Meanwhile, Lebanon resents Iran using it as bargaining chip in U.S. peace talks: File Image/Pixabay

Oil prices on Friday held steady, with Brent trading 57 cents lower at $97.44 per barrel as of 1400 GMT as guarded optimism about progress on a U.S./Iran peace deal remained intact, but concern grew on reports of global inventories reaching depletion.

Oil remained more than 4 percent higher for the week.

Media on Friday reported that global oil inventories will be depleted in a couple of weeks, putting economies in serious jeopardy if another price spike occurs.

The reports seemed to derive their conclusions from Neil Chapman, senior vice president at Exxon Mobil, who on May 28 remarked that “We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels, I mean, really, really low levels….you can debate whether that’s going to hit those really low levels in two weeks or three weeks, but once you get to that point, you’ll see prices shoot up.”

Chapman, who was speaking at a conference hosted by Bernstein in New York, went on to remark that the price of physical Brent oil cargoes will spike to $150 to $160 per barrel when inventories hit all-time lows.

Predictions by the International Monetary Fund were somewhaty different: it predicted that global oil inventories were expected to sink to a five-year low next month, from a pre-war high of 8 billion barrels to about 7.5 billion barrels.

Yet another perspective about supplies was offered by EU sustainable transport and tourism commissioner, Apostolos Tzitzikostas.

He said in an interview published Friday, “There is currently no jet fuel shortage in Europe; we have no signs that we will have a shortage in the coming period.”

Meanwhile, Iran-backed Hezbollah rejecting a U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal between Israel and Lebanon – which Iran demanded if peace negotiations with the U.S. were to resume -  didn’t seem to dent a guarded sense of optimism among investors that an end to hostilities would be achieved; and U.S. president Donald Trump on Friday insisted that Washington is seeing “great success” with Tehran.

Trump also downplayed rumours of a major oil pricing shock, noting that  “People thought it was going to be a lot worse: today I looked at $96 a barrel, and people thought that was going to be $300 a barrel.”

Still, with all sides fully engaged in rhetoric, it remained unclear if and how the U.S./Iran war would revolve, and Friday saw the waters muddy even further with Joseph Aoun, president of Lebanon, accusing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of trying to use his country as a “bargaining chip” in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

“It’s unacceptable, he told media, adding that “It’s not your country, it’s our country…..our interests do not coincide with your interests.”