BASRA, March 6, 2026, 11:56 GMT+3
BP evacuated foreign staff from Iraq’s Rumaila oilfield after two unidentified drones landed inside the field on Thursday, Iraqi oil industry sources said. The incident struck the giant field as the Middle East conflict was already choking exports and forcing output cuts.
The timing matters for BP and for oil prices. Iraq has already cut production by nearly 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), with Rumaila alone down 700,000 bpd, as the Strait of Hormuz closure left the country short of storage. The waterway carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas traded by sea.
For BP, the security scare lands weeks after it suspended share repurchases to focus on debt reduction and as Meg O’Neill prepares to take over as chief executive on April 1. The company has been steering more capital back toward oil and gas after scaling back parts of its renewables push.
A BP spokesperson said the company was taking steps to support its partners and protect its people. In London trade on Thursday, BP and rival Shell each rose about 2% as crude climbed more than 3% on fresh supply fears.
Oil traders said the physical disruption mattered more than the first spike in futures. “There is no movement in the Strait of Hormuz,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital. Dennis Kissler of BOK Financial said that “if this persists into next week,” restarting production and shipping will also take time. Reuters
UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said tanker attacks and China’s move to curb fuel exports were also lifting prices and tightening fuel markets. Even after a pullback on Friday, Brent was still up 17.2% for the week, the biggest weekly jump since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The picture could still swing. Washington’s waivers for purchases of sanctioned Russian oil held on tankers cooled prices on Friday. “It’s important to put this move into perspective,” IG analyst Tony Sycamore said, but Phillip Nova’s Priyanka Sachdeva warned that each extra day of halted Hormuz traffic adds to both the storage squeeze and the loss of barrels reaching market. Reuters
Security risk in Iraq is also spreading. A drone strike on Thursday halted output at HKN Energy’s Sarsang field in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Iraqi officials have said the country’s production cuts could widen to more than 3 million bpd within days if tankers still cannot load. That would deepen the disruption already hitting Rumaila.
