West Texas: Waterway Washington and Oil Trade

west texas: Last week, both U.S. benchmark WTI and Brent saw weekly rises of around 1.5%. Oil has struggled to rally convincingly despite a string of six weekly declines in U.S. inventories and rising geopolitical tensions between Iran and other countries, notably the U.S. and Britain in the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for global oil transport, with around a third of global seaborne oil trade passing through the waterway, according to Market Watch. Washington's decision last May to pull out of a 2015 Iran nuclear deal set the stage for increased animosities in the region. West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery CLU19, 0.50% on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 67 cents, or 1.2%, to close at 56.87 a barrel, while October Brent crude BRNV19, 0.74%, the global benchmark, rose 15 cents, or 0.2%, to 63.62 a barrel on the ICE Europe exchange. On Monday, the U.K. sent a warship to escort its vessels in the area and warned Tehran that it must release a British-flagged vessel seized this month. We believe the window for upward price movement is rapidly closing, and we are lowering our conviction in tandem, they wrote. Analysts at Macquarie Capital, in a Monday note, said the bullish trend in U.S. crude inventories, which fell 10 million barrels last week, remains supportive for the short-term outlook, but they expressed worry about longer term prospects against a backdrop of diminishing economic optimism and ample global supply. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.