Gulf energy workers faced unprecedented danger on Wednesday after Iran threatened to strike facilities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar in retaliation for an Israeli attack on the South Pars gasfield. The Revolutionary Guards named specific sites and issued evacuation orders, telling all workers and residents to leave immediately. Oil prices surged toward $110 a barrel as the human dimension of the energy crisis became impossible to ignore.
South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas reserve, is shared between Iran and Qatar. The Israeli attack — reportedly with US authorization — was the first direct strike on Iranian fossil fuel production in the conflict. Washington and Tel Aviv had previously avoided this step, but crossing it triggered Iran’s most specific and threatening retaliatory declaration of the war — one that placed hundreds of thousands of energy workers across the Gulf in direct danger.
Iran’s state media named Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery and Jubail complex, the UAE’s al-Hosn gasfield, and Qatar’s Mesaieed and Ras Laffan facilities as targets for strikes within hours. Workers were urgently ordered to leave without delay. Asaluyeh governor Eskandar Pasalar called the US-Israeli escalation “political suicide” and declared Iran was now in a full-scale economic war — one with human as well as economic costs.
Brent crude rose nearly 5% to $108.60 per barrel, while European gas benchmarks climbed more than 7.5% to above €55.50 per megawatt hour. Gulf oil exports had already fallen 60% from pre-war levels due to sustained infrastructure damage and Iran’s Strait of Hormuz blockade. Iran had continued to export its own crude through the strait unimpeded while blocking Gulf neighbors from doing so — a strategic advantage that had given it significant leverage throughout the conflict.
Qatar’s government spokesperson Majid al-Ansari warned that attacking energy infrastructure threatened global energy security, regional populations, and the environment. The unprecedented danger facing Gulf energy workers was a human consequence of a conflict that had escalated to its most dangerous energy dimension yet. As evacuation orders went out and Iran’s clock ran down, the human cost of the energy war was being counted alongside the economic one.