London (awp/afp) – Growing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, with the risk of an “imminent” ballistic missile attack from Iran on Israel, are causing oil prices to rise by more than 3% on Tuesday after noon.
Around 2:35 p.m. GMT (4:35 p.m. in Paris) the price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea, for delivery in December, of which this is the first day of use as a reference contract, increased by 3.17% to 73.93 % dollars.
Its American equivalent, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery in November, lost 3.30% to $70.42.
The price of black gold immediately jumped by almost 4% after the United States announced that “Iran is preparing to launch an imminent ballistic missile attack” against Israel.
“In the short term, total involvement by Iran could lead the markets to panic, and we could see the barrel rise very sharply,” reacts John Plassard, analyst at Mirabaud.
Such an attack would follow a week of intense bombings by Israel against the armed Islamist movement Hezbollah (pro-Iranian), which left hundreds dead in Lebanon.
The Israeli army announced that it had carried out a strike on Beirut on Tuesday, the latest raid targeting Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital.
Iran was the world’s ninth-largest crude producer in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and has the third-largest proven reserves behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
A lasting involvement of Tehran in a conflict with Israel would be synonymous with very high oil prices.
Investors, however, are cautious in the upward movement, uncertain of the real desire and Iranian capacity to launch into all-out war with Israel.
Iran in fact affirmed on Monday that it would not deploy fighters in Lebanon and Gaza.
John Plassard recalls that one month before the American elections “the Biden administration will not let oil prices soar” and could even ask its allies within OPEC+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies ) to increase production.
Conversely, prices are weighed down by information from the financial press according to which Libya could resume crude exports on Tuesday.
In addition, eight members of OPEC+ have planned to gradually restore 2.2 million barrels per day of production starting in December.
To prepare for this, the alliance’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) is due to meet on Wednesday.
afp/rp
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