By Amanda Stephenson<\/p>\n
CALGARY, May 25 (Reuters) – Oil prices fell almost 6% to two-week lows on Monday as optimism grew that the United States and Iran were moving closer to a peace deal that \u200cwould reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even though Washington and Tehran played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Brent \u200ccrude futures were down $6.12, or 5.9%, at $97.42 a barrel at 12:43 p.m. ET (1643 GMT) and U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were down $5.72, or 5.9%, at $90.88. \u200bBoth contracts traded at their lowest since May 7.<\/p>\n
Trading volumes were light due to the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.<\/p>\n
Iran’s top negotiator and its foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar’s prime minister on a potential deal with the U.S. to end the three-month-old war, an official briefed on the visit said Monday.<\/p>\n
Both sides said they have made progress on a memorandum \u200cof understanding that would halt the war \u2060and give negotiators 60 days to reach a final deal.<\/p>\n
‘GET SOME OIL MOVING’<\/p>\n
“Even though it’s not done, there seems to be some hope that we will start to get some oil \u2060moving through the Strait of Hormuz,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst with Price Futures Group.<\/p>\n
In a lengthy Truth Social post on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said talks with Iran were going “nicely,” but warned of fresh attacks if they failed.<\/p>\n
He urged more Arab \u200band \u200bMuslim states to sign up to the Abraham Accords, which were \u200bbrokered during Trump’s first term in office and \u200caim to normalise ties between Arab and other Muslim-majority states and Israel.<\/p>\n
“That could mean a significant reduction of risk premium in the Middle East, especially if a deal with Iran can be done and Iran gives up their nuclear material,” Flynn said.<\/p>\n
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday Iran was negotiating an end to the war and was not currently discussing nuclear issues.<\/p>\n
Even if a peace deal is reached, analysts expect a return to normal oil flows through the \u200cstrait will take months, while damaged oil and gas facilities are \u200brepaired.<\/p>\n
“The underlying supply shortfall of 10-11 (million barrels per day) of crude oil \u200bdoes not go away immediately and will see \u200bmarkets still drawing inventories until Middle Eastern crude production is back online, which is months away,” \u200csaid Sparta Commodities analyst June Goh.<\/p>\n
“We continue to \u200bbelieve that the key factors \u200bfor the oil market to watch should be the physical oil flows; and so far, flows through the strait remain restricted,” said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Amanda Stephenson CALGARY, May 25 (Reuters) – Oil prices fell almost 6% to two-week lows on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,283782,12,801,3,183066,290520,210369,283781,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-664532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-brent-crude-futures","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-news","tag-peace-deal","tag-phil-flynn","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-u-s-west-texas-intermediate","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664532","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=664532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}