Iran intensified the Gulf energy crisis to its highest level yet on Wednesday after Israeli forces struck the South Pars gasfield — the world’s largest natural gas reserve. The Revolutionary Guards named specific facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar as targets for imminent strikes and ordered immediate evacuation. Oil prices surged toward $110 a barrel as the crisis intensified beyond anything the conflict had previously produced.
South Pars, shared between Iran and Qatar, has been the backbone of Iran’s gas economy throughout the conflict. The Israeli strike — reportedly with US backing — was unprecedented in its direct targeting of Iranian fossil fuel production. Both countries had carefully avoided this move, but the decision to cross this threshold intensified the Gulf energy crisis beyond what markets or governments had previously been forced to contemplate.
Iran’s state media named Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery and Jubail complex, the UAE’s al-Hosn gasfield, and Qatar’s Mesaieed and Ras Laffan facilities as imminent targets. Workers and residents were told to evacuate without any delay. Governor Eskandar Pasalar of Asaluyeh condemned the US-Israeli attack as “political suicide” and declared the conflict had entered a total economic war phase with potentially catastrophic global consequences.
Brent crude rose nearly 5% to $108.60 per barrel, while European gas benchmarks jumped more than 7.5% to above €55.50 per megawatt hour. Gulf oil exports had already been reduced by 60% from pre-war volumes due to infrastructure damage and Iran’s Strait of Hormuz blockade. Iran had continued to export its own crude through the strait unimpeded while blocking Gulf neighbors from doing so — a strategic advantage it had wielded effectively throughout the conflict.
Qatar’s government spokesperson Majid al-Ansari warned that attacking energy infrastructure was a direct threat to global energy security, the environment, and the welfare of millions across the region. The intensification of the Gulf energy crisis that Iran’s threat represented was the most alarming development of the conflict’s energy dimension to date — one with the potential to push global energy supply from a manageable crisis to an unmanageable catastrophe.