Oil surges as Gulf energy facilities come under attack: Latest developments in the Middle East war

A plume of smoke rises from the site of a strike in Tehran on March 17, 2026. Two waves of Iranian strikes caused “extensive damage” at Qatar’s main gas hub, the country’s state-run energy firm said on Thursday, with President Donald Trump warning Iran against further attacks on the facility. Iran had vowed to target energy infrastructure across the Gulf after a strike that Trump said was carried out by Israel on Iranian facilities at South Pars field, Iran’s part of the world’s largest known gas reserve.

Missile strikes on the Ras Laffan Industrial City on Qatar’s north coast on Wednesday caused damage to a gas-to-liquids facility and early on Thursday sparked “sizeable fires and extensive further damage” to several liquefied natural gas facilities, QatarEnergy said in a statement. Trump on his Truth Social platform threatened to “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field” if any further attacks took place at Ras Laffan. The Gulf has borne the brunt of Iran’s reprisals for the US-Israeli strikes that sparked the Middle East war in late February, with Tehran targeting US assets as well as striking energy facilities.

The feared energy shock caused by the war has shaken international markets and pushed up prices globally. Oil prices surged more than 5 percent on Thursday on supply concerns and stocks sank as news of the attacks on Gulf energy facilities spooked investors. Brent Crude was trading at $106 on Thursday morning.

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Markets have been hammered since the US-Israel attacks on Iran on February 28 that sparked a wave of retaliatory strikes across the Gulf by Tehran. The Islamic republic also effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas flows. Qatari civil defence teams have contained fires that erupted at a major gas facility following an Iranian attack, the interior ministry said.

“Civil Defence has fully brought all fires under control in the Ras Laffan Industrial Area without any reported injuries. Cooling and sites-securing operations are still ongoing,” it said. Earlier Thursday, Iranian state television said that a missile had struck the gas plant, hours after it was hit in a destructive strike.

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