With Attacks on Energy Facilities, Iran War Enters New Phase, Oil Jumps Above $119

• Iran attack wipes out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity 

•Pentagon wants $200 billion more for ongoing war 

•Six Countries Condemn Attacks on Gulf Energy in Joint Statement

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

With attacks shifting decisively toward critical oil and gas infrastructure across the Gulf, the Iran war has entered a dangerous new phase, one that is already reverberating through global energy markets and military calculations.

To this end, oil prices surged sharply yesterday, with Brent crude briefly climbing above $119 per barrel, before falling to below $110 last night, after coordinated Iranian strikes hit energy facilities across multiple countries, deepening fears of prolonged supply disruptions and wider regional instability.

The escalation followed earlier Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas field, triggering a cycle of retaliation that has now placed some of the world’s most strategic energy assets directly in the line of fire.

Perhaps, the most consequential blow came in Qatar, where Iranian strikes on the Ras Laffan industrial hub damaged facilities responsible for about 17 per cent of the country’s liquefied natural gas output. The destruction of key LNG trains and processing units is expected to take up to five years to repair, removing millions of tonnes of supply annually from global markets.

As the world’s largest LNG exporter and a supplier of roughly a fifth of global demand, Qatar’s disruption has sent shockwaves through Europe and Asia, forcing contract suspensions and raising the prospect of a prolonged global gas shortage. The targeting of such infrastructure marked a strategic shift in the conflict, from military confrontation to economic warfare with global consequences.

Amid the intensifying conflict, the US Department of Defence is pushing for additional funding to sustain expanding military operations in the region, reflecting concerns that the war is entering a prolonged and resource-intensive phase.

Also, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected claims that Israel’s actions triggered deeper US involvement, insisting that Tehran’s retaliatory strikes, not Israeli offensives, are responsible for widening the conflict.

His comments came amid growing international concern that the war risks evolving into a broader regional confrontation involving multiple state actors. While Israel maintained that its strikes were preemptive and necessary, critics argue that the targeting of Iran’s energy infrastructure set off the current chain reaction now engulfing the Gulf.

In the same vein, highlighting the rising risks to advanced military assets, a US F-35 fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing after sustaining damage believed to be from Iranian fire.

The incident marked a rare vulnerability for one of America’s most sophisticated aircraft and underscored how contested the operational environment has become.

Iran Attack Knocks Out 17% of Qatar’s LNG Export Capacity

Iranian attacks have knocked out 17 per cent of Qatar’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO told Reuters on Thursday.

Saad al-Kaabi said two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in the unprecedented strikes. The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of LNG for three to five years, he said in an interview.

“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that Qatar would be – Qatar and the region – in such an attack, especially from a brotherly Muslim country in the month of Ramadan, attacking us in this way,” said Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs.

Hours earlier Iran had aimed a series of attacks at Gulf oil and gas facilities after Israeli attacks on its own gas infrastructure.

State-owned QatarEnergy will have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China due to the two damaged trains, Kaabi said.

“I mean, these are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure. We already declared, but that was a shorter term. Now it’s whatever the period is,” he said.

QatarEnergy had declared force majeure on its entire output of LNG, after earlier attacks on its Ras Laffan production hub, which came under fire again on Wednesday. “For production to restart, first we need hostilities to cease,” he said.

U.S. oil major ExxonMobil is a partner in the damaged LNG facilities, while Shell is a partner in the damaged GTL facility, which will take up to a year to repair. Texas-based ExxonMobil holds a 34 per cent stake in LNG train S4 and a 30 per cent stake in train S6, Kaabi said.

The scale of the damage from the attacks has set the region back 10 to 20 years, he said.

“And of course, this is a safe haven for a lot of people, to have a safe place to stay and so on. And that image, I think, has been shaken.”

The fallout extends well beyond LNG. Qatar’s exports of condensate will drop by around 24 per cent, while LPG) will fall 13 per cent. Helium output will fall 14 per cent, and naphtha and sulphur will both drop by 6 per cent. The damaged units cost approximately $26 billion to build, Kaabi said.

Oil Jumps Above $119/Barrel on Middle East Energy Attacks

Nigeria’s benchmark Brent oil prices jumped above $119 a barrel on Thursday after  Iran attacked energy facilities across the Middle East following Israel’s strike on its South Pars gas field, a major escalation in the war.

Brent futures were up $6.02, or 5.6 per cent, at $113.40 a barrel. Earlier in the session, Brent had climbed more than $11 to a high of $119.13, close to the three-and-a-half-year peak touched on March 9.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was up 7 cents, or 0.1 per cent, at $96.39 a barrel, after earlier gaining almost $4 to trade at $100.02. WTI has been trading at its widest discount to Brent in 11 years, Reuters said.

Meanwhile, Middle East benchmark Dubai and Oman premiums hit all-time highs at about $65 per barrel, according to trade sources and Reuters data. The U.S. central bank held interest rates steady on Wednesday, projecting higher inflation as policymakers take stock of the impact of the war.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is keen to counteract rising fuel costs ahead of November elections and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. may soon remove sanctions from Iranian oil that is stranded on tankers, amounting to around 140 million barrels.

‘US Informed of Strike on Iran Energy Facilities’

The U.S., which had previously pledged to rein in attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, was informed of the plan ahead of time and had no issues with it, American and Israeli officials said Wednesday.

Trump approved of the strike, U.S. officials said, to pressure Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. The officials said Trump believed Tehran received the message and wants to refrain from further strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.

On Wednesday night, Trump denied that the U.S. knew in advance about Israel’s attack on South Pars.

