Brent crude rose $2.02, or 1.8%, to $115.90 a barrel as of 0735 GMT on Wednesday 28 October, after falling nearly $2 in the previous session, as a claimed attack on a Saudi refinery revived supply fears. US West Texas Intermediate gained $2.01, or 2.0%, to $101.91 at the same snapshot. Prices move through the day, so the timestamped morning figures are used consistently here.

A claimed strike moves the market

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday that they had hit Saudi Arabia's biggest oil refinery with a missile. Saudi authorities did not immediately confirm the strike on the 550,000-barrel-per-day facility, so the attack itself remains a claim, not a confirmed fact, even though the market reaction is real. The rally also drew support from US inventory data: crude stocks fell 1.9 million barrels in the week ending 23 October to 410.6 million barrels, about 4% below the five-year average for this time of year, according to US Energy Information Administration data released on Wednesday, following American Petroleum Institute figures a day earlier showing a 2.031-million-barrel fall.

Stocks fall adds to the rally

The episode shows how quickly war-related disruption feeds into prices: Gulf producers have been rebuilding exports disrupted for months by the Iran war, but most are still producing well below their assigned quotas, so physical supply and shipping, not headline output targets, are doing much of the work in setting prices. OPEC+ producers are still expected to hold December output targets steady at their 1 November meeting, with the harder negotiation over 2027 quotas to come.

Sources: Reuters via KRRO and Oilprice (EIA data).