Oil Steadies as Supply Disruption Concerns Offset Strong Dollar

July 17, 2025 / Billboard Lifestyle /

(Bloomberg) — Oil was steady in London as traders weighed supply disruptions in Iraq against a strong rebound in the dollar.

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Brent was little changed at $68.47 a barrel. The US dollar strengthened — typically a bearish indicator for commodities — as anxiety abated over the future of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. On the supply side stockpiles at Cushing, the key US storage hub, continued to slide and Iraq has lost about 200,000 barrels a day of oil production due to drone attacks on several fields in Kurdistan.

“While inventories globally have built very significantly, stocks in the pricing centres – especially in the US – are still quite low,” Goldman Sachs head of oil research Daan Struyven said on Bloomberg Television. Market focus has shifted to “downside risks to supply,” he said.

In Kurdistan, attacks continued on Thursday according to the local authorities. Still, Kurdistan hasn’t been shipping any crude to global markets since an export pipeline was shut more than two years ago, limiting the impact on benchmark prices.

Supply concerns were also reflected in the forward curve for crude. It is currently trading in backwardation, where a premium is paid for sooner delivery over longer-dated contracts, Staunovo said.

In the US, distillate stockpiles remain at the lowest seasonal level since 1996 even after last week’s increase. At the same time, the spread in futures between low-sulfur gasoil and Brent for September — a gauge of the profitability of making diesel — has risen about 7% this month.

–With assistance from Yongchang Chin.