Oil Prices Today: Brent Below $100 as Trump Eases Strikes
Oil prices today held below the $100-a-barrel mark on Monday, with Brent crude trading around $97 after President Donald Trump said further United States strikes on Iran were highly unlikely while negotiations to end the war keep moving. The calm capped a violent week in which Brent suffered its steepest weekly fall since the coronavirus pandemic began, and it stood in sharp contrast to the fear that gripped energy traders only days ago, when the president was openly hinting that American military operations could resume once the midterm elections were over.
Front-month Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell 1.3 percent to $97.01 a barrel on Monday, while West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, declined 0.7 percent to $90.17 a barrel. The moves left Brent below $100 for the first time since September. Prices steadied later in the morning, with Brent recovering to near $98.45 and West Texas Intermediate edging up to $91.09, but the direction was clear: traders were betting that the Democratic victory in last week’s midterm elections, combined with the president’s own words, had lowered the odds of a return to all-out fighting.
What Happened to Oil Prices on Monday
The session opened with selling. Brent was down 84 cents, or 0.85 percent, at $97.48 a barrel by 0138 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate fell 32 cents, or 0.35 percent, to $90.51, according to Reuters data. The decline reversed the small gains made at Friday’s settlement, when prices had ticked up modestly as traders weighed the possibility of fresh American strikes.
The immediate trigger was a telephone interview the president gave to CNN on Sunday. Asked whether the United States would resume its attacks on Iran, Trump said further strikes were unlikely as long as talks on Tehran’s nuclear program and on reopening the Strait of Hormuz continued to make progress. “It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement,” he said. “The answer is, highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary.” The phrasing was conditional, but in a market primed for escalation it was enough to send prices lower.
The contrast with the president’s tone only a week earlier could hardly have been starker. Before the midterm elections, Trump had repeatedly hinted that major military operations against Iran could resume after voters had their say, a threat that kept a war premium embedded in the price of every barrel. Since the vote, no large-scale American military operation has materialized. The Democratic victory, which handed the opposition control of both chambers of Congress, has reinforced market expectations against a major escalation, adding to the downward pressure on crude even as fighting continues in the region.
Why Traders Are Betting Against Escalation
The oil market is, at its core, a market in expectations, and the expectation that moved prices on Monday was that diplomacy, however halting, is now the likelier path. Investors are watching for signs of progress toward ending the conflict, according to analysts at ANZ, and the uncertainty over American policy continues to be the single biggest influence on prices. Every statement from the White House is read for what it reveals about the odds of a new round of bombing, and the president’s weekend remarks tilted those odds decisively toward restraint.
There is also a political logic to the market’s reading. Trump himself has acknowledged that the war has carried a domestic cost. In his interview with the CBS program 60 Minutes, recorded on Friday and aired on Sunday, he said voters had punished Republicans in part because the war pushed gasoline prices higher, naming fuel costs alongside the war itself and a growing dislike of Israel as the primary reasons his party lost control of Congress. A president who has just been told by voters that expensive fuel helped cost his party an election has an obvious incentive to avoid the kind of escalation that would send pump prices higher again.
The diplomacy remains active even if it has produced little so far. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was due to meet Trump at the White House on Monday, and the president spoke by telephone with Qatar’s emir on Friday about efforts to bridge the differences between the sides and secure a comprehensive agreement. Qatar has acted as the chief mediator between Washington and Tehran throughout the conflict, which is now in its ninth month.
Not everyone shares the market’s optimism. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said talks with Washington had made no progress and that Tehran was waiting to see whether the American administration would change its position following the elections. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a similarly bleak assessment on Sunday, saying he would not describe the talks as being on the verge of a breakthrough and calling some of Iran’s demands unacceptable and, in some cases, outrageous. The gap between the two sides’ accounts is a reminder that the market is betting on a process, not on a deal, and that the bet could still go wrong.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Risks That Remain
The reason prices did not fall further on Monday is that the risks to supply have not gone away. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which a large share of the world’s seaborne oil passes, remains effectively disrupted. Iranian media reported that no ships crossed the strait on Sunday, and both sides have reported attacks on vessels in or near the waterway in recent days.
The weekend brought fresh reminders of how quickly the situation can deteriorate. On Sunday, Houthi forces in Yemen launched a missile attack on the Saudi capital, Riyadh, striking the Saudi Aramco office and causing minor damage. The attack underlined that the war’s reach extends well beyond Iran’s borders and that American allies in the Gulf remain exposed. Iran has warned that it would strike American and Israeli targets if the United States resumes its attacks, a threat that hangs over every diplomatic exchange.
