Oil Rises After Iraq Civil War Looms

West Texas Intermediate crude headed for the biggest weekly advance since December and Brent gained as escalating violence in Iraq threatened supplies from OPEC’s second-largest oil producer.

Futures pared gains after earlier rising 1.1 percent in New York. Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi speculated that U.S. planes may bomb his nation’s north as militants linked to al-Qaeda, that captured the city of Mosul this week, moved south toward Baghdad. Events in Iraq highlight the risks to oil supply from the nation, which is forecast to provide about 60 percent of OPEC’s output growth in the rest of this decade, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said.

“There has been some positioning for the potential for supply disruptions in Iraq,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of Switzerland-based researcher Petromatrix GmbH, said by phone. “It’s a major supplier.”

WTI for July delivery gained as much as $1.15 to $107.68 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $106.83 at 1:04 p.m. London time. The contract rose $2.13 to $106.53 yesterday, the highest close since Sept. 18. The volume of all futures traded was more than double the 100-day average for the time of day. Prices have advanced 4.1 percent this week.

via Bloomberg

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza