Oil prices rose after US President Donald Trump tightened the blockade imposed on Venezuela, with members of the US Coast Guard boarding an oil tanker and chasing another, weeks after the first seizure of a ship. Brent crude rose to $61 a barrel after two straight weekly losses, while West Texas Intermediate crude traded near $57. The US Coast Guard on Saturday boarded the tanker “Centuries” in the Caribbean Sea, which was loaded with about two million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil. The United States is also dealing with the Bella 1 tanker, which was on its way to the Latin American country. Also read: Washington is tracking a third oil tanker as Trump tightens blockade of Venezuela. Washington continues to escalate pressure on the government of Nicolas Maduro as Trump seeks to strangle the regime’s main source of revenue. The United States has also classified the regime as a “foreign terrorist organization” and accused it of involvement in drug trafficking. Venezuela still has the largest crude oil reserves in the world, but its exports, most of which go to China, now represent less than 1% of global demand. Ukraine intensifies its attacks. At the same time, tensions also rose over supplies from another member of OPEC and the OPEC+ alliance, after Ukraine for the first time targeted an oil tanker belonging to the Russian “shadow fleet” in the Mediterranean with drones. It came after strikes targeting Lukoil’s facilities in the Caspian Sea. Geopolitical tensions have helped support oil prices, which have fallen by about a fifth this year. These declines were driven by expectations of an oversupply, with the OPEC+ alliance restoring production at a faster-than-expected pace, at a time when other countries are increasing their output while demand remains weak. “We maintain our slightly more optimistic view on crude until the end of the year, based on geopolitical developments becoming much more supportive,” said Robert Rennie, head of commodity research at Westpac Banking Corp. But he added that Brent crude is likely to fall to the $50 range next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices rose after US President Donald Trump tightened the blockade imposed on Venezuela, with members of the US Coast Guard boarding an oil tanker and chasing another, weeks after the first seizure of a ship. Brent crude rose to $61 a barrel after two straight weekly losses, while West Texas Intermediate crude traded near<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":359247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}