Oil prices rose on Friday on the possibility that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program.
Price gains were limited, though, as the US has said it is not now seeking sanctions against Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer. The IAEA board adjourned until yesterday morning without reaching a consensus.
Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose US$0.69 to US$65.37 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after sinking to as low as US$63.95 earlier in the day. The contract had dropped US$1.88 a barrel on Thursday.
March Brent futures rose US$0.51 to settle at US$63.39 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange.
"The market is uncertain as to what it wants to do at this point. Supply is not the issue," Alaron Trading Corp analyst Phil Flynn said, referring to ample US crude and product inventories.
"The uncertainty about Iran is the issue," Flynn said.
Participants on both sides in the IAEA meeting have said referring Iran to the UN body seemed unavoidable. The UN Security Council could impose sanctions if the agency reports Iran. Even though Iran's oil minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh has said Iran won't link the country's oil exports to its nuclear dispute, analysts say the issue is nevertheless a factor in the energy markets.
"Iran needs the money, and the world needs the oil," Flynn said, but any sanction against the country "would increase the anxiety and definitely increase the risk in holding futures."
Heating oil rose more than a US$0.01 to settle at US$1.7816 a gallon (US$0.47 per liter) on the NYMEX, while gasoline gained more than US$0.01 to settle at US$1.6817 a gallon. Natural gas rose US$0.266 to settle at US$8.613 per million British thermal units.
Iran claims its program is peaceful and aimed only at generating electricity, while the US and some European nations fear it could be used to develop weapons.
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
The US Federal Reserve is expected to announce a pause in rate cuts on Wednesday, as policymakers look to continue tackling inflation under close and vocal scrutiny from US President Donald Trump. The Fed cut its key lending rate by a full percentage point in the final four months of last year and indicated it would move more cautiously going forward amid an uptick in inflation away from its long-term target of 2 percent. “I think they will do nothing, and I think they should do nothing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis former president Jim Bullard said. “I think the
The TAIEX ended the Year of the Dragon yesterday up about 30 percent, led by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). The benchmark index closed up 225.40 points, or 0.97 percent, at 23,525.41 on the last trading session of the Year of the Dragon before the Lunar New Year holiday ushers in the Year of the Snake. During the Year of the Dragon, the TAIEX rose 5,429.34 points, the highest ever, while the 30 percent increase in the year was the second-highest behind only a 30.84 percent gain in the Year of the Rat from Jan. 25, 2020, to Feb.
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS