By Michael Kitchen and Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Oil futures fell on Thursday, halting a strong advance made on the back of supply concerns surrounding a possible U.S. military strike on Syria.
October delivery CLV3 -0.81% pulled back by 97 cents, or 0.9%, to $109.13 a barrel after rising by 1% to a more than two-year high in Wednesday’s New York Mercantile Exchange session and by 3% on Tuesday.
Similarly, October Brent crude UK:LCOV3 -0.75% retreated 85 cents, or 0.7%, to $115.76 a barrel, after a 2% advance the previous day.
Oil’s rapid rise over the past two days came as the U.S. moved closer to military action against Syrian government targets in retaliation for their alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians.
However, late Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with PBS NewsHour that he had yet to make a decision on his nation’s response.
At the same time, the U.K. indicated it would wait until a parliamentary vote, likely early next week, before considering joining any U.S. effort in Syria, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The timing [of a U.S. strike] seems to have shifted from ‘as early as Thursday-Friday’ to possibly Tuesday, in order to allow for the United Nations Security Council to consider a resolution, the U.K. Parliament to debate, and perhaps some briefing of the U.S. Congress as well,” wrote Citi Futures analyst Timothy Evans late Wednesday.
At the same time, the chances that a Syria strike could spark a wider conflict appeared to rise, as officials from the Syria regime and its ally Iran suggested they might attack Israel if the U.S. takes military action.
“Possible involvement of Iran in any potential conflict could lead to disruptions in oil-tanker flow through the Strait of Hormuz (which accounts for 20% of world’s oil trade),” wrote analysts at ICICI Bank on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in the energy complex Thursday, October natural gas NGV13 +0.36% rose less than a penny to trade at $3.58 per million British thermal units. The September contract rose 0.9% during Nymex trade Wednesday before its expiration at the end of the session.
The move came ahead of weekly U.S. natural-gas supply data, due out later in the day from the Energy Information Administration.
A Platts survey of analysts showed average expectations for supplies to rise by between 61 billion and 65 billion cubic feet for the week ended Aug. 23.
Meanwhile, other petroleum-product futures followed crude lower, with September gasoline RBU3 -0.57% losing 2 cent, or 0.7%, to $3.07 a gallon, and September heating oil falling 2 cents, or 0.5%, to $3.19 a gallon.
