New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude for December delivery, settled Friday’s session at $85.54, up $2.33, or 2.8%. The US crude benchmark had been in yo-yo mode over the past four days, rising 2% or more in one session to promptly give that back in the next. For the week, WTI finished down 3.6%.
UK-origin Brent crude for December delivery settled at $90.48, up $2.55, or 2.9%. For the week, the global crude benchmark showed a drop of nearly 2%.
“It’s a ‘mess,’ in one word,” John Kilduff, partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital, said, referring to the conflict. “No oil trader, I can tell you, knows where this thing is heading and everyone is just racing from headline to another.”
Crude prices rebounded from Thursday’s tumble as Israeli forces carried out their biggest Gaza ground attack on Hamas overnight, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israeli troops were still preparing for a full ground invasion.
While that was being held up amid intense mediation by world powers, the threat of fifth largest oil producer Iran thrusting itself into the battle seemed to intensify with each passing day of the three-week old war.
Tehran, a vociferous supporter of Hamas, has had a war of words with Israel ally Washington since the deadly Hamas rampage into southern Israel on October 7 that triggered the worst fighting the Middle East has seen in decades. US military struck Iranian targets in Syria on Friday and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned that the United States will "not be spared from this fire."
Separately, projectiles hit two Egyptian Red Sea towns on Friday injuring several people, according to reports that showed the risk of regional spillover from the conflict.