HOUSTON
\nUS oil prices settled more than 11% higher, and Brent soared nearly 8% on Thursday in volatile trading, as traders worried about prolonged disruptions to oil supply the day after President Donald Trump said the United States would continue attacks on Iran.Brent crude futures LCOc1 closed $7.87, or 7.78%, higher at $109.03 a barrel.
\nUS West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 futures rose $11.42, or 11.41%, at $111.54 per barrel, settling at their biggest absolute price rise since 2020. Both benchmarks remained below highs near $120 a barrel touched earlier in the conflict. Trump said military operations would be intensified, but did not specify a timeline for ending hostilities.
\nHe gave no details on any steps that could lead to a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz \u201cWe\u2019re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong. \u201cIran is drafting a protocol with Oman to monitor traffic in the strait, an Iranian foreign ministry official said, after a Bloomberg report.
\nIran has effectively shut down the narrow waterway through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas is shipped, in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that began on February 28. Reopening it has become a priority for governments around the world as energy prices soar.
\n\u201cThe real question on traders\u2019 minds is that if Iran\u2019s oil infrastructure is possibly now at risk, and with more damage in the area now very likely, even if left intact the restart of oil flows in the region (is) now looking to be delayed further,\u201d said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial.
\nWTI, which typically trades below Brent, was pricing nearly $3 over Brent as the US contract was trading for May deliveries, while the Brent contract was trading for June deliveries. WTI\u2019s premium over the global benchmark was the highest in a year. \u201cMarket\u2019s expectation is that if (the) Strait of Hormuz opens up in (a) couple of weeks this risk premium will immediately go down,\u201d said John Kilduff, Partner at Again Capital.
\nFederal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Lorie Logan said on Thursday that a swift war resolution may mean economic impact could be pretty moderate, adding that the economic outlook was uncertain due to the crisis. The United States has some buffers to impacts from the war, Logan said.
\nBrent crude prices could average $95 a barrel in the base case and $130 a barrel in the bull case in the second half of the year, Citi said, while oil prices could climb to between $120 and $130 a barrel in the near-term, JP Morgan said. Prices could rise above $150 if the Strait remains closed into the middle of May, JP Morgan added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOUSTON US oil prices settled more than 11% higher, and Brent soared nearly 8% on Thursday in volatile trading, as traders worried about prolonged disruptions to oil supply the day after President Donald Trump said the United States would continue attacks on Iran.Brent crude futures LCOc1 closed $7.87, or 7.78%, higher at $109.03 a barrel. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95869,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95849\/revisions\/95869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}