The barrel of oil is on fire, between American sanctions and war in the Middle East

(Boursier.com) — New tensions on the oil market this weekend with a barrel jumping more than 4% in explosive geopolitical news. The barrel of Brent from the Northern Met (December contract) rose 4.2% to $89.6 in London while the barrel of American light crude (November deadline) rose 4.4% to $86.5 on Nymex.

The return to $90 a barrel comes after the United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two shipping companies it said violated the G7 oil price cap, a mechanism designed to curb resources. of the Kremlin in the midst of war against Ukraine. “This action underscores the Treasury Department’s commitment with its international partners to responsibly reduce the Russian government’s oil profits and contain the Russian war machine,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

“We remain committed to implementing a price cap policy that has two objectives: to reduce the oil profits that Russia relies on to wage its unjust war against Ukraine and to keep global energy markets stable and well supplied despite the turmoil caused by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.

This announcement increased fears over the supply of crude oil in an already tense market. Market players are particularly closely monitoring the consequences of the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and its potential impact on the production of neighboring countries as well as on maritime transport in the region. “Even if there has been no direct impact on physical supply, the markets will remain on hold,” the IAE said in its monthly report, referring to the conflict in the Middle East. The agency “stands ready to act as necessary to ensure markets remain adequately supplied.”

“A geopolitical risk premium persists, likely to support oil prices in the near term,” Kelvin Wong, senior analyst at OANDA in Singapore, told ‘Reuters’. But for the Commerzbank teams, the conflict in the Middle East has so far had a limited impact on crude prices: “nothing indicates so far that the main oil producing countries in the region will be directly involved in the military conflict, which would threaten to significantly restrict the crude oil production of these countries.

On Thursday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries also maintained its forecast for growth in global demand for black gold, citing signs of a resilient global economy so far in 2023 and expecting further increases. of consumption in China, the world’s largest importer of crude.