Oil prices traded near six-month highs today, poised for their first weekly gain in three weeks on growing concern over potential conflict after Washington said Tehran will suffer if it does not agree to a nuclear deal in a matter of days.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures edged down 33 cents, or around 0.5%, to $71.33 a barrel this afternoon while US West Texas Intermediate crude lost 25 cents, or 0.4%, to $66.18.<\/p>\n
Over the week, Brent and WTI were both up around 5.3%.<\/p>\n
“Market players are now awaiting how tension in the Middle East will evolve over the weekend; the appetite to take profit and close a position is also limited ahead of the weekend,” UBS oil analyst Giovanni Staunovo said.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump said yesterday that “really bad things” would happen if Iran does not agree to curtail its nuclear programme, setting a deadline of 10 to 15 days.<\/p>\n
Iran, meanwhile, has planned a joint naval exercise with Russia, a local news agency reported, days after closing the Strait of Hormuz temporarily for military drills.<\/p>\n
The major oil producer lies opposite the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula across the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of global oil supply passes. Conflict in the area could limit oil entering the global market and push up prices.<\/p>\n
“We’re waiting for a potential binary outcome, if we should take Trump’s words at face value,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. “The market is nervous, it’s going to be a wait-and-see day.”<\/p>\n
Traders and investors ramped up purchases of call options on Brent crude in recent days, betting on higher prices, Saxo Bank analysis shows.<\/p>\n
Also supporting oil were reports of falling crude stocks and limited exports in the world’s biggest oil-producing and exporting countries.<\/p>\n
US crude inventories dropped by 9 million barrels as refining utilisation and exports climbed, an Energy Information Administration report showed yesterday.<\/p>\n
Markets were also considering the impact of ample supply, with talks of OPEC+ leaning towards a resumption in oil output increases from April.<\/p>\n
The oil surplus that was evident in the second half of 2025 continued in January and is likely to persist, JP Morgan analysts Natasha Kaneva and Lyuba Savinova said in a note.<\/p>\n
“Our balances continue to project sizeable surpluses later this year,” they said, adding that output cuts of 2 million barrels per day would be needed to prevent excess inventory builds in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil prices traded near six-month highs today, poised for their first weekly gain in three weeks on growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-308469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}