Attacks on oil infrastructure are escalating.

From Marketplace, I'm Surrey Beneshore in for David Bruncaccio.

Iran has ratcheted up its attacks on Gulf countries and in the Strait of Hormuz.

Six more tankers have been hit.

Reuters has some pretty insane video of tankers burning on the water.

Iran's new supreme leader in his

first official message says the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed. Brent Crude has hit $100 a barrel.

Bradley Saunders is North America economist at Capital Economics and is here to talk about it. Hi, Bradley.

Good morning. Oil prices are now headed back towards

$100 a barrel. Does it feel like they are going to stay there for a while? It's difficult to say at

the moment. Obviously, there is so much uncertainty. We just have to take the conflict today as it comes.

But I suppose the best way to think about this, the way we've been looking at it at Capital

is sort of sketching out

free scenarios, really. One being that similar to the 12-day war last year, conflict quickly

resolves and the oil price drops back towards $70 or $60 a barrel with end of the year.

The second scenario being that oil prices sort of stay around $100 for a few months as the

conflict continues, but there's limited damage to energy infrastructure and once resolve is reached

of some kind oil prices drop back later on in the year. And the third scenario where the conflict

spirals, energy infrastructure is damaged to quite a degree,

and the oil price remains around $120, $150 a barrel throughout the year.

I mean, we have seen some infrastructure damage in both the Gulf countries as well as Iran.

How bad is that?

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