Israel stokes concern over Iran exports
Futures in New York rose as much as 0.%, after Monday’s 0.7% advance
Oil held gains above $68 (Dh249) a barrel as Israel’s accusations that Iran pursued nuclear weapons stoked speculation US President Donald Trump may reimpose sanctions on Opec’s thirdbiggest producer.
Futures in New York rose as much as 0.5 per cent, after Monday’s 0.7 per cent advance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country has documents that prove Iran had a programme to build atomic bombs.
That’s raising concern Trump may pull the US out of a nuclear accord between Iran and world powers, a move that energy consultant FGE says could cut the nation’s 2019 oil exports by 700,000 barrels a day.
Oil rallied last month to the highest level in more than three years amid concern that a US withdrawal from the nuclear deal would result in fresh export curbs, as well as issues including the conflict in Syria and tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iranbacked rebels in Yemen.
At the same time, production cuts led by Opec have continued to tighten global markets, despite record-setting US output.
“Speculation that Iran’s production may fall, and that may make Opec’s production cuts more successful, is psychologically making it easy to buy oil,” Satoru Yoshida, a commodity analyst, said from Tokyo.
WTI crude for June delivery traded at $68.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 24 cents, as of 12.55pm in Tokyo. Total volume traded was about 41 per cent below the 100day average. Prices rose 47 cents to $68.57 a barrel on Monday.
Brent crude for July settlement rose 23 cents to $74.92 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The June contract expired Monday up 53 cents, or 0.7 per cent, at $75.17. The global benchmark crude traded a $6.23 premium to July WTI.
Netanyahu said Israel uncovered 55,000 pages of material on a weapons programme that operated between 1999 and 2003, and that the nuclear programme continued after it was subsumed under a different guise. Iran called Netanyahu’s allegations lies “already dealt with” by the International Atomic Energy Agency.