Yahoo Finance Brent Crude Rises to Near 4-Year Highs as Trump Vows No Turnback on Iran
Investing.com - Brent oil prices rose to near four-year highs for a second day in a row on Tuesday as U.S. President Donald Trump vowed in a U.N. speech that there will be no reprieve for Iran from sanctions on its oil exports.
Trump withdrew the United States on Aug. 6 from an Obama-era deal that let Iran export oil in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Since then, the president has pressured major U.S. trading partners, including India, to sharply reduce oil imports from Iran. He has been widely expected to turn the screws further on Tehran with a 180-day interval expiring on Nov. 4 for more U.S. action against Iran.
“Additional sanctions will resume November 5th and more will follow and we are working with countries that import Iranian crude oil to cut their purchases substantially,” Trump told the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.
Brent oil futures, the U.K.-traded global benchmark for oil on the Intercontinental Exchange, saw its December contract rise by 0.9%, or $0.75, to $81.28 a barrel by 3:01 PM ET (19:01 GMT). It earlier hit $82.55, its highest level since November 2014.
Crude oil WTI futures for November rose 0.35 %, or $0.25, to $72.33.
Oil has rallied with little pause over the past two weeks on worries about Trump’s plans to bring Iranian crude shipments to zero through the impending sanctions on the country.
But the president has also been sending mixed signals to the market by calling on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to put a lid on the rally, saying he would sell supplies from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if necessary, to curb rising prices at the pump.
From lows of under $30 a barrel just two over years ago, OPEC has managed to bring crude prices back into the $70-$80 territory through disciplined output cuts coordinated with major producer Russia, which isn’t a part of the cartel. A meeting of the so-called OPEC+ group, which includes Russia, Oman and Kazakhstan, was held at the weekend in Algiers, only to decide it would not immediately recommend the cartel to raise production.
The spike in Brent to above $80 a barrel and the rally in natural gas to beyond the key $3 level have prompted Wall Street bankers and traders to raise their energy price forecasts amid speculation that a new age of high energy prices could be arriving faster than expected.
In other energy trading, gasoline RBOB futures rose 0.4% to $2.055 per gallon, while heating oil futures rose nearly 1% to $2.312 a gallon. Natural gas futures were up 0.8% to $3.053 per million British thermal units.
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