Brent Crude Nears $117 a Barrel, Highest Since May, on Saudi Attack Fears

⛽ Crude oil prices have risen for a third consecutive week, driven by fears that repeated attacks by Yemen-based Houthi militants on Saudi Arabia could disrupt energy supplies across West Asia. Brent crude rose at least 1 percent to above $116.72 a barrel — its highest level since May, according to The New York Times on Saturday — with prices gaining 6.2 percent over the week in their biggest weekly increase in two months.

📉 The scale of the move is best read against the year's arc. Crude oil last reached a peak of $111.30 a barrel in May, and prices have climbed nearly 60 percent since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28. The latest rise reflects fears that spreading military conflict across West Asia could block oil supplies from reaching international markets, the report said — and the market is now close to its peak since the war began.

💸 The surge is broadening across benchmarks. The US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) also rose above $103 a barrel on Friday, up more than 50 percent since the conflict began. The price pressure weighed immediately on equity markets: the pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.13 percent at the start of trading on Friday and remained on track for a weekly decline after recording its steepest drop in three weeks on Thursday, The Irish Times reported.

🌏 There was one note of relief in an otherwise tightening market: Russia's domestic fuel market showed signs of easing, with Interfax, citing the Russian government, reporting that petrol and diesel production had increased and fuel stocks were rising. But Dennis Kissler, senior vice-president of trading at US investment and brokerage firm BOK Financial Securities, said recent geopolitical tensions pointed to the prospect of more intense attacks on Iran, fuelling expectations of higher oil prices over the longer term.

💰 The Bangladesh bill keeps climbing

📝 For Bangladesh, every dollar on the barrel translates directly into import costs. The country meets the bulk of its commercial energy needs — crude and refined petroleum products, and liquefied natural gas for power generation — from international markets, and petroleum-related import payments more than doubled year on year in the July-August period of the current fiscal year as prices climbed. At a Brent price near $117, the fuel and fertiliser import bill compounds pressure on the trade account, the exchange rate and the subsidy arithmetic of the power sector simultaneously.

⚡ The transmission to households and industry runs through familiar channels: fuel-adjusted electricity tariffs, transport fares that rise with diesel prices, and working-capital costs for manufacturers whose generators, boilers and logistics run on imported fuel. For exporters already squeezed by weak global demand, an energy-cost shock lands directly on margins — and for the central bank, higher oil means higher dollar demand from state importers at precisely the moment reserve rebuilding remains a priority.

🔭 What to watch

🔎 Three variables will decide how much of this spike becomes a lasting burden. First, whether the attacks on Saudi infrastructure escalate from pin-prick strikes to sustained disruption of export capacity — the difference between a risk premium and a physical shortage. Second, whether strategic reserves and non-OPEC supply can cushion the market, as they have in earlier Middle East price shocks. Third, how the Iran conflict evolves, since the 60 percent price climb since February is, at root, a war-risk number rather than a demand number.

🚀 Bangladesh's near-term playbook is constrained but known: adjusting fuel prices to keep the subsidy line sustainable, accelerating the gas-field work that raises domestic output, and pushing the demand-management measures already in force — from shopping-hour restrictions to efficiency drives. The longer-term answer is the one the country has been circling for a decade: more domestic energy, more renewables, and an economy that earns enough foreign exchange to absorb shocks of this size. Oil at $117 does not change that agenda; it simply prices the cost of continuing to defer it.

📊 The wider emerging-market picture is equally sobering. Every sustained leg above $100 reshapes the balance of payments of oil-importing nations across South Asia: import bills swell, currencies weaken, and inflation expectations harden just as central banks hoped to ease policy. Bangladesh's peers in the region face the same arithmetic, which is why fuel-price adjustments and power-tariff formulas are moving up the political agenda from Colombo to Islamabad — and why the current account gains Bangladesh has made from record remittances are so valuable as a buffer right now.

🛢️ The supply side offers little near-term comfort. OPEC producers hold spare capacity in theory, but months of conflict have shown how quickly shipping lanes, insurance premiums and port operations can tighten effective supply even when barrels physically exist. Freight rates through affected waterways already carry war-risk surcharges, and each escalation cycle adds a layer of cost that persists long after the shooting stops — a hidden import tax that landlocked and coastal importers alike end up paying.