward, a nonprofit business group.
“So far, farmers and trucking companies have been absorbing a lot of this cost increase,” she said, “but with the war continuing on with no end in sight, they are going to pass through more and more of the price jump to consumers.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond remained elevated at 4.95 percent on Friday, as investors feared that higher energy prices would stoke broader inflation. The two-year Treasury yield, which acts as a barometer of what investors expect the Federal Reserve to do, inched higher to 4.61 percent.
The recent rise in yields also comes as governments borrow more money and tech giants use mountains of debt to finance the building out of their data centers.
Some factors pushing up bond yields will dissipate, Goldman Sachs said Friday in a research note, but concerns over fiscal deficits will linger. “The lack of a move higher in volatility makes it hard to claim that we’re fundamentally mispriced,” George Cole, a Goldman analyst, said in a webinar.
Pressure is mounting on the Fed to raise interest rates. “Financial markets are now pricing two and a half further rate hikes,” analysts at ING wrote in a research note.
“This time around, we think that one and done might be the case,” they added, pointing to “weak wage growth, tariff refunds and a stagnant housing market” to support their prediction, although they acknowledge that high energy prices remain a risk.
The S&P 500 rose 1 percent in afternoon trading in the United States on Friday, on track to a four-day losing streak. The rise was not enough, however, to prevent the benchmark index from recording a decline for the week.
Shirin Hakim contributed reporting.
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