WTI crude traded near $93.20 a barrel in Asian hours on Wednesday, giving back gains from the previous session. Markets awaited the US Energy Information Administration report due later on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Prices eased after Iraq agreed to resume exports through Turkey\u2019s Ceyhan port. Iran also allowed safe passage for some vessels based on affiliation, reducing near-term disruption worries.<\/p>\n
The United States stepped up efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after allies declined President Donald Trump\u2019s request to help protect shipping. The route remains a key channel for oil transport.<\/p>\n
The American Petroleum Institute said US crude stocks rose by 6.6 million barrels for the week ending 13 March. That followed a 1.7 million-barrel draw the prior week and differed from forecasts for a 600,000-barrel fall.<\/p>\n
Reuters reported US forces struck Iranian coastal sites near the Strait of Hormuz over anti-ship missile concerns. The BBC said Israel claimed strikes that killed senior Iranian officials, including Ali Larijani and Basij chief Gholamreza Soleimani.<\/p>\n
The Guardian reported Iran attacked oil and gas production facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. The report said the targets were upstream sites rather than refineries or storage.<\/p>\n
WTI, or West Texas Intermediate, is a US-produced crude benchmark traded via the Cushing hub. Prices mainly follow supply and demand, as well as OPEC output decisions and the US dollar.<\/p>\n
Weekly inventory data from API (Tuesday) and EIA (Wednesday) can move prices by signalling supply changes. Their results are within 1% of each other 75% of the time, and EIA data is generally treated as more reliable.<\/p>\n
We are seeing WTI oil prices pull back to around $93.20, which seems to be a short-term reaction to news about renewed Iraqi exports and a significant build in US crude inventories. This dip is likely temporary as the market digests the weekly supply data. Traders should watch the upcoming EIA report closely, as a confirmation of the large inventory increase could offer a better entry point.<\/p>\n
The underlying geopolitical risk is far more significant than these weekly data points. Last year, in 2025, we saw a major escalation with direct attacks on oil production facilities in the UAE and Iraq, which is a much greater threat than targeting tankers or storage sites. These events, combined with the killing of senior Iranian officials, have set the stage for sustained volatility and a high-risk premium on oil prices.<\/p>\n
Historically, direct attacks on infrastructure cause dramatic price reactions. We saw this in 2019 when attacks on Saudi Arabia\u2019s Abqaiq and Khurais facilities briefly knocked out 5% of global supply, causing one of the largest single-day price surges in history. The precedent from 2025 suggests an even higher risk is now priced into the market, and any further escalation could trigger a similar, if not larger, price spike.<\/p>\n
This tension is happening within an already tight market. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently projected that global oil demand is on track to hit a record high of over 103 million barrels per day this year. With non-OPEC+ supply growth slowing, there is very little spare capacity to absorb a major supply disruption from the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Given this backdrop, we view the current price weakness as a strategic opportunity to position for a sharp move higher in the coming weeks. The fundamental risk is skewed to the upside, driven by the unresolved conflict in one of the world’s most critical energy-producing regions.<\/p>\n
For derivative traders, this means considering the purchase of call options or setting up bull call spreads to profit from a potential price surge. The extreme uncertainty also makes long volatility strategies, like buying straddles, an attractive way to trade the potential for a major price move. The current dip seems to be a brief pause before the geopolitical reality reasserts itself on the market.<\/p>\n
Create your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WTI slipped near $93.20 as Iraq resumed exports; traders awaited EIA data after API stock build.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":{"acf_article_selection_author":null},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}