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Oil prices have jumped following Israel’s attack on Iran as experts warn the conflict could lead to higher gas costs.
The price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude jumped 6.8 percent to $72.65 Friday. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 7.1 percent to $74.30 a barrel.
“Gas prices will likely start to rise across much of the country later this evening in response to Israel's attacks on Iran, which have caused oil prices to surge. For now, I expect the rise to be noticable, but limited. Approx 10-25c/gal thus far, but this could change,” GusBuddy.com industry expert Patrick De Haan wrote on X.
Iran is one of the world’s major producers of oil and if a wider war escalates, it could slow the flow of Iranian oil to U.S. customers and elsewhere.
“Iran knows full well that Trump is focused on lower energy prices and actions by Iran that impact Middle East supply and consequently raise oil prices damage Trump politically,” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates consulting firm, told CNN.
Past attacks involving Iran and Israel have seen prices for oil spike initially, only to fall later “once it became clear that the situation was not escalating and there was no impact on oil supply,” said Richard Joswick, head of near-term oil at S&P Global Commodity Insights.
The Secretary of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries warned industry executives not to “raise false alarms.”
“There are currently no developments in supply or market dynamics that warrant unnecessary measures,” the organization said on X.
Israel said 200 fighter jets took part in strikes on more than 100 targets in Iran overnight in an escalation that threatens to spark a wider conflict in the Middle East. Israel said Iran has launched more than 100 drones towards Israel in response - but Tehran has denied these reports, according to Iranian media.
Trump firmly put the U.S. in Israel’s corner after the attacks. The president said he’d given Tehran “chance after chance to make a deal” that would have headed off the strikes by putting restrictions on the country’s nuclear weapons program and complained that Iranian negotiators had never been able to come to an agreement.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” he wrote on Truth Social. Trump also said he’d warned Iran that Israel “has a lot” of American-made military hardware — “the best and most lethal” — and is quite proficient in using it.
“Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” he added.
“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” the president wrote.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
