LONDON, Feb 24, 2026, 18:34 GMT — Regular session
- Brent crude slipped roughly 0.4%, hovering close to $71 a barrel after earlier brushing the upper edge of its range for the day
- Geopolitical risk stayed baked into prices as traders looked to Thursday’s U.S.-Iran nuclear talks.
- Next up: U.S. inventory data, along with new headlines tied to shipping and Russian flows, are set to drive the action.
Brent crude futures dipped Tuesday, off 25 cents at $70.86 a barrel by 1821 GMT after touching $71.90 earlier. U.S. crude tracked lower as well, losing around 0.6% to trade near $65.9.
Despite the pullback, Brent remained close to highs not seen since late July, as traders braced for potential volatility with a third round of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations set for Thursday in Geneva. The support has largely come from a “risk premium”—that added cost reflecting fears of supply disruption—while Washington and Tehran continue to exchange threats and signals. Business Recorder
The impact stretches well past the oil market itself. Jamie McGeever at Reuters pointed out that oil isn’t doing much to cool inflation anymore, as those favorable “base effects” on headline numbers start to disappear. Gregory Daco, chief economist over at EY-Parthenon, figures a $10 jump in oil prices—if it sticks—could push annual U.S. inflation up by as much as 0.2 percentage point. Reuters
Priyanka Sachdeva at Phillip Nova says oil prices are mostly being propped up by geopolitics. Over at OANDA, senior analyst Kelvin Wong points to “geopolitical factors related to the US-Iran conflict” as likely to steer prices for now. Dawn
Freight’s pulling focus now. Hiring a VLCC — shorthand for a very large crude carrier, capacity around 2 million barrels — on the Middle East-to-China route has surged past $170,000 per day, according to Reuters. That’s as charterers moved quickly to lock in ships further ahead, with war-risk premiums creeping higher. “VLCC freight rates have seen many positive fundamental drivers,” noted June Goh, senior analyst at Sparta Commodities. Reuters
Fresh supply worries cropped up in Russia, where Transneft slashed crude inflows to its pipeline network by about 250,000 barrels a day. The move follows a Ukrainian drone strike at the Kaleykino pumping station, sources told Reuters. If the damage turns out to be serious, both the volume and quality of some Russian crude exports could take a hit.
The bullish argument isn’t straightforward. UBS expects oil prices could edge down in the next few weeks—assuming Middle East tensions don’t spark actual supply disruptions. U.S. officials and traders are still watching sanctions and stockpiles closely. Traders awaited weekly U.S. crude inventory data: the American Petroleum Institute’s report was due later Tuesday, with the Energy Information Administration set for Wednesday. Analysts, for their part, predicted a 1.3 million-barrel rise in crude supplies for the week ended Feb. 20.
Brent’s upswing lately has leaned harder on positioning and headline risk than anything tied to physical supply disruptions, leaving it exposed to snapbacks. If Geneva delivers a period of calm, or if U.S. storage data show a bigger build than traders anticipate, that could reveal whether the premium reflects true demand or just hedging.
But traders aren’t missing the tail risks here: if something chokes off flows through the Gulf, tangles up shipping, or knocks Russian exports offline, front-month prices could lurch right back toward the highs.
The sequence coming up: API inventory numbers land later Tuesday, EIA’s report follows on Wednesday, and then U.S.-Iran talks kick off in Geneva Thursday.
