Oil Rally Runs Out of Steam After Trump Says Iran Wants a Deal

Описание: Oil edged lower, though still notched its biggest monthly gain since 2022, as US President Donald Trump reiterated openness to negotiations with Iran though investors remain on edge about the potential for further tensions. West Texas Intermediate fell 0.3% to settle near $65 a barrel, snapping a breathless three-day rally, while Brent ended the day above $70. Prices tumbled after Trump told reporters that Iran wants to make a deal. The US president’s messaging has shifted from punishing Tehran for its deadly crackdown on protesters to this week trying to extract a new nuclear agreement. Dr. Ellen Wald, President of Transversal Consulting, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and author of "Saudi, Inc." joins Bloomberg Businessweek Daily to discuss. She also weighs in on Chevron and Exxon earnings results. Wald speIt was supposed to be the year of glutted oil markets and lower prices, but the first weeks of 2026 have instead been dominated by geopolitical spikes and supply disruption, powering futures to $70 a barrel.
President Trump’s threats to attack Iran have injected several dollars of geopolitical risk premium into crude — now at $7 to $10 a barrel, according to Citigroup Inc. — just weeks after the US removed Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state. In a year where many had expected crude in the $50s, options traders have been busy placing bets on a rally above $90.


Supplies have been tighter than expected, too. Outages from Kazakhstan to Libya, as well as a severe winter storm in the US, have lowered the availability of crude in key pricing locations. Most traders and analysts still see production exceeding consumption globally, but not where it’s most visible: western storage hubs. They point instead to the build up of sanctioned Russian supply at sea — barrels that exist, but that only a few nations are willing to buy — and China mopping up much of the excess.
The result is an oil market that’s been caught off guard and has surprised Wall Street analysts. Traders amassed record bearish wagers on the global Brent benchmark toward the end of the year. Instead, futures are up 15% so far in January, heading for the biggest monthly increase since January 2022 in a period when the OPEC+ alliance, which meets on Sunday, is keeping output steady. 
When and whether prices come back down will be driven heavily by President Trump’s next moves on Iran. 
“We have very little reason to fundamentally change the story, but you do also have to consider the geopolitical risk,” Martijn Rats, global oil strategist at Morgan Stanley, said in an interview. “You had almost nothing that built in the core OECD pricing centers and so a lot of the bearish impact of this surplus has been shielded.”
For much of 2025, the oil market’s surplus largely washed up into storage tanks and caverns in China, the world’s largest importer. That trend is likely to continue this year — averaging 300,000 barrels a day, according to Vortexa Ltd. analyst Emma Li — although details of the stockpiling program aren’t yet clear.
In December, more than 13 million barrels a day of crude arrived on China’s shores, the most on record, according to government data.
Bloomberg Originals explores why the world is awash in cheap crude oil, how geopolitical tensions don’t have the same effect on price they once did and what this glut means for the global economy.

Brent futures have averaged $64.69 a barrel in London this month, surpassing the first-quarter forecasts of major Wall Street banks, who at the end of last year were generally anticipating levels closer to $59 between January and March. Some have since nudged their estimates higher.
.”aks with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec.




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