) but only held those gains for a short period, with Brent range bound in the low $70 soon enough. There was a lot of oversupply at that time. Ten days after the attack, Aramco had its damaged facilities back online and oil prices pared most gains. In the meantime, while the normalization of ties between the UAE and Israel bode extremely well for the region, the Saudis have not been keen to make this same move–yet.
Additionally, with Benjamin Netanyahu now back in the PM’s seat in Tel Aviv, and as radical and contentious as ever, no other Gulf states would think of entertaining normalization. Potential Israeli actions are now one of the more extreme levers of vulnerability in the region. This is an old, long-running narrative that the markets have largely ignored until now.
Baghdad’s grievances are, of course, understandable to some extent. All the oil from all of Iraq is meant to be sold by the federal government’s state-run marketer, SOMO. However, for years, the KRG has been selling its oil directly to markets by piping it to Turkey, bypassing Baghdad’s coffers.
While the market is already aware that this is going to be a long war , major developments such as the use of on Ukraine that would bring us close to more active NATO involvement , do not even bear speaking about. We will be beyond discussing oil prices at that point.