Oil Down For Third Straight Week As Flynn Credits Trump For Being Its "Biggest Influence"

From tariffs to sanctions, Trump is writing there script "for the history books": File Image/Pixabay

Oil trading on Friday predictably paved the way for the third straight weekly loss based largely on concern over U.S. president Donald Trump’s multi-country tariffs; however, the commodity eked out daily gains due to the brash billionaire imposing a new sanction against Iran.

Brent settled up 37 cents at $74.66 per barrel but closed in on a 2.1 percent weekly loss; West Texas Intermediate settled up 39 cents at $71.00 per barrel.

Washington’s new sanction on Iran involved a few individuals and tankers helping to ship millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil per year to China, the oil shipped on behalf of Iran's Armed Forces General Staff and its front company, Sepehr Energy.

State department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce justified the measure by saying, "We will use all tools at our disposal to hold the regime accountable for its destabilizing activities and pursuit of nuclear weapons that threaten the civilized world.”

As for Trump’s 10 percent tariff against Chinese imports in a bid to improve the U.S. trade balance, Michael Haigh, global head of commodities research at Societe Generale, pointed out that on one hand "The imposition of tariffs and the pauses should be bullish for the oil market because it adds uncertainty,” but on the other, “Tariffs and tit for tat responses from nations, they hurt global GDP ... and oil demand."

Meanwhile, Bloomberg disclosed that refiners in China “have slashed operating rates to lows last seen at the beginning of the pandemic.”

The news agency went on to report that Europe isn’t faring much better: “The crude grades that help underpin futures benchmarks are trading at the weakest levels in several months as processing plants in the region shut down…..so-called timespreads, which offer a gauge of market health, have also slumped this week.”

But Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group Inc. seemed to embrace the volatility on Friday: he credited Trump for being “the biggest influence on oil prices,” and he went on to ruminate that the effect of the tariffs, the Iranian sanction, and possibly a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine “are going to write the script for oil in the short term and for the history books for generations to come."