The U.S. said on Thursday it has imposed new sanctions on Iran's military oil trade, even as Washington and Tehran reached a tentative agreement to extend their ceasefire and lift restrictions on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The Treasury Department said it had sanctioned eight vessels involved in transporting Iranian crude oil and petroleum products to global markets. The vessels included the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker Flora, the Comoros-flagged crude oil tanker Hauncayo and [Read more]

Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, said on Thursday the text of a potential memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States had not yet been finalized or confirmed. The source said Tehran had not informed the Pakistani mediator that the text was complete and would notify both the mediator and the public once finalized, adding that Western media reports claiming the agreement had already been finalized were false. (Reporting by Yomna [Read more]

U.S. distillate fuel oil inventories fell to a 23-year low last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Thursday, as the Iran war continues to choke global fuel supplies and raise demand for U.S. crude and petroleum products. The country's distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 2.1 million barrels in the week ended May 22 to 100.8 million barrels, the lowest since May 2003. Analysts had expected a 1.02 million-barrel drop. "We're going to continue [Read more]

U.S. crude, gasoline and distillate stockpiles fell last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Thursday, as demand jumped. Crude inventories fell by 3.3 million barrels to 441.7 million barrels in the week ended May 22, the EIA said, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 4.14 million-barrel draw. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub fell by 2.79 million barrels in the week, the EIA said. Oil futures held on to earlier gains, despite [Read more]

The U.S. and Iran have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, but President Donald Trump still needs to give final approval, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two U.S. officials. (Reporting by Katharine Jackson and Daphne Psaledakis) [Read more]

If Donald Trump is indeed backing off and allowing the Federal Reserve to do what it needs to do, then the U.S. president may have to park his administration's long-assumed preference for a weaker dollar too. For some nervous Republicans, that may come asa relief. As his appointee Kevin Warsh was sworn in as Fed chair last week, Trump appeared to change tack on his perpetual demand for ever-lower U.S. interest rates, and his persistent barracking of Warsh's predecessor, Jerome Powell, on the [Read more]