By Arathy Somasekhar<\/p>\n
HOUSTON, June 8 (Reuters) – Oil prices settled $1 higher after rising more than 5% earlier in the session on Monday as Iran and Israel said they had halted attacks on each other following an appeal from U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Tehran, however, \u200csaid it would resume strikes if Israel continued to hit Hezbollah in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures closed $1.16, or 1.3%, higher at $94.25 a barrel, while \u200cU.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 76 cents, or 0.8%, at $91.30.<\/p>\n
Brent has risen around 31% since the eve of the conflict just over 100 days ago, while WTI has \u200brisen around 37%. Brent in April touched a peak above $126 a barrel.<\/p>\n
Prices gained more than 5% earlier on Monday after renewed Israeli strikes on Iran and attacks on Lebanon had reduced hopes of an imminent end to the wider war.<\/p>\n
Israel hit a petrochemical plant in southwestern Iran that it said was used to produce ballistic missiles, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the country retaliated with a strike aimed at a similar Israeli facility in the city of Haifa.<\/p>\n
The \u200cexchange followed Israeli strikes on strongholds of Iran-backed Hezbollah \u2060in Beirut over the weekend. Tehran has repeatedly said any deal with Washington to end the conflict must include a halt to Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
“Crude futures are trading higher this morning in a nervous trade as Iran and Israel \u2060traded missile attacks over the weekend,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial.<\/p>\n
TRUMP DEMANDS A HALT<\/p>\n
Trump on Monday demanded that Israel and Iran “immediately stop ‘shooting.'”<\/p>\n
Because of the strikes, investors were concerned that flows through the Strait of Hormuz might remain restricted for longer, UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said.<\/p>\n
Roughly a fifth of the \u200bworld\u2019s daily \u200bsupply of oil and liquefied natural gas passed through the Strait of Hormuz off \u200bIran before U.S.-Israeli airstrikes at the end of February unleashed \u200cthe latest escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Iran\u2019s ambassador to Moscow was quoted as saying that the strait would be open but under conditions to be set by Iran and Oman, including a transit fee.<\/p>\n
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, said a new security belt will be established from the Strait of Hormuz to the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, off Yemen, and from the Gulf to the Red Sea, according to comments carried by state media.<\/p>\n
“For markets, the best near-term outcome remains a ‘skinny’ deal that decouples Strait disruption and active strikes from the underlying sources of disagreement, \u200cbuying time without resolving them,” said Erik Meyersson with SEB Research.<\/p>\n
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said \u200bon Monday they would ban ships linked to Israel from the Red Sea after Israel \u200brenewed its military attacks on Iran, adding to concerns about global shipping \u200band energy flows.<\/p>\n
OPEC+ AGREES OUTPUT TARGET INCREASE<\/p>\n
In the face of the supply crisis, OPEC+ on Sunday agreed its fourth \u200coil output target increase in four months.<\/p>\n
Analysts said the decision would \u200bhave little impact since most members \u200bof OPEC+, which groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia, cannot meet their targets.<\/p>\n
That, they said, was because of the closure of the strait or, in the case of Russia, Ukrainian drone attacks that have eroded its production capacity.<\/p>\n
“In the current market, \u200bthe physical impact of such a decision would \u200cbe close to zero,” Jorge Leon, Rystad Energy’s head of geopolitical analysis, said in a note to clients.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia has cut its \u200bofficial selling prices for crude oil to Asia in July for a second month.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar in Houston, Stephanie Kelly, Helen \u200bClark and Colleen Howe; editing by Barbara Lewis, Jan Harvey and Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Arathy Somasekhar HOUSTON, June 8 (Reuters) – Oil prices settled $1 higher after rising more than 5%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,87,21453,46,223657,6807,12521,223656,114994],"class_list":["post-483027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","tag-israel","tag-israeli-strikes-on-iran","tag-oil-prices","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-southwestern-iran","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}