The global price of crude oil has seen yet another dip by nearly 2 percent on Thursday as investors look into the growing global supply of the commodity following President Donald Trump's decision to carve out some countries from the Iran oil sanctions, prompting the US leader to take credit on this recent market development.
According to Reuters, several crude futures including the US LLoC have never seen these low rates since March of this year at it fell $1.00, or 1.6 percent, to $60.67 a barrel. Global benchmark, Brent crude futures, on the other hand, took a steeper dive at $1.42, or 1.97 percent, settling at $70.65 per barrel, the lowest since mid-August 2018.
Over at China, the Asian nation's crude importation rate increased to 9.61 million barrels per day last month, which is up by 32 percent compared to last year's, the customs data was cited by the news agency.
Beijing was given the leeway to import some portion of the sanctioned Iranian crude at 360,000 barrels a day. But the waiver signed only allows China to make such amount of purchases for 180 days, two sources who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of the issue told Reuters on Tuesday.
Apparently, it's not only China who got the exemptions from the White House. Business Mirror said that aside from the world's second largest economy, Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan were also given the same benefit in Asia.
In Europe, the Trump administration has also carved out exemptions for select countries like Greece, Italy, and Turkey.
As reported earlier here at Business Times, the US has renewed its economic sanctions on Iran, sanctions that aimed to prohibit the embattled country from participating in the global oil trade. Market watchers and analysts have been wary of its effects with the rising oil prices as one of the main concerns.
The policy, which constituted the second wave of the US sanction, kicked off earlier this November. The first one has already been taking effect months prior whereby Iran's non-crude products were targeted.
Sudden Change of Heart
According to CNBC, there's a fat chance that Trump will shift from his aggressive stance to a more lenient one. As stated in the news report, the White House may not pursue to tighten the sale restrictions on Iran's oil exports should the price of oil starts to increase again.
Trump further linked this continuous pullback in oil markets to his administration's incessant call for the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) to keep prices at the minimum as well as its actions against Iran.
