By Sethuraman N R and Helen Clark <\/p>\n
NEW DELHI\/PERTH, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Oil prices were little changed on Monday after surrendering earlier gains, as optimism over \u200ctalks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was tempered by Iran’s insistence that \u200cthe United States satisfy several demands before the waterway could reopen. <\/p>\n
Brent crude futures stood at $83.54 a barrel, off \u200b1 cent, by 0643 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 15 cents, or 0.2% to $78.03 a barrel. <\/p>\n
Both benchmarks had fallen more than 7% last week on hopes that Iran and Oman were close to reaching a deal that would result in a \u200creopening of the Strait of Hormuz, \u2060which carried a fifth of the world’s oil before the war. <\/p>\n
While Iran said on Sunday that a deal with Oman was in its “final \u2060stages”, it reiterated that the waterway would only reopen once Washington met other conditions, including U.S. compensation for widespread U.S. attacks on Iran. <\/p>\n
“Crude oil prices remain caught between opposing forces, as \u200bmarkets \u200bassess the possibility of a breakthrough over the \u200bStrait of Hormuz against Iran’s conditions \u200cfor reopening the strategic waterway,” said Sugandha Sachdeva, founder of SS WealthStreet, a New Delhi-based research firm. <\/p>\n
Iran and the U.S. are not engaged in talks and Tehran will not start them as long as Washington breaches an interim deal signed in June, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in a further threat to supply, the Iran-aligned Houthis \u200csaid they had hit Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery \u200bon Sunday. <\/p>\n
The attack came two days after the kingdom \u200bsigned a defence pact with Sunni \u200bMuslim allies Turkey and Pakistan in response to growing regional instability \u200cfrom the U.S.-Israeli war on Shi’ite Iran. <\/p>\n
Separately, \u200bthe United Arab Emirates’ \u200bADNOC said on Friday that 15 of its vessels had been attacked transiting the Strait of Hormuz since the beginning of the conflict. <\/p>\n
“Any major progress towards restoring \u200bunrestricted shipping could exert downward \u200cpressure on oil prices, while a breakdown in negotiations or renewed supply \u200bdisruptions could quickly revive the geopolitical risk premium,” Sachdeva said. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Helen Clark; \u200bEditing by Nick Zieminski and Sonali Paul) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sethuraman N R and Helen Clark NEW DELHI\/PERTH, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Oil prices were little changed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[61310,102,34,261,101,53105],"class_list":["post-243008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-strait-of-hormuz","tag-helen-clark","tag-hormuz","tag-iran","tag-oil-prices","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-sugandha-sachdeva"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117070029358756589","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}