Oil was little changed after a volatile session in which investors weighed signs of less-tight conditions against rising military threats to energy infrastructure across the Middle East.
West Texas Intermediate traded above $94 a barrel, after losing 5.3% on Monday, while Brent settled above $100 for a third straight session. The US and Iran both stepped up attacks on energy assets in the region, including a drone strike on the massive Shah natural gas field in the United Arab Emirates.
Traders also assessed global attempts to blunt the worst of an impending supply shock stemming from the US-Israeli war on Iran, from an imminent release from the US emergency stockpile to a trickle of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point.
President Donald Trump said the US is “hammering” Iran’s capacity to threaten commercial shipping through the Strait and reiterated appeals to other nations to help secure the passage. The waterway typically handles a fifth of global oil flows but has been effectively closed by Iran since the war began late last month.
The aftershocks of the most volatile week for the global Brent benchmark on record are continuing to reverberate. Daily trading ranges have been far wider than usual as the tumult in the Middle East creates what the International Energy Agency has described as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
“Crude prices in the triple-digit area are usually short-lived, as demand destruction tends to appear very quickly,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securitires Inc. “While Iran seems to have dug in, the reality is: they have no navy, a shaken military, and they are being shut out from commerce from neighboring countries. Their need to negotiate will come quicker than not.”
A direct communications channel between the US and Iran has been reactivated in recent days, Axios reported, citing unidentified sources.
On Monday, Trump said he had requested China — among those he’s asked for support in Hormuz — to delay a summit with his counterpart Xi Jinping for about a month, saying it was important for him to remain in Washington to oversee the Iran war.
The spread between Brent and West Texas Intermediate has widened in a sign of immediate supply relief in the US, after Washington prepared to release emergency reserves this week.
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With assistance from Charles Gorrivan.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
