By Sam Li and Colleen Howe <\/p>\n
BEIJING, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Oil prices edged lower on Thursday as investors weighed the uncertainty of renewed military strikes between the U.S. and Iran that \u200crisk disrupting supplies from the Middle East. <\/p>\n
Brent crude futures fell 59 cents, or 0.62%, to $95.04 \u200ca barrel at 0509 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down 38 cents, or 0.42%, at $90.63. <\/p>\n
The latest attacks were \u200bthe most substantial exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran since July, with the war now in its seventh month. <\/p>\n
Brent and WTI swung between gains of as much as $2 a barrel and losses of $1 a barrel during the previous trading session. The session highs for both benchmarks were the highest since July 24. <\/p>\n
Oil prices \u200cretreated on tentative signs that the \u2060latest flare-up was easing, with no confirmed exchange of fire since around midday on Wednesday, Sydney time, IG analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note. <\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump \u2060said on Wednesday that the renewed U.S. campaign against Iran would not continue for “too long” and that U.S. forces had targeted Iran’s radar and missile systems. <\/p>\n
“We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build \u200balong the \u200bStrait of Hormuz \u2013 some defensive, some offensive … It was \u200ba very heavy attack last night, and \u200cwe’re prepared to do another one any time we want,” Trump said. <\/p>\n
“If that easing holds, and it is a big if, it won’t be long before oil moving out of the Strait via dark-ship transits and ship-to-ship transfers returns to the levels we saw at the end of last week,” Sycamore said. <\/p>\n
Four commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz, below the 10-day average of around 13, preliminary shipping data from Kpler \u200cshowed on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Iran also added more ships to the list \u200bof vessels it deems non-compliant and subject to fines, confiscation or \u200bdetention if they try to sail through \u200bthe strait. <\/p>\n
Iraq increased its oil exports to around 2.34 million barrels per day in \u200cAugust from about 1.35 million bpd in \u200bJuly, two Iraqi energy officials \u200bsaid on Wednesday, with September exports also expected to increase as heavy discounts and Iranian approvals for Iraqi tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz encouraged buyers. <\/p>\n
The U.S. said on Tuesday \u200bthat 17 million barrels of oil \u200ctransited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, calling it the largest volume of crude to \u200bpass through the waterway since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sam Li and \u200bColleen Howe; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Stephen Coates) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sam Li and Colleen Howe BEIJING, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Oil prices edged lower on Thursday as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[7158,48376,75364,34,3038,351,75363,73976,392,683],"class_list":["post-276246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-brent","tag-colleen-howe","tag-howe","tag-iran","tag-iraqi","tag-reuters","tag-sam-li","tag-sycamore","tag-trump","tag-u-s"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117205815121782609","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276246","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=276246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}