NEW YORK, Oct 16 : Oil prices jumped 1 percent on Monday as Iraqi forces entered the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, taking territory from Kurdish fighters and briefly cutting some crude output from OPEC’s second-largest producer.
“We’re seeing increased geopolitical tension in the Middle East providing support in the market today, namely in Iraqi Kurdistan, and some uncertainty around Iran,” said Anthony Headrick, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging LLC in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.
Iraq’s Kurdistan briefly shut down some 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of production from major fields Bai Hassan and Avana due to security concerns. Iraq launched the operation on Sunday as the crisis between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) escalated. The KRG voted for independence in a Sept. 25 referendum.
Brent crude futures were up 62 cents or 1 percent at $57.79 per barrel at 11:02 a.m. (1502 GMT). US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was up 36 cents or 0.7 percent at $51.81 per barrel.
The government said its troops had taken control of Iraq’s North Oil Co, and the fields quickly resumed production. The KRG government said oil continued to flow through the export pipeline, and it would take no steps to stop it.
Still, the action unsettled the market. Some 600,000 bpd of oil is produced in the region, and Turkey has threatened to shut a KRG-operated pipeline that goes to the Turkish port of Ceyhan at Baghdad’s request.
Renewed worries over US sanctions against Iran also drew attention. On Friday US President Donald Trump on Friday refused to certify that Tehran was complying with the accord even though international inspectors say it is.
Under US law, the president must certify every 90 days that Iran is complying with the deal. Congress now has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran.
During the previous round of sanctions, roughly 1 million bpd of Iranian oil was cut off. Analysts said renewed sanctions were unlikely to curtail that level of exports, yet they warned it could still be disruptive.
Cuts to US drilling rigs, and an explosion overnight at an oil rig in Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, also boosted prices.
Oil consumption has been strong, especially in China, where the central bank governor said the economy is expected to grow 7 percent in the second half, defying widespread expectations for a slowdown.
Sources said China was offering to buy up to 5 percent of Saudi Aramco directly, a move that could give Saudi Arabia more flexibility as it plans to float the world’s biggest oil producer on the stock market.
Oil jumps 1%; fighting shuts output in Kirkuk
Oil jumps 1%; fighting shuts output in Kirkuk
Syrian civil war killed more than 528,500: monitor
The overall toll includes thousands killed since 2011 that were only confirmed dead recently, with access to detention centers and mass graves easier following the rebel overthrow of Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based monitory said 6,777 people, more than half of them civilians, were killed in 2024 in fighting in Syria.
AFP was unable to independently verify these figures.
Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011 after the government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests triggering a devastating conflict that pushed millions to flee abroad and drew in foreign powers.
Last year, 3,598 civilians, including 240 women and 337 children were killed across Syria, according to the Observatory.
In addition, 3,179 combatants were killed, the monitor said, including soldiers from “the old regime,” but also “Islamist armed groups” and jihadists.
In 2023, the Observatory reported 4,360 people killed, including nearly 1,900 civilians.
In December, Islamist-led rebels overthrew Assad, seizing power in a rapid offensive that ended more than 50 years of the family’s iron-fisted rule.
Since 2011, the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria has recorded more than 64,000 deaths in Assad’s prisons “due to torture, medical negligence or poor conditions” in the jails.
Gaza population down by 6 percent since start of war — Palestinian statistics bureau
- Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing
JERUSALEM: The population of Gaza has fallen 6 percent since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry.
As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47 percent of the total children under the age of 18, the PCBS said.
It added that Israel has “raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure... entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses.”
Israel’s foreign ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel.”
Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza because of the scale of death and destruction.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis has suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s Gaza campaign constitutes genocide.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.
The PCBS said some 22 percent of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.
Included in that 22 percent are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.
Israel warns it will step up Gaza strikes if Hamas keeps up rocket fire
JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Wednesday that Israel will step up its strikes in Gaza if Hamas keeps up its rocket fire at Israel.
“I want to send a clear message from here to the heads of the terrorists in Gaza: If Hamas does not soon allow the release of the Israeli hostages from Gaza... and continues firing at Israeli communities, it will face blows of an intensity not seen in Gaza for a long time,” Katz said in a statement after visiting the Israeli town of Netivot, which was recently targeted by rocket fire from nearby Gaza.
At least 12 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed in Gaza by airstrikes, officials in the territory said on Wednesday.
More than 45,500 people have been killed during Israel's 15-month military campaign in Gaza.
