Oil gave back some of last week's gains in early trading Monday. Brent crude was down about 1% after Friday's run to a six-month high, and US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was off close to 2%.
Diplomacy helped cool the market. Iran hosted Qatari mediators in Tehran on Sunday, and an official told Reuters the trip had been coordinated with Washington. A second set of visitors was due Monday. Saudi Arabia sent Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Turkey sent intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin, and Pakistan sent Field Marshal Asim Munir, who heads its army. Saudi diplomat Rayed Krimly said the group would sit down with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohsen Rezaei, who leads Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
Friday's spike
Brent jumped 3.1% on Friday, and Reuters said no Brent close had been higher since April 29. WTI did even better with a 3.8% gain. Over the week, Brent rose roughly 6%.
Traders were reacting to a string of Houthi strikes inside Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, debris from a drone shot down near the Shaybah processing plant killed two people. Shaybah pumps about 1 million barrels a day, and according to the energy ministry, the plant kept running.
Weekend claims on Saudi oil sites
Then came Saturday. Yahya Saree, the Houthis' military spokesman, claimed hits on the East-West Pipeline and several of its pumping stations, the Rabigh refinery and an Aramco site in Yanbu. Airports in Riyadh, Najran and Dammam were also on his list.
Saudi Arabia's military coalition reported shooting down two ballistic missiles, one headed for Yanbu and the other for Taif. By early Sunday, neither Riyadh nor Aramco had said anything to confirm damage at the pipeline or at Rabigh. Saudi officials also said the group had aimed at Mecca and Medina, a charge the Houthis rejected.
The attacks kept coming on Monday. Coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki said a ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh was shot down, while Saree claimed drone hits on oil pumping stations.
Why the pipeline matters: it runs roughly 750 miles from the Abqaiq processing hub in the east to the port of Yanbu, so Saudi crude can be loaded onto Red Sea tankers without going near the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping is still heavily disrupted. In early October, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman put its flow at 5.8 million barrels a day.
Mixed signals from Washington and Tehran
President Trump kept both doors open. "Do I make a deal with them or do I finish them off? That's the only question," he told Fox News on Sunday. He also said there would be no strike that day.
On Saturday, Tehran's envoy in Islamabad said Iran had used Pakistan as a go-between to propose reopening Hormuz, provided Washington lifted its naval cordon around Iranian ports. By the envoy's account, Trump turned the offer down and kept the blockade.
What is actually moving through the strait is disputed. Iranian state TV said seven tankers were damaged near Hormuz last week, which the AP could not verify. Trump has accused Tehran of inventing such incidents to push prices up, and US Central Command dismissed an earlier set of mine claims as false. The command puts the number of commercial transits it has supported in the last six months at more than 3,000.
In comments to Reuters, Andrew Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates said the recent rise in tanker traffic could unwind fast if security gets worse.
What it means at the pump
Drivers are still paying far more than a year ago. AAA data for Sunday show the national average for regular gasoline up about 40% from the same day in 2025, while diesel is up roughly 74%. Both have eased in the past month, regular by about 4.5% and diesel by about 2.4%.
US crude inventories are shrinking too. Commercial stocks dropped by 3.06 million barrels in the week to Oct. 16, leaving 412.5 million barrels in storage, Energy Information Administration (EIA) data show.
What to watch
- Any readout from Monday's meetings in Tehran
- Israel's national election on Tuesday, Oct. 27
- EIA's weekly inventory report on Wednesday
- A meeting of seven core OPEC+ members on Nov. 1
- US midterm elections on Nov. 3