Oil Drops After US May Grant Waivers to Iran Oil Purchases

Oil prices extended early losses on Monday, with U.S. crude dropping below $69 a barrel, after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said some crude importers may receive waivers to continue buying supplies from Iran, despite U.S. sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.

“We want people to reduce oil purchases to zero, but in certain cases if people can’t do that overnight, we’ll consider exceptions,” Mnuchin told reporters on Friday while traveling to Mexico, Reuters reported. The comments were under embargo until Monday morning.


West Texas Intermediate graph

Mnuchin told the reporters the Trump administration wants to avoid roiling global oil markets as it seeks to pressure Iran to make concessions on its nuclear program, ballistic missile tests and its role in regional conflicts. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and restored sanctions on Tehran in May.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices fell $2.70, or 3.8 percent, to $68.31 by 11:01 a.m. ET (1501 GMT). WTI has fallen for two weeks in a row, dropping from a 3½-year high above $75 a barrel.

via CNBC

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