“The United States knew nothing about this particular attack” on South Pars, Trump said. “Unfortunately, Iran did not know this, or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Pars attack, and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar’s LNG Gas facility,” he said on social media, referring to Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Qatar’s liquefied-natural gas hub that was hit once on Wednesday and again on Thursday morning local time. “No More Attacks Will Be Made By Israel,” Trump added.

The president went on to say that if Iran strikes Qatar’s gas hub again, the U.S. “will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”

The attack Wednesday hit facilities that process gas coming from the field. Fars News, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, reported explosions at several units in that complex.

Iran’s missile attack later Wednesday on Ras Laffan, where Qatar has facilities for gas pumped from its side of the giant field, left extensive damage and set fires after four missiles were intercepted and one got through. Qatar is one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied-natural gas, a super-chilled substance that can be shipped around the globe.

Qatar condemned the attack as a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to its national security.

The Revolutionary Guard said that refineries, petrochemical facilities and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have become direct and legitimate targets after the Israeli attack on South Pars. Operators had begun evacuations for sites on the list as well as other energy facilities in the region as a precaution, Gulf oil officials said.

Pentagon Wants Billions of Dollars More for Ongoing War

Also yesterday, Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth said the military wanted more billions from Congress to fund the Iran war as gas prices hit an average of $3.90 a gallon nationwide and global oil prices surged after Israel attacked a critical Iranian gas field.

Trump sought to distance the United States from the Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field, which has infuriated Washington’s Gulf allies, saying in a Wednesday night social media post that Tel Aviv had “violently lashed out” and the U.S. “knew nothing about this particular attack.” But he threatened to destroy the rest of the gas field if Iran continued attacks on its neighbors, many of which host U.S. military bases.

Hegseth, speaking at the Pentagon Thursday morning, appeared to confirm a Washington Post report that he would seek $200 billion from Congress to continue the now 20-day-old war.

“It takes money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth said.

Also, the U.S. may soon drop sanctions on an estimated 140 million barrels of Iranian oil to increase global supply and lower prices, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday, but some experts doubted it would make a much difference in the cost of gasoline and crude oil.

Bessent, speaking on Fox Business Network, said the Iranian oil amounted to “10 days to two weeks of (global) supply.” The oil in question has been loaded onto tankers but officially remains unsold due to U.S. sanctions.

I Misled Nobody, Netanyahu Says

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied misleading foreign leaders about the high costs of going to war against Iran such as spiraling energy costs and the deaths of servicemembers.

“I misled no one,” Netanyahu said. “I didn’t have to convince President Trump of the need to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear programme, putting it underground and being able to launch nuclear-tipped missiles at the United States. He understood that.”

Netanyahu said the U.S.-Israeli partnership is the only way to halt Iran’s nuclear programme. He called the loss of troops painful, recalling how a fellow soldier died in his arms during his military service and how he lost a brother in the historic Entebbe rescue of hostages.

“Freedom is precious. It has its costs,” Netanyahu said. During a press conference, Netanyahu said that there can’t only be attacks from the air during the war.

“You can’t do it only from there. You can do a lot of things from the air … but there has to be a ground component as well,” he said. “There are many possibilities for this ground component, and I take the liberty of not sharing with you all those possibilities.”

President Donald Trump earlier Thursday said the U.S. will not send troops to the Middle East, even as a U.S. Navy warship has been spotted moving into the region. “In war you have to grit your teeth,” Netanyahu said.

US F-35 Damaged By Suspected Iranian Fire

A US F-35 fighter jet made an emergency landing at a US air base in the Middle East after it was struck by what is believed to be Iranian fire, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for US Central Command, said the fifth-generation stealth jet was “flying a combat mission over Iran” when it was forced to make an emergency landing. Hawkins said the aircraft landed safely and the incident is under investigation.

“The aircraft landed safely, and the pilot is in stable condition,” Hawkins added. “This incident is under investigation.”

The incident would be the first time Iran has hit a US aircraft in the war started in late February. Both the US and Israel are flying F-35s in the conflict; the aircraft costs upwards of $100 million, a CNN report said.

The US has lost other aircraft in the war thus far, though none known to have been hit by enemy fire. Three US F-15 fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses, with all six crew members ejecting safely. And last week, a KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq, though the cause is still unclear. The US military said the incident was “not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.” All six crew members aboard the KC-135 were killed.

As the war nears the end of its third week, senior US officials continue to claim widespread success in its campaign against Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday morning that the US is “winning decisively” and that Iran’s air defenses have been “flattened.”

Six Countries Condemn Attacks on Gulf Energy in Joint Statement

A joint statement issued by the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan yesterday condemned Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels in the Gulf, on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas facilities, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The statement, issued by the UK Prime Minister’s Office, called on Iran to immediately cease its threats, mine-laying operations, and attacks using drones and missiles.

The leaders of the six countries expressed their deep concern over the escalation of the war, calling on Iran to immediately stop its threats, mine-laying operations, drone and missile attacks, and other attempts to close the strait to commercial navigation, and to comply with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2817.

The statement stressed that freedom of navigation is a fundamental principle of international law, including the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

It added that Iran’s actions will have a tangible impact on citizens around the world, particularly the most vulnerable groups, noting that under UN Security Council Resolution 2817, the signatory countries affirm that such interference in international maritime navigation and disruption of global energy supply chains constitute a threat to international peace and security.

In this regard, they called for an immediate and comprehensive halt to attacks on infrastructure, including oil and gas facilities.

The six countries also expressed their readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait and welcomed the commitment of countries working on preparatory plans in this regard.

They further welcomed the decision of the International Energy Agency (IEA) to allow a coordinated release of strategic oil reserves, noting that they will take additional steps to stabilize energy markets, including cooperation with certain producing countries to increase production.

The statement added that the six countries will work to provide support to the most affected countries, including through the United Nations and international financial institutions.