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Goldman Sachs has predicted that oil prices could surge to as much as $120 per barrel if attacks on ships in the Middle East intensify.
The development has further triggered a hike in petrol prices with a litre selling at N1310 per litre on Monday from 1,290 per litre on Friday. Findings by Daily Sun across retail outlets operated by independent marketers in Lagos revealed an adjustment in their various pump prices.
According to some marketers, price movements in some depots could have equally been responsible for the hike.
According to Petroleumprice.ng, an online petroleum products trading platform, Soroman and A.Y.M Shafa as of Monday were trading at N1295 per litre.
On crude prices, Goldman Sachs said “Events over the last few days do suggest that the risk of shipping disruptions broadening and intensifying is an important one,” Daan Struyven, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg TV in an interview on Monday.
Oil prices have rallied in recent days amid the re-escalation of hostilities and jumped early on Monday in Asian trading to the highest level since mid-July, nearing the $100 per barrel threshold.
The situation escalated further this weekend after the U.S. said it had struck three Iranian oil tankers in response to the IRGC targeting two U.S. warships with ballistic missiles.
Following the attacks, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said that the era of “proportionate responses” is now over, and warned that future retaliations from Iran will be “faster, heavier and more painful.” Iran also said it would announce in the coming days a new “exclusion zone” which “will begin from the line of the U.S. naval blockade, extend toward the Strait of Hormuz, and from this side continue into the Persian Gulf.”
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“Any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list,” Mohsen Rezaei, the new head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday.
Early on Monday, Brent Crude traded at over $97 per barrel, while the U.S. benchmark, WTI Crude, was above $92 a barrel.
Goldman sees “meaningful upside to crude oil prices,” Struyven told Bloomberg, but added that investors should bet on rising natural gas and refined product prices.
In gas and fuels, “the supply shocks are bigger than in the crude market,” the expert said.
“Strike our assets and you get struck,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Monday, in what appeared to be a response to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warning that Tehran’s oil fleet was “defenseless”.
The United States and Iran traded strikes on oil tankers and warships over the weekend, marking a major escalation of the war between the two countriesthat began when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on February 28, maritime intelligence firm Marisks said.
“Commercial tankers are now being deliberately used as instruments of reciprocal economic pressure, substantially weakening the previous distinction between military confrontation and commercial shipping,” Marisks said.
