Oil prices jump 3pct as Iran suspends cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog
Brent crude settled US$2.00 higher, or 3 per cent, to US$69.11 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude gained US$2.00, or 3.1 per cent, to US$67.45 a barrel.
Brent has traded between a high of US$69.21 a barrel and low of US$66.34 since June 25, as concerns of supply disruptions in the Middle East have ebbed following a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
Iran enacted a law stipulating any future inspection of its nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency will need approval by Tehran's Supreme National Security Council.
The country has accused the agency of siding with Western countries and providing a justification for Israel's air strikes.
"The market is pricing in some geopolitical risk premium from Iran's move on the IAEA," said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS.
"But this is about sentiment, there are no disruptions to oil."
Prices also gained after President Donald Trump and Vietnamese state media said the US and Vietnam had struck a trade agreement that sets 20 per cent tariffs on many of the Southeast Asian country's exports following last-minute negotiations.
"Risk appetite appears emboldened by an apparent tariff deal between the US and Vietnam today," analysts at energy advisory firm Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note.
Prices pared gains earlier in the session after the US Energy Information Administration said domestic crude inventories rose by 3.8 million barrels to 419 million barrels last week
Analysts in a Reuters poll had expected a drawdown of 1.8 million barrels. Gasoline demand dropped to 8.6 million barrels per day, prompting concerns about consumption in the peak summer driving season.
"During summer time, 9 million (bpd) is basically the line in the sand to define a healthy market," said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho.
"We're now well below that. That's not a good sign." Meanwhile, planned supply increases by OPEC+, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, appeared priced in and were unlikely to catch markets off-guard again imminently, said Priyanka Sachdeva, senior market analyst at brokerage Phillip Nova.
Four OPEC+ sources told Reuters last week the group plans to raise output by 411,000 bpd next month when it meets on July 6, a similar amount to the hikes agreed for May, June and July.
Saudi Arabia lifted shipments in June by 450,000 bpd from May, according to data from Kpler, its biggest increase in more than a year.
However, overall OPEC+ exports are relatively flat to slightly down since March, Staunovo said. He expects this trend to persist over the summer as hot weather drives higher energy demand.
The release of the key US monthly employment report on Thursday will shape expectations around the depth and timing of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve in the second half of this year, said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at IG.
Lower interest rates could spur economic activity, which would in turn boost oil demand. (Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York; additional reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Anna Hirtenstein in London, Sudarshan Varadhan and Trixie Yap in Singapore; Editing by Rachna Uppal, David Evans and Paul Simao)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
23 minutes ago
- The Star
Blistering heat, empty chairs and the C-word mar UN's flagship development event
SEVILLE (Reuters) -Brutal heat scorched Spain this week, a blistering reminder of the climate change that is battering the world's poorest countries - stretching their finances even as government debt climbs to new heights. But at a once-a-decade UN development finance conference in Seville, two key ingredients were in less abundance: money and power. Just one G7 leader - France's Emmanuel Macron - attended the event, where he and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez addressed rooms filled with dozens of empty chairs. Organisers initially said they expected 70 heads of state; that was whittled to 50 as the conference got underway. Back in Washington, Paris, London and Berlin, rich-country leaders are slashing aid and cutting bilateral lending in a pivot to defence spending and rising debt at home. "The mood is ... I would say realistic, but also a sense of unity and of pragmatism," said AlvaroLario, president of the International Fund of Agricultural Development, adding the question on everyone's mind this week was how to do more with less. "How can we come together, or think out of the box, or create new type of ways of really stretching it more?" The Financing For Development meeting is a flagship UN conference, charting the trajectory to help tackle changes the world must make to tax policies, aid spending or key areas such as debt, health and education. Its outcomes guide global aid funding and UN policies for the decade to come. EMPTY CHAIRS, MISSING LEADERS Few disagree over the need for action; hundred-year floods and storms are happening with alarming regularity, and rising debt-servicing costs are siphoning money away from health, education and infrastructure spending in the developing world. But even top developing-world leaders Mia Mottley, the Barbados prime minister and prominent global climate champion, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, currently chairing the Group of 20 major economies, backed out of the event at the last minute. The media room was stacked with bored-looking Spanish press gossiping about a domestic political scandal while disillusioned civil-society leaders stalked the halls, upset with the watered-down agenda and the lack of fiscal or political firepower. "We are facing a backsliding of many agendas that we had advanced a few years ago," said Henrique Frota, director of ABONG, a Brazilian association of NGOs. "Developed countries are reducing their investment in (official development assistance) and European countries are not fulfilling their commitment ... they are giving less and less money right now for every kind of agenda." Event leaders were relieved to produce an outcome document - despite gnawing fears in the past months that Washington would torpedo any deal. In the end, U.S. officials backed out altogether. "The entire community was very afraid of coming herebecause one country wasn't attending," said UN Assistant Secretary General Marcos Neto. "But the document ended up working out ... I'm leaving happy, with more optimism than I thought I would leave with." Neto highlighted significant steps toward implementing climate and development goals, including the Seville Platform and multiple agreements from public and private sectors to leverage funds for the biggest possible impact. The Seville Commitment included tripling