Iranian tanker attack had limited oil price impact
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 14
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The attack on Iranian suezmax tanker Sabiti had a limited impact on oil prices, Trend reports citing Fitch Solutions Macro Research (a unit of Fitch Group).
“The suezmax tanker Sabiti experienced a fire and an uncontrolled release of crude with no reports of injuries or causalities. Early reports stating the attack originated from Saudi Arabia by the National Iranian Tanker Company have since been retracted with no party claiming responsibility at the time of writing. With tensions already running high from the spate of infrastructure attacks over the summer culminating in last month’s unprecedented supply outage in Saudi Arabia, this latest apparent attack is more of the low level attacks that have characterized the scale of tensions in the region to date. The limited impact
of this most recent attack is an example of the limited force we expect to be deployed during flare-ups as tension remain high,” reads the report.
Front month and six month futures spreads remain in backwardation with a 7.3 percent gain in the early hours of trading, said the company.
“Backwardation manifests with the expectation of supply tightening in the market as longer dated prices continue to show a premium. Expectations of another major outage of supply is limited and do not appear to be priced in at the moment though we see evidence of a risk premium starting to build with the widening spread. However, this may be short-lived as September spike quickly eroded and returned to below pre September attack levels as production rapidly returned,” said Fitch Solutions.
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