Ammon News - Oil prices fell on Tuesday, extending losses from the previous session, on signs of some progress in restoring crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz following U.S.-Iran peace talks.

Brent crude futures were down 44 cents, or 0.6%, to $77.46 a barrel and ​U.S. West Texas Intermediate was down 30 cents, or 0.4%, to $73.56 a barrel at 0813 GMT.

Prices ​fell more than 3% on Monday after the United States granted Iran a 60-day sanctions waiver ⁠following initial peace talks, and as officials reported a lull in hostilities in Lebanon under a broader agreement.

The ​U.S. waiver means Iran can sell crude oil across the world, not only to the usual buyers, adding ​to the market’s focus on supply, said Saxo Bank analyst Ole Hansen.

Oil and liquefied natural gas tankers sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, in a sign of traffic slowly picking up after Iran said it had again closed the waterway over the ​weekend, shipping data showed.

Two smaller crude tankers, carrying just under 2 million barrels of oil in total, sailed ​out of the strait into the Gulf of Oman on Monday, separate ship tracking data on the MarineTraffic platform showed.

The world ‌has ⁠lost millions of barrels of oil and gas supply since the war closed the strait, a chokepoint for about a fifth of the world's oil and LNG supplies, for more than three months.

"Ship owners and operators will require assurances that the threats posed by mines have been fully eliminated. Damaged ports, debris in the water, and ​congestion present additional obstacles to ​an unconditional ramp-up in ⁠traffic," said Tamas Varga, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates.

The price declines come after a weekend that had appeared to put the week-old accord in jeopardy, including threats ​from U.S. President Donald Trump to restart the war if Iran disrupted shipping again.

Elsewhere, ​six people were ⁠wounded in Russian airstrikes on Ukraine overnight, local authorities said, while Russia's ongoing fuel crisis deepened into parts of Siberia.

Separately, analysts in a Reuters poll expect U.S. crude inventories to have fallen last week, along with distillate and gasoline inventories.

On ⁠Monday, government ​data showed U.S. crude stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to ​331.2 million barrels last week, the lowest since June 1983, as supplies tightened in the wake of the U.S.-Iran conflict.


Reuters