Escalation in the Middle East raised the price of oil towards 93 dollars
Oil prices rose to $93 on international markets on Wednesday as traders were unsettled by a flare-up in the US-Iran conflict in the Persian Gulf, with warnings of an accelerated supply drawdown due to the blockade of Hormuz.
On the London market, a barrel was traded in the afternoon at $1.18 higher than the closing price of $92.63 the day before. On the American market, it rose by $1.5 to $89.70.
Even in the middle of the week, prices followed the ‘temperature’ in the Persian Gulf.
Traders are closely monitoring the data on the movement of tankers through Hormuz.
Data from Kpler and the London Stock Exchange Group showed that a fifth tanker carrying Qatari liquefied gas recently passed through Hormuz. Since the beginning of the war, a total of nine LNG transport ships have passed through.
At the end of May, an oil tanker with a destination in Europe passed through Hormuz for the first time, according to Al Jazeera’s data Kpler.
The Marshall Islands-flagged Advantage Victory tanker, carrying two million barrels of Iraqi oil, passed through the strait on May 27 without specifying a destination. They discovered the information only this Monday, with an AIS signal indicating the symbol “NL RTM”, which is the code name for Rotterdam.
Since the beginning of March, 103 tankers with a total of 185 million barrels of oil have left the Persian Gulf, according to Kpler’s data.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday afternoon at the Atlantic Council conference that more ships are passing through Hormuz and more oil is being exported.
“I would say (traffic) is up a lot,” Wright drew a parallel with last week and the week before last.
“Oil exports through the strait and the Persian Gulf are growing, “and will continue to grow,” said the US Minister of Energy.
His words followed a warning by the US Energy Administration that oil and derivatives stocks in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members are decreasing at an accelerated pace to supplement reduced supplies from the Persian Gulf.
By the end of this year, supplies could drop to their lowest level since 2003, the US Energy Administration said, warning that it was basing its estimate on the assumption that Hormuz would be opened in the third quarter. The full normalization of traffic is likely to take several months, they noted in the report.
Separate calculations by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries show that a barrel of the oil basket of its members fell by $3.59 to $98.92 on Tuesday.
