US crude oil prices rose above $75 a barrel (E1026,32) for the first time since 2014 on Tuesday after Iran appeared to threaten to disrupt oil shipments from the Middle East Gulf if Washington pressed ahead with sanctions.
“The Americans have claimed they want to completely stop Iran’s oil exports,” the website, president.ir, quoted Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as saying. “They don’t understand the meaning of this statement, because it has no meaning for Iranian oil not to be exported.
Tuesday’s earlier gains extended last week’s rally, which saw U.S. crude surge more than 8 percent and Brent rise 5 percent. The increases were fueled by an outage at a major Canadian oil sands facility and flaring tensions in Libya’s long-running conflict that raised fresh concerns about the country’s exports.
Exacerbating those surprise events, a Trump administration official told reporters that American diplomats are pushing oil buyers to cut off all purchases of Iranian crude by the beginning of November. A senior State Department official reaffirmed the tougher-than-anticipated policy on Monday.
Analysts pointed to a report from Saudi Arabia’s state media agency saying the kingdom’s Council of Ministers, chaired by King Salman bin Abdulaziz, is ready to deploy the nation’s spare capacity to add more oil to the market. President Donald Trump has asked the king to raise output by as much as 2 million barrels per day.
OPEC, the Saudi-dominated group of 14 oil producers, reached an agreement with Russa and other exporters last month to raise output by about 1 million bpd.
