Oil edged up above $91 a barrel Friday as an inconclusive summit about Iran’s nuclear program outweighed demands concerns tied to Greece’s financial crisis and sputtering growth in China.
By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark oil for July delivery was up 41 cents to $91.07 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 76 cents to settle at $90.66 in New York on Thursday.
In London, Brent crude for July delivery was up 46 cents at $107.01 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Crude has sunk about 15 percent from $106 three weeks ago amid dimming global growth prospects and easing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.
On Thursday, however, Iran and six world powers ended talks without making any progress toward a deal, agreeing to continue meetings next month in Moscow. Crude rose to above $110 earlier this year as traders worried a pre-emptive military attack by the U.S. or Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities would disrupt global crude supplies.
“Ahead of the talks there had been hopes of a breakthrough,” said analysts at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. “Now that these hopes have not been fulfilled, part of the risk premium may return, which would argue against any further fall in the price of oil.”
Weaker manufacturing data released Thursday in Europe and China suggests a sharper slowdown in the global economy and weaker demand for crude.
Some European countries, such as Italy and Spain, are already in recession. Political turmoil in Greece has increased the possibility that the country will leave the euro common currency, a move that would likely undermine investor confidence in the rest of Europe.
“Data for the world’s most important commodity consumer, China, point to signs of slowdown,” Citigroup said in a report. “Easing geopolitical concerns have also weakened bullish sentiment.”
Trading volumes were expected to remain low ahead of U.S. markets being closed Monday for Memorial Day.
In other energy trading, heating oil was up 1.03 cents at $2.8360 per gallon and gasoline futures added 0.92 cent at $2.8285 per gallon. Natural gas fell 3.2 cents at $2.615 per 1,000 cubic feet.
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Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.
The Israeli leader cileatnry does not hate Iranians, we have many Iranians living in Israel, and they’re my friends and like family! Very sadly, I think most of us just want to live & let live, like you, me and all the regular people. I can reassure you, us and our leaders desperately want to live in peace with everyone and all our neighbors. Our leaders have always offered to make peace treaties and are eager to exchange info in agriculture, technology, medicine & environment for the greater good of us all. We did achieve peace treaties with Jordan, Egypt and Turkey, which til recently seemed quite strong.We worked together for the greater good of all our peoples. But very sadly Ray, I don’t know how much info you can get where you are, but there’s this thing called anti-semitisim, and there always seems to be at least one leader who wants to illogically wipe us all off the map, no matter how much kindness, goodness and peace treaties we offer.I so wish we all could change your leader’s mind, but he very publicly announces to the whole world he wants to bomb us with nuclear bombs and wipe us and our country off the map. He is being the aggressor, and openly so, for the whole world to see. We’d LOVE peace, we’d LOVE if he changed his mind. But he hasn’t & doesn’t look like he will. Our leaders have no choice but to try and defend our whole people and country from genocide.From what many experts say, if our leaders don’t try to take out the nuclear facilities, it may get to the point of your leader having the capability of following through with his threats to attack us and the US as well as others.What would you do?! Our country carefully & in a very pinpointed attack took out the nuclear reactor in Iraq years ago preventing such a tragedy (imagine if Saddam Hussein had that weapon!) And recently did a pinpoint attack on the nuclear weapons facility in Syria (imagine seeing how Assad is murdering his own people how he would’ve followed through threats on us as well, he’s working with your leader on all of this, and Achmedinjad supports him even through the horrible genocide happening right now.Our leaders feel pressure they must take out nuclear weapons capabilities now before it’s too late. Do they or we or any of us want them to? NOT AT ALL!!! We really don’t want to do this, it’s horrible, we want to live in peace without the increasing threat of genocide! But we’ve lived through Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, and too many others to not take these threats lightly.Our country is very careful to only pinpoint military targets that threaten us, and bend over backwards to avoid innocent civilian population centers. But this is why we’ve been having such a hard time with the war on terror, we’re so careful to avoid civilian casualties, but our enemies don’t care and purposely target innocent civilians and use their own as human shields. It’s not been a fair fight, and cileatnry only started by the other side, we’re just on the defensive, we want peace!!!I truly hope & pray God will make miracles and no offensive or defensive war will take place on any side and we’ll only have world peace. Our hearts are totally with you, the innocent people, and want us all to live as brothers and sisters. I’m so glad you reach out and honestly share your thoughts. You should know we ALL don’t want war of any kind and are praying like crazy for peace and yours & our protection.