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When asked in the Oval Office if the war could end this week, President Donald Trump says \u201cI don\u2019t think so, but it\u2019ll be soon.\u201d <\/p>\n(Bloomberg) — Oil recovered as Iran continued attacks on energy infrastructure around the Middle East and Israel said it killed senior Iranian officials.<\/p>\n
West Texas Intermediate traded around $94 a barrel, after slipping almost 5.3% on Monday, the first drop in almost a week. US President Donald Trump reiterated that the US could \u201cknock out\u201d oil on Kharg Island, adding that it hasn\u2019t done so yet because of how long it would take to rebuild. The nation previously bombed military targets on the key Iranian export hub but spared its oil infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not ready to leave yet, but we will be leaving in the near future,\u201d Trump said to reporters at the White House, speaking of Iran.<\/p>\n
Operations were suspended at the Shah gas field in the United Arab Emirates, while an Iraqi oil field was also targeted by drones and missiles. Crude loadings from the UAE\u2019s port at Fujairah, the country\u2019s only export hub outside the Strait of Hormuz, were again halted.<\/p>\n
The strikes heightened the threat for global supplies with the war in its third week, with a near-complete halt of shipping through the waterway starting to impact consumers, especially in Asia. Scandinavia\u2019s biggest airline, SAS AB, has cut some flights amid higher jet fuel costs, while American Airlines said it may need to raise liquidity if fuel stays elevated.<\/p>\n
Oil has risen more than 40% since the war started, but prices eased on Monday as the US prepared to release the first tranche of emergency crude reserves. Israel on Tuesday said it killed senior Iranian officials, including the country\u2019s security chief Ali Larijani. Iran hasn\u2019t confirmed the claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is still this reservoir of disbelief and hope that this will be over soon,\u201d Bob McNally, president of consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official, said in a Bloomberg television interview. \u201cBut it is not stopping, and crude is marching higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked in the Oval Office if the war could end this week, President Donald Trump says \u201cI don\u2019t think so, but it\u2019ll be soon.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump also said Washington is \u201chammering\u201d Tehran\u2019s capacity to threaten commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and reiterated his appeals for help from other nations to secure passage.<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said that his nation won\u2019t join an operation to revive traffic in the Hormuz in the \u201ccurrent context.\u201d Greece\u2019s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his country and Europe will not participate in any military operations near Iran.<\/p>\n
In the Middle East, the UAE and Kuwait have both reduced oil output further. Saudi Arabia is racing to boost exports through an alternative route that bypasses Hormuz.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no plug for a hole this large,\u201d said Dan Ghali, a commodity strategist at TD Securities. \u201cThe prospect of a prolonged period of instability in the Middle East grows louder, irrespective of this phase of the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
Transit through the strait is likely to become \u201cincreasingly conditional,\u201d with Iran permitting passage for some vessels depending on their affiliation, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts, including Natasha Kaneva said in a note. A series of vessels have made their way out of Hormuz using a route that hugs unusually close to Iran\u2019s coast, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
The number of Iranian ships crossing the waterway jumped to a wartime high on Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That included an oil tanker headed for China.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran is looking to escalate and really squeeze the conflict,\u201d Emily Ashford, head of energy research at Standard Chartered, said in a Blooomberg TV interview. \u201cIt\u2019s trying to give a deterrence for this to happen again by showing that it can push prices significantly higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Charles Gorrivan, Grant Smith, Jonathan Ferro and Alex Longley.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — Oil recovered as Iran continued attacks on energy infrastructure around the Middle East and Israel said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7904,15745,28,12,801,803,235479,129,238063,210369,4014,3123],"class_list":["post-529343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bloomberg","tag-bloomberg-television","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-kharg-island","tag-middle-east","tag-oil-infrastructure","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-west-texas-intermediate","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}