Volatility is the best word to describe crude oil prices on Thursday as they settled down about 2% because of the remaining uncertainty as to any possibility of bringing peace to the Middle East and whether Iran might accept some peace deals with the U.S.
Prices initially surged as much as 4% following a Reuters report that Iran’s supreme leader issued a directive against the key U.S. demand of no nuclear weapons. Later Thursday, President Trump stated the U.S. will eventually recover Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that was reportedly meant for Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.
West Texas Intermediate futures closed down $1.90 or 1.9% at $96.35 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude futures finished down $2.44 or 2.3% at $102.58 a barrel.
The closings were the lowest for both futures in nearly two weeks.
Natural gas prices also finished lower. They closed at $2.993 MMBtu with a decline of $0.011 or 0.37%.
Energy stocks in Oklahoma were nearly split in Thursday’s trading with threefirms recording significant gains—Empire Petroleum Corp., USA Rare Earth Inc. and Stardust Power. Empire finished up more than 9% and the two others had nearly 8% increases for the day.