After climbing nearly $6 a barrel to reach $118, the world’s oil prices ended up falling Tuesday after President Trump said he was thinking of ending military operations against Iran without a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
At the same time, the Iranian president indicated his country was also “prepared to end” the war if it had security guarantees.
The possible de-escalation of fighting sent Brent oil futures expiring in June to fall 2.5% to $104.75 a barrel.
West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 0.6% and closed at $102.27 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil prices had earlier jumped after a Kuwaiti oil tanker was hit by an Iranian rocket and set ablaze. Prices moderated after the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had told aides he was willing to end the military strikes without reopening the Strait. Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to reopen the critical strait would take much longer than his initial four-to-six week timeline for the Iran conflict, the WSJ reported.
Natural gas prices made a slight gain on Tuesday, closing at $2.888 MMBtu with a gain of $0.001 or 0.03%.
A majority of Oklahoma energy stocks we follow daily ended the day with recorded losses including a more than 6% drop for Mammoth Energy Services. Two firms had significant gains including Stardust Power at nearly 9% and USA Rare Earth Inc. at more than 6%.