Washington, meanwhile, is tightening the economic pressure even as it talks about restraint. The president said on Sunday that the American military’s new land blockade on Iran is now in effect, adding to the naval blockade enforced by Task Force Iron Gate, the operation aimed at extending the blockade from Iran’s ports to its overland trade routes and the Caspian Sea. Iraq, for its part, says it has reached a deal with Washington to ship crude through a lane near Oman, a workaround that would keep at least some Gulf oil moving even while the strait remains dangerous.
A Historic Weekly Plunge for Brent
To understand why Monday’s relatively modest decline mattered, it helps to look at the week that came before it. Brent crude fell about 17 percent last week, its steepest weekly percentage decline since the beginning of the Covid pandemic and its biggest drop in absolute terms, according to LSEG data stretching back to 1988. The scale of the fall was extraordinary: a commodity that had been priced for war lost nearly a fifth of its value in five trading days as traders concluded, first, that the election result made escalation less likely, and second, that the world simply has more oil than it needs.
That second judgment is backed by the numbers. JPMorgan said in a report on Friday that global petroleum supply exceeded consumption by approximately 1.1 million barrels per day in September, with the surplus widening to 1.4 million barrels per day in October. A market in surplus does not need a war premium to stay expensive, and once traders began to doubt that the war would escalate, the surplus did the rest. The selling fed on itself as funds that had bought oil as a hedge against conflict rushed to unwind their positions.
The oil slide also ran alongside a convulsion in equities: on November 5, the day after the midterm results became clear, American stocks suffered one of their worst sessions in history, with the Nasdaq sliding 5.52 percent in its largest point drop in 55 years and roughly $2.5 trillion wiped from the value of Nasdaq-listed companies.
What Cheaper Oil Means for Gas Prices and the Economy
For American consumers, the most important consequence of cheaper crude is what happens at the pump. Gas prices today are the most visible link between the war in Iran and the daily cost of living, and the president himself drew that connection in his 60 Minutes interview, arguing that the war had pushed fuel prices higher after he had brought them down and that voters had punished his party for it. If Brent stays below $100, the pressure on pump prices eases, and with it one of the most potent political vulnerabilities of the administration.
The relief, if it holds, would come at a useful moment for the wider economy. Cheaper oil lowers transport and manufacturing costs, eases inflation, and leaves households with more money to spend. It also complicates the case for those who argue that the war is worth its economic price, since the price is now falling precisely because the market expects the war to wind down.
The banks, however, are not convinced the calm will last. Goldman Sachs raised its long-term oil price outlook on Friday, citing heightened risks to global supply, and cautioned that Brent crude could hit $140 a barrel in 2027 if crude production in the Gulf region remains significantly below 2025 levels. The bank lifted its December Brent forecast to $105 a barrel, up from $90, and raised its West Texas Intermediate outlook to $94 a barrel, up from $81.
What to Watch Next
The first thing to watch is the meeting at the White House on Monday between Trump and Qatar’s prime minister. Qatar is the mediator that both sides trust, and the talks are the most direct channel available for testing whether a deal is possible. Watch for any statement afterward about the nuclear program or the reopening of the strait: the president has tied the question of further strikes to progress on both, and any sign of movement would push prices lower still.
The second thing to watch is the strait itself. If ships resume crossing in normal numbers, the market will take it as evidence that the de-escalation is real, and Brent could test lower levels. If attacks continue and crossings stay at zero, the market will conclude that the calm is a pause rather than a peace, and prices will find a floor. The same applies to the Houthi campaign against Saudi targets: a single missile that does more than break windows would change the calculation overnight.
The third thing to watch is the diplomacy’s own timetable. Trump has said he expects to discuss ending the war with the leaders of China and Russia at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on November 18 and 19. A trilateral conversation that produces even a framework for de-escalation would be the strongest signal yet that the war is winding down.
For now, the facts are these: Brent crude is trading below $100 for the first time since September, down about 17 percent in a week, after the president said new strikes on Iran were highly unlikely. The market believes the war is more likely to end at the negotiating table than on the battlefield. The risks have not gone away, the strait is still dangerous, and the banks are warning that a failed diplomacy could send prices far higher than they were before the fall. But on Monday, at least, the direction was down, and the reason was the simplest one in the market: the president said he was not looking for a new war, and for once, traders believed him.
*Source: Reuters*