A drone hit a desert oilfield. Nobody was hurt. Brent crude broke $110 anyway

$110.63.

That is what a barrel of Brent crude oil cost on Wednesday 22 October, up $1.81 in a single day. It is the highest the oil price has been in five months, and it moved because of a drone, not because of the people it killed.

A Houthi drone struck close to Saudi Aramco's Shaybah oilfield, a giant site buried in the sand dunes of Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter. Nobody was reported hurt there. On the same day, a separate attack hit King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, killing one person and injuring eight. Traders barely reacted to the airport attack. They reacted hard to the field.

If you fill up a car in South Africa, this is the number that decides what you pay next. Brent was already sitting at $111.50 a barrel when the mid-term budget was tabled on 21 October, and every dollar on this chart eventually lands at the pump. We cover what that means for your fuel bill in our petrol price tracker. This story is about why the market panicked over the field and shrugged at the airport.

Why did the market panic over an empty field and shrug at an airport where someone died?

A terminal can reopen in hours. A field cannot be rebuilt in a week.

Read nextTrump's Russian diesel deal, converted into barrels, and the backlash

King Khalid airport in Riyadh reopened the same day it was hit earlier this month. Dammam's King Fahd airport will likely do the same. Planes can be rerouted, runways repaired, terminals swept clean.

Shaybah is different. It holds roughly 1 million barrels a day of Saudi Arabia's production capacity and feeds a pipeline network that reaches export terminals on the Gulf. Traders price in the chance that a strike there, or on the pipeline that carries its oil, could choke off supply for months, not hours. That is why a drone that hurt nobody moved the price more than an attack that killed one person and injured eight.

What actually happened at Shaybah and Dammam this week?

The drone strike near Shaybah on 22 October raised fears serious enough to push Brent up 1.7% in a day, The National reported. The same day, the United States ordered some of its diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia, a sign Washington sees the risk rising.

Hours earlier, the attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam killed one person and injured eight, Al Jazeera reported. The injuries ranged from minor to critical. Saudi Arabia has not said how the strike reached the airport.

Photo: Ank Kumar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Which Houthi attacks this month actually moved the oil price?

Not every strike has pushed the price up. Some days Brent barely moved. Here is Brent crude against every dated Houthi attack this month.

Line up the attacks and a pattern appears. The strikes that hit ships and oil infrastructure moved the price every time. The strikes that hit airports, even deadly ones, mostly did not. Markets are not grading these attacks on how many people they hurt. They are grading them on whether Saudi Arabia can still pump and ship its oil.

Trending nowScammers already know your account details before they call, and that is what makes them so convincing

We covered one of those airport attacks, the Houthi missile that hit Riyadh's airport, when CCTV footage of pilgrims running from pink smoke went viral. That strike killed three people and barely moved Brent for more than a day. This latest one, with nobody hurt, has kept the price above $110 for three straight sessions.

What does a $110 barrel do to the petrol price at home?

South Africa buys its fuel priced in dollars, so every jump on this chart becomes a bigger bill at the pump weeks later. Treasury tabled its mid-term budget on 21 October with Brent already near $111.50, before this week's spike pushed it higher still. We break down what that does to your fuel bill in our coverage of the petrol levy fight, and track prices across countries in our petrol price comparison.

Could Saudi Arabia actually lose Shaybah's oil?

Saudi Aramco has not confirmed any damage or lost production at Shaybah. If it stays that way, this week's spike could fade the same way earlier ones did. Brent slipped back from $111.99 to $108.79 just two days after its last five-month high, once traders decided the risk had been overstated.

But Shaybah is not a small target. It is one of the largest oilfields in Saudi Arabia, built to move more than a million barrels a day into the export network that supplies much of the world. Saudi Arabia is not the only producer learning this lesson. Venezuela has tried to fill some of the gap, but its own oil industry carries problems that make it a poor substitute.

Photo: Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

Every Houthi strike this month has tested the same question. How much of this is traders pricing in fear, and how much is the market finally pricing in what a war inside the world's biggest oil exporter actually costs. Nobody died at Shaybah this week. The oil price did not care who got hurt. It cared about the sand underneath.