Large fire seen at Saudi Aramco oil storage facility in Jeddah: reports

Oil prices jumped March 25 on social media reports of a large fire at a Saudi Aramco storage tank facility in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

Video footage on Twitter and other social media platforms showed the blaze at the Aramco site, which is being attributed to an attack, but company officials were unavailable for immediate comment.

At 1533 GMT, NYMEX May WTI was up $1.24 from the overnight settle at $113.58/b and ICE May Brent traded $1.16 higher at $120.19/b. Both contracts had been trading around $3 lower earlier on in the session.

Energy infrastructure in the kingdom has been heavily targeted by Houthi militants in Yemen since the beginning of the year. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said March 21 it no longer has "responsibility for any shortage in oil supplies to global markets in light of the attacks on its oil facilities" after the uptick security incidents.

The world's largest exporter of crude has a policy of maintaining 2 million b/d of spare capacity to act as a supply buffer for markets. However, Riyadh has rebuffed calls from the US and European consumer nations to pump more oil in response to higher prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.