Oil prices were little changed Monday as the market weighed between fears of an escalation of war in the Middle East and hopes for a ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
THE West Texas Intermediate United States The contract for May rose 85 cents to $112.39 a barrel as of 11:45 a.m. ET. International reference Brent crude price advanced 66 cents to $109.69 a barrel.
Mediators in Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey have proposed a 45-day ceasefire between the United States and Iran. President Donald Trump said Monday the proposal was not enough.
“It’s not enough, but it’s a very important step,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They are negotiating now and they have taken a very important step. We will see what happens.”
A White House official earlier told CNBC that Trump had not approved the proposal. It’s one idea among many, the official said. Axios was the first to report the proposal.
Trump has given Iran until Tuesday to open the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks on its power plants and bridges. The president warned Sunday in an expletive-filled speech social media post that Iran would “live in hell” if it did not open the strait.
Trump then posted, “Tuesday, 8 p.m. Eastern Time!” without further explanation.
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Iran has effectively kept the strait closed through attacks on oil tankers. The sea route connects the Persian Gulf to global markets. Before the war, about 20% of the world’s supplies passed through the strait.
The closure of the strait triggered the largest oil supply disruption in history. The prices of crude oil, jet fuel, diesel and gasoline have soared since the start of the war.
Trump said in a national speech last Wednesday that the war would continue for two or three weeks.
Nearly 1 billion barrels will be lost by the end of the month, including up to 600 million barrels of crude oil and about 350 million barrels of refined products, according to TD Securities.
“As the conflict is now expected to last at least until April, the barrel calculations are getting increasingly grim,” Ryan McKay, senior commodities strategist at TD Securities, said in a note to clients Thursday.
Rapidan Energy reports a total net loss of 630 million barrels of oil and products by the end of June, taking into account flows redirected through pipelines, emergency inventory releases and inventory draws.
The eight members of OPEC+ On Sunday, they agreed to increase production by 206,000 barrels per day in May, although it is unclear how the oil will reach the global market with the strait still closed.
Kuwait Oil Company said on Sunday that several of its operational facilities had been attacked by drones, resulting in significant damage.
OPEC+ warned that repairing energy infrastructure damaged by Iranian attacks “is both costly and time-consuming, thus affecting overall supply availability.”
The eight members of OPEC+ are Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman.
— CNBC’s Megan Cassella and Anniek Bao contributed to this report.
