Oil inches into one-week high as Iran glut weakens

On Tuesday, prices of oil slipped, but had inched near one-week highs after its sudden climb of more than 3% in a prior session as investors mitigated expectations of Iran’s early return to international crude markets.

Brent crude saw a decline of 3% or 20 cents, with it being left at $68.26 per barre at 1223 GMT. It jumped yet again by 3% on Monday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures saw a fall of 0.4%, down by 29 cents, leaving it at $65.76 a barrel, after it had gained 3.9% from the prior session.

United States and Iran are set to resume indirect negotiations in Vienna within the coming week. This had been revitalized after Tehran and the United Nations Nuclear Agency extended a monitoring agreement on the former’s atomic programme.

Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State, was quoted in an interview on Sunday saying that he had not seen yet if Iran would be complying with its nuclear committments so as to see the removal of sanctions with progressing talks. Regarding the matter, Commerzbank had this to say:

“It seems that the market no longer expects the nuclear agreement between the US and Iran to be reinstated in the near future, or therefore that Iranian oil exports will quickly return to the global market,”

Oil demand, in general, remains to be a mixed bag with the Coronavirus pandemic still being patchy.

Certain European and American regions are seeing fewer cases which led them to ease previously implemented restrictions. However, in India one of the world’s biggest oil importer, the rates remain high, recording a total of 222,315 on Monday.

German economy shrank more than what is forecast in the first quarter as COVID-19-related restrictions compelled households to put more money into savings, data recorded on Tuesday.