Iran to hold nuclear talks with 3 European powers Jan. 13: local media
- Iran insists on its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and has consistently denied any ambition of developing nuclear weapons capability
Tehran: Iran will hold nuclear talks with France, Britain, and Germany on Jan. 13 in Switzerland, local media reported on Wednesday, quoting a foreign ministry official.
“The new round of talks between Iran and three European countries will be held in Geneva on January 13,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, according to ISNA news agency.
He added the talks were only “consultations, not negotiations.”
The three European countries had on Dec. 17 accused Iran of growing its stockpile of high-enriched uranium to “unprecedented levels” without “any credible civilian justification.”
They have also raised the possibility of restoring sanctions against Iran to keep it from developing its nuclear program.
Iran has in recent years increased its manufacturing of enriched uranium such that it is the only non-nuclear weapons state to possess uranium enriched to 60 percent, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog said.
That level is well on the way to the 90 percent required for an atomic bomb.
On November 29, Iran held a discreet meeting with the three European powers in Geneva which Gharibabadi at the time described as “candid.”
Iran insists on its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and has consistently denied any ambition of developing nuclear weapons capability.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all state matters, has long issued a religious decree, or fatwa, prohibiting atomic weapons.
Late Monday, Iran’s security chief Ali Akbar Ahmadian maintained that Iran has “not changed” its nuclear doctrine against pursuing atomic weapons.
The January 13 talks will take place one week before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
In 2015, Iran and world powers — including France, Britain and Germany — reached an agreement that saw the easing of international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
But the United States, during Trump’s first term in office, unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed biting economic sanctions.
Tehran adhered to the deal until Washington’s withdrawal, and then began rolling back on its commitments.
Gaza babies die from winter cold say medics and families
- Yahya Al-Batran clutched the tiny clothes of his dead newborn son Jumaa, just days after the baby died from the cold in their tent in war-torn Gaza
DEIR EL BALAH: Yahya Al-Batran clutched the tiny clothes of his dead newborn son Jumaa, just days after the baby died from the cold in their tent in war-torn Gaza.
“We are watching our children die before our eyes,” said the 44-year-old.
Their baby was one of the seven children who died from the cold within the span of a week, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said on Monday.
“We fled the bombing from Beit Lahia, only for them to die from the cold here?” said the child’s mother Noura Al-Batran, referring to their hometown in northern Gaza.
The 38-year-old is still recovering from giving birth prematurely to Jumaa and his surviving twin brother, Ali, who is being treated in an intensive care unit at a hospital in southern Gaza.
Completely destitute and repeatedly displaced by the Israel aggression on Gaza, the Batran family live in a makeshift tent in Deir el-Balah made of worn-out blankets and fabric.
Like hundreds of others now living in a date palm orchard, they have struggled to keep warm and dry amid heavy rains and temperatures that have dropped as low as eight degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit).
“We don’t have enough blankets or suitable clothing. I saw my baby start to freeze, his skin turned blue and then he died,” she cried.
The twins were born prematurely and she said the doctor decided to take the babies out of the incubator despite the family not having access to heating.
On a rain-soaked mat, the father hugged his older children tight with blankets and worn-out cloth in a corner of their tent.
He then placed a small pot of water on the stove to make tea, which he then mixed with dry bread to make a meagre lunch for his family with a little cheese and the thyme-based spice blend called zaatar.
Like thousands of other families enduring dire conditions, they face shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, with the United Nations warning of an imminent collapse of the health care system.
In southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis, Mahmoud Al-Fasih said he found his infant daughter, Seela, “frozen from the cold” in their small tent near Al-Mawasi beach, where they were displaced from Gaza City.
He rushed her to the hospital in the area that Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone,” but she was already dead.
Ahmad Al-Farra, a doctor and director of the emergency and children’s department at Nasser Hospital, told AFP that the three-week-old baby arrived at the hospital with “severe hypothermia, without vital signs, in cardiac arrest that led to her death.”
Another 20-day-old baby, Aisha Al-Qassas, also died of cold in the area, according to her family.
“In Gaza, everything leads to death,” said the baby’s uncle, Mohamed Al-Qassas. “Those who do not die under Israeli bombardments succumb to hunger or cold.”
The Hamas government press office in Gaza warned on Monday of the impact of more harsh weather expected in the coming days, saying it posed a “real threat to two million displaced people,” the majority of whom live in tents.
Farra warned that this would likely be accompanied by “the death of greater numbers of children, infants, and the elderly.”
“Life in tents is dangerous due to the cold and the scarcity of energy and heating sources,” he said.