multilateral lending capacity, debt relief, a push to boost tax-to-GDP ratios to at least 15%, and get more rich countries to let the IMF use "special drawing rights" money for countries that need it most. But in Seville, only host nation Spain signed on to commit 50% of its "Special Drawing Rights" for the purpose. THE C-WORD UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed acknowledged that the attendance was not as star-studded as hoped, and that public funds are under pressure. "But there's innovative financing, there's the private sector, there's the triple lending of MDBs ... so the resources are there," she said. "We just have to have the political will to leverage through these mechanisms that have come out of the platform of action and continue moving with them." U.S. President Donald Trump, despite his country's absence, loomed large over the event; his climate change scepticism, hostility toward diversity initiatives and pledge to review U.S. participation in multilateral organizations made some keen to strip the "c-word" - climate change - and rebrand initiatives as focused on resilience, education or health. Still, some say the gloomy backdrop should not deter leaders focused on progress. "Ultimately the important thing is doing it," said Jose Vinals, former group chairman of Standard Chartered and co-chair of both the FFD4 Business Steering Committee and the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance. "The private sector is, for the most part, still willing to walk the talk." (Reporting by David Latona in Seville; Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker, Simon Jessop and Marc Jones in London; Writing by Libby George; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Trump, disappointed by call with Putin, to speak with Zelenskiy on Friday
WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump said early on Friday he came away disappointed from a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin because it does not appear the latter is looking to stop Russia's war against Ukraine. U.S. attempts to end Russia's war in Ukraine through diplomacy have largely stalled, and Trump has faced growing calls - including from some Republicans - to increase pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest. After speaking to Putin on Thursday, Trump plans to speak to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, he said in remarks to reporters on his return to Washington from a trip to Iowa. 'I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed,' Trump said. 'I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad.' The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some U.S. weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hour-long conversation, a summary provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov showed. Within hours of their concluding the call, an apparent Russian drone attack sparked a fire in an apartment building in a northern suburb of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, indicating little change in the trajectory of the conflict. In Kyiv itself, Reuters witnesses reported explosions and sustained heavy machine-gun fire as air defense units battled drones over the capital, while Russian shelling killed five people in the east. 'I didn't make any progress with him at all,' Trump told reporters on Thursday. Zelenskiy told reporters in Denmark earlier in the day that he hopes to speak to Trump as soon as Friday about the pause in some weapons shipments first disclosed this week. Speaking to reporters as he left Washington for Iowa, Trump said 'we haven't' completely paused the flow of weapons but blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for sending so many weapons that it risked weakening U.S. defenses. 'We're giving weapons, but we've given so many weapons. But we are giving weapons,' he said. 'And we're working with them and trying to help them, but we haven't (completely stopped). You know, Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves.' The diplomatic back-and-forth comes as low stockpiles have prompted the U.S. to paused shipments of certain critical weapons to Ukraine, sources told Reuters earlier, just as it faces a Russian summer offensive and growing attacks on civilian targets. Putin, for his part, has continued to assert he will stop his invasion only if the conflict's 'root causes' have been tackled, making use of Russian shorthand for the issue of NATO enlargement and Western support for Ukraine, including the rejection of any notion of Ukraine joining the NATO alliance. Russian leaders are also angling to establish greater control over political decisions made in Kyiv and other Eastern European capitals, NATO leaders have said. The pause in U.S. weapons shipments caught Ukraine off-guard and has generated widespread confusion about Trump's current views on the conflict, after saying just last week he would try to free up a Patriot missile defense system for use by Kyiv. Ukrainian leaders called in the acting U.S. envoy to Kyiv on Wednesday to underline the importance of military aid from Washington, and caution that the pause in its weapons shipments would weaken Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russia. The Pentagon's move has meant a cut in deliveries of the Patriot defense missiles that Ukraine relies on to destroy fast-moving ballistic missiles, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Ushakov, the Kremlin aide, said that while Russia was open to continuing to speak with the U.S., any peace negotiations needed to happen between Moscow and Kyiv. That comment comes amid some signs that Moscow is trying to avoid a three-way format for possible peace talks. The Russians asked American diplomats to leave the room during such a meeting in Istanbul in early June, Ukrainian officials have said. Trump and Putin did not talk about a face-to-face meeting, Ushakov said.
New Straits Times
an hour ago
- New Straits Times
UK's Reeves to announce review of workplace pensions contributions, Financial Times reports
LONDON: British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves is expected to announce a shake-up of the UK pension system in her Mansion House speech on July 15, including plans to look at the amount companies and their staff set aside for retirement, the Financial Times reported on Friday. Reeves plans to establish a commission to conduct a long-anticipated review of pension adequacy, examining auto-enrolment rates, the state pension, and retirement savings among the self-employed, the report added, citing executives familiar with her plans. The Treasury did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. In July 2023, Britain's government launched a review of the pensions system to look at ways to shift more investment into productive assets with the aim of boosting economic growth and improving retirement incomes.
