By Siddharth Cavale <\/p>\n
Sept 2 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose nearly 1% in early trade on Wednesday, extending the previous session’s surge, as concerns over supply disruption intensified after the \u200cU.S. and Iran exchanged strikes overnight, dimming hopes for a quick easing of tensions \u200cin the Middle East. <\/p>\n
Brent crude futures rose 87 cents, or 0.92%, to $95.52 a barrel by 0008 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate \u200bcrude futures climbed 80 cents, or 0.89%, to $91.02. Both contracts soared more than $4 on Tuesday, marking Brent’s largest gain since July 24 and WTI’s largest since July 23. <\/p>\n
The United States said it had launched a series of airstrikes against targets in Iran overnight, prompting an Iranian response, in the most serious \u200cescalation of the conflict between the \u2060two countries in weeks. <\/p>\n
“The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members \u2060deployed to the region,” U.S. Central Command said in a post on X, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). <\/p>\n
The IRGC said the U.S. attacks would further restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, \u200ba critical \u200bwaterway that carried about one-fifth of the global oil \u200bconsumed before the conflict and which \u200cIran has effectively closed to commercial shipping. <\/p>\n
The IRGC also said it had targeted a U.S. military base in Jordan with ballistic missiles that it claimed had killed a large number of U.S. forces, while Iranian state media reported a large-scale drone attack on a U.S. base in Bahrain in response to the American strikes. <\/p>\n
Jordan’s military said its air defenses intercepted 10 of 13 ballistic missiles that entered \u200cits airspace, while two U.S. officials said no American \u200bcasualties had been reported so far from the attacks. \u200bSeparately, Kuwait said its armed forces were \u200bresponding to hostile drone activity. <\/p>\n
The latest exchange followed a weekend flare-up in \u200chostilities, the first since July, and came after \u200battacks on two tankers \u200bdeparting the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, causing further disruptions to oil supplies and forcing traders to seek alternative crude shipments. <\/p>\n
In the U.S., the world’s largest oil producer, crude \u200binventories fell by 2.6 million barrels \u200cin the week ended August 28, while distillate stocks, which include diesel and \u200bheating oil, declined by 265,000 barrels, market sources said, citing data from the American Petroleum \u200bInstitute. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Siddharth Cavale Sept 2 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose nearly 1% in early trade on Wednesday, extending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,57184,74788],"class_list":["post-274064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-iran","tag-session","tag-siddharth-cavale"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117199122086714865","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274064","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=274064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}