Investing.com — Oil prices remained near multi-week highs in European trading on Thursday after three consecutive sessions of gains, as fresh U.S. attacks against Iran reinforced supply concerns, although President Donald Trump said the attacks would not last long.
As of 07:29 ET (11:29 GMT), expiring in November rose 1% to $96.62 a barrel, while added 1.6% to $92.48 a barrel, holding earlier gains after both benchmarks reached five-week highs in the previous three sessions.
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The rally had been driven by fears that renewed military confrontation between the United States and Iran could further disrupt oil supplies from the Middle East.
U.S. forces struck Iran’s southern coast on Wednesday while Tehran retaliated against U.S. positions across the region, in the most intense exchange of fire between the two countries since July.
Trump, however, said on Wednesday that the renewed U.S. campaign against Iran would not persist for an extended period, helping to temper some of the market’s immediate supply concerns.
He also said the U.S. had targeted Iranian radar, missile systems and capabilities linked to laying mines around the Strait of Hormuz.
The Strait remains the key focus for oil markets. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said 17 million barrels of crude passed through the waterway on Monday, the highest volume since the conflict sharply reduced flows.
Still, shipping traffic remains volatile. Preliminary Kpler data showed only four commodity vessels transited the strait on Tuesday, compared with a 10-day average of about 13.
The market also received a bullish signal from U.S. inventories. U.S. commercial crude stocks fell by 4.5 million barrels last week, the first decline in five weeks, which defied analysts’ estimate for a small rise.
Product inventories offered a mixed picture. fell by 1.2 million barrels, while distillate inventories, including diesel and , rose by about 800,000 barrels.
Attention is also turning to OPEC+. The group is expected to leave its October oil output policy unchanged at a meeting on Sunday after completing the scheduled unwinding of a 1.65 million-barrel-per-day layer of cuts. OPEC+ had raised September output quotas by 188,000 bpd.
Vahid Karaahmetovic contributed to this report.