Michelle ThompsonPrices dropped last week after reporting their biggest gains in the previous 26 weeks.
As markets centered on the development of the geopolitical tension in the Middle East, oil prices declined in a largely flat early Asian trading session on Monday.
At 10.19 a.m. local time (0719 GMT), international benchmark crude Brent was trading at $90.70 a barrel, down 0.21% from its previous trading day’s closing price of $90.89.
The benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price in the United States was trading at $86.28 a barrel at the same time, down 0.08% from Friday’s closing of $86.35.
Last week, as markets worried about rising supply constraints for the rest of the year due to the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel, both benchmarks experienced their most significant gains in the previous 26 weeks.
As Israel prepares to make a big incursion into Gaza in response to the onslaught by Hamas, market participants are attempting to evaluate the potential spillover of the conflict to other nations and its impacts on the crude oil supply channels.
Over the weekend, bombs kept falling on Gaza, killing hundreds of people daily. Iran’s threats against the US and Israel put at danger a successful resolution of the US-Iran nuclear deal, which would relieve sanctions on Iran and allow for the sale of Iranian oil.
Since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear agreement that forbade Iran from developing highly enriched uranium or plutonium that might be used in a nuclear weapon in 2015, the US and Iran have been in negotiations.
Before the Israel-Palestine conflict, the two sides had not yet reached an agreement to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, generally known as JCPOA.
