Oil prices edged lower on Wednesday as Saudi Arabia began restoring crude flows through a key pipeline to the Red Sea, while hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough in the US-Iran war grew ahead of talks at the United Nations in New York.
The moves came after US President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that he could “annihilate” Iran, while also saying his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had held productive discussions with Iranian mediators aimed at ending the war.
Crude oil on September 23
Brent crude futures fell 7 cents, or 0.07%, to $99.18 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate futures declined 35 cents, or 0.39%, to $90.17 a barrel.
“I think there’s a lot of momentum for them to make a deal,” Trump said. Expectations of stronger oil supply and the possibility of an end to the nearly seven-month conflict pushed Brent below $100 a barrel at Tuesday’s close for the first time since September 8. “I think that a settlement is going to be reached,” Trump said after a meeting with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Further, a sentiment boost also comes after Saudi Arabia restarted operations on its East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea on Tuesday, three sources briefed on the matter said, with signs that Middle Eastern oil flows were beginning to increase. The pipeline had been shut on September 11 after drone attacks, which Saudi Arabia blamed on Iraqi militia, halted crude loadings at the kingdom’s Yanbu port.
Before the disruption, Saudi Arabia had been using the pipeline to reroute around 4 million barrels per day, or roughly 4% of global supply, to Yanbu after the US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted oil flows from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iraq is also raising its oil exports, Oil Minister Basim Mohammed said on Tuesday. The country is currently exporting more than 3 million bpd and expects shipments through Turkey to rise to more than 600,000 bpd.
Where are prices headed?
JPMorgan, meanwhile, has lost visibility on where oil prices are headed. For the first time since the Iran war began in February, the Wall Street bank no longer has a clear baseline scenario for the oil market, as escalating tensions add to concerns over an already worsening supply shock.
“We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” JPMorgan analysts said, highlighting the uncertainty over how the conflict could develop. At the start of the conflict, the bank had assumed there were certain economic thresholds that the US administration would not cross. Six months into the war, however, many of those lines have been crossed, while there is still no clear exit strategy, JPMorgan said.
JPMorgan said on Thursday that it did not have a clear baseline view for oil markets for the first time since the US-Israeli war on Iran began, highlighting the uncertainty confronting the market.
The possibility of further supply disruptions has increasingly pushed the oil price outlook higher. Daan Struyven, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, said recent attacks had shown that disruptions to shipping could spread and become more severe.
Goldman Sachs has outlined a scenario in which oil prices could climb to as much as $120 a barrel if attacks on vessels in the Middle East intensify. If exports return to normal, the bank expects oil prices to move back towards $80 a barrel.
Struyven told Bloomberg that shipping risks had become an important driver of oil prices. He said Goldman Sachs sees “meaningful upside to crude oil prices” and also expects natural gas and refined product prices to rise. He added that supply shocks in gas and fuels are larger than those in the crude market.
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