Amid the ongoing tension in the Middle East, there is a rise in oil prices. Oil prices rose for the fourth session in a row on Friday. It was the biggest weekly rise in the crude oil benchmark since OPEC+ began production cuts two years ago. Brent, currently at $78 a barrel, is trading at a one-month high. WTI crude is also close to $74 per barrel.
On a weekly basis, both benchmarks are expected to rise more than 9 percent, according to the agency. It was the highest in a week after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) agreed to a deep cut in oil production in October 2022.
The deals rose more than 5 percent on Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged that the White House is in talks with Israel over whether to support attacks on Iran’s oil facilities. “We’re discussing it,” Biden said Thursday.
What did Biden say about Israel’s attack?
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden, when asked if he would support Israel’s attack on Iran’s crude oil facilities, said we are discussing it. Later, a US official said the administration was still negotiating with Israel and did not believe a decision had been made yet.
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Analysts were quick to alert buyers to the potential consequences of an escalating war in the Middle East. Israel on Friday said it had targeted the intelligence headquarters of Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon overnight and was assessing the damage, as Iran’s supreme leader called on allies to step up their anti-Israel conflict.
What do the experts say?
Attacking Iranian energy facilities is not Israel’s preferred course of action, JPMorgan commodity analysts wrote Friday. However, low levels of global oil inventories suggest that prices are likely to rise until the conflict is resolved. Citing data from ship-tracking service Kpler, he said inventories were below last year’s level, when Brent traded at $92, and were at a record low of 4.4 billion barrels.
Brokerage StoneX estimates that if Iran’s oil infrastructure is targeted, oil prices will rise by $3 to $5 a barrel. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made his first public appearance on Friday after Iran launched a missile attack on Israel and called for an anti-Israel conflict.
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Iran’s semi-official news agency SNN On Friday, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Ali Fadawi, stated that if Israel attacks Iran, it will target Israeli fuel and gas installations. Iran, a member of OPEC+, produces 3.2 million barrels per day, or 3 percent of global production.
