Oil Retreats After Biggest Monthly Gain This Year

Brent crude declined, trimming its biggest monthly gain since August amid speculation that continuing violence in Iraq won’t disrupt supply from OPEC’s second-largest oil producer. West Texas Intermediate also fell.

Brent futures slid as much as 0.7 percent in London, curbing their advance in June to 2.9 percent. The Russian military is helping prepare Iraq’s air force to recapture areas of the country’s north held by Islamist militants. Fighting hasn’t spread to the south, home to more than three-quarters of its crude output. Iraq’s oil production was stable at 3.3 million barrels a day in June, according to JBC Energy GmbH.

“The geopolitical tensions that have been propping up prices recently are moving into the background with facts taking over,” Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said by phone. “For instance, the positive surprise in export and production in southern Iraq last week and the absence of new risks.”

via Bloomberg

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza