By Anushree Mukherjee and Seher Dareen BENGALURU/LONDON June 23 Oil prices fell on Tuesday, extending losses from the previous session, on signs of some progress in restoring crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz following U.S.-Iran peace talks.
Brent crude futures were down 43 cents, or around 0.6%, to $77.47 a barrel and U.S
West Texas Intermediate was down 32 cents, or 0.4%, to $73.54 a barrel at 1001 GMT. Prices fell more than 3% on Monday after the United States granted Iran a 60-day sanctions waiver following initial peace talks, and as officials reported a lull in hostilities in Lebanon under a broader agreement. Venezuelan, Russian and now Iranian crude is available to anyone looking to buy, said Ole Hvalbye, market analyst at SEB Research, highlighting that countries would be looking to stock up on crude to replenish stores.
In the short term, the easing of sanctions wouldn’t weigh on prices much, he added, as the U.S.-Iranian memorandum of understanding was still new and fragile. On Monday, government data showed U.S. crude stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 331.2 million barrels last week, the lowest since June 1983. Oil and liquefied natural gas tankers sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, in a sign of traffic slowly picking up even though Iran said it had again closed the waterway over the weekend, shipping data showed.