Oil prices rose on \u200bWednesday morning as doubts about a US-Iran peace deal and attacks on two ships \u200cfuelled concerns about Middle East supply disruptions, even as industry data showed US\u00a0crude inventories expanded.<\/p>\n
Brent futures gained 72 cents, or 0.81%, to $89.63 a barrel, while US\u00a0West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude climbed 71 \u200bcents, or 0.85%, to $83.91.<\/p>\n
Both benchmark contracts settled more than $1 higher on Tuesday, marking their \u200bhighest closes since July 31 and extending gains after jumping about 5% on \u2060Monday as hopes for a peace deal between the US\u00a0and Iran began to fade.<\/p>\n
The \u200bUnited States and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis reported separate\u00a0attacks\u00a0on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and \u200bthe Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, said on Tuesday that the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route would remain closed unless the US\u00a0accepted Iran’s conditions for ending the war, including the \u200brelease of frozen Iranian assets and an end to other conflicts across the region.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Oil refineries urged to swiftly upgrade plants<\/p>\n
Shipping data showed that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped to six vessels on Monday, compared with a 10-day \u200caverage of \u2060about 11. Before the war, daily traffic through the waterway averaged 125 to 140 vessels.<\/p>\n
On the supply front, a\u00a0Reuters\u00a0poll showed on Tuesday that US\u00a0crude oil and fuel inventories were expected to have fallen last week.<\/p>\n
However, market sources citing American Petroleum Institute data said US\u00a0crude inventories rose \u200bsharply in the week \u200bended August 7, \u2060while gasoline and distillate stocks fell.<\/p>\n
Crude stocks rose by about 9.1 million barrels, while gasoline and distillate inventories fell by 1.5 million barrels and \u200b596,000 barrels, respectively, from the previous week, the sources said.<\/p>\n
The crude build \u200bfar exceeded \u2060expectations and, if confirmed by the EIA report later on Wednesday, could ease market concerns about supply tightness, Haitong Futures said in a note.<\/p>\n
Official numbers from the EIA, the statistical arm of the US\u00a0\u2060Department \u200bof Energy, are due at 10:30am on \u200bWednesday.<\/p>\n
As for longer-term supply, the EIA expected disruptions of about 600,000 barrels per day to Middle East crude oil supplies to \u200bpersist through the end of 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices rose on \u200bWednesday morning as doubts about a US-Iran peace deal and attacks on two ships \u200cfuelled concerns about Middle East supply disruptions, even as industry data showed US\u00a0crude inventories expanded. Brent futures gained 72 cents, or 0.81%, to $89.63 a barrel, while US\u00a0West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude climbed 71 \u200bcents, or 0.85%, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4815,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4813\/revisions\/4815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}