Global oil prices edged lower in early trading on Monday, driven by a new announcement from former U.S. President Donald Trump outlining planned American military action to free commercial vessels detained in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Even with this pledge of intervention, persistent uncertainty around stalled U.S.-Iran peace talks has kept upward pressure on prices, leaving benchmarks holding firmly above the $100 per barrel threshold.
Brent crude futures fell 64 cents, a 0.59% drop, to settle at $107.53 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude declined 84 cents, or 0.82%, to hit $101.10 per barrel. Both benchmarks already recorded significant losses in trading on the prior Friday, extending a period of volatile price swings tied to Middle East geopolitics.
In a post to his Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump stated that the U.S. has committed to escorting vessels from other nations safely through the narrow waterway, allowing commercial shipping traffic to resume unimpeded. “For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we will provide this escort protection,” Trump wrote in the post.
Despite Trump’s public statement, regional geopolitical tensions remain elevated. Negotiations between Washington and Tehran have hit repeated snags, with both sides refusing to back away from their core non-negotiable positions. While Trump has prioritized reaching a new nuclear deal with the Iranian government as a top policy goal, Tehran has proposed setting nuclear discussions aside temporarily until the ongoing regional conflict ends and blockades in the Persian Gulf are lifted.
In a separate development over the weekend, OPEC+ announced it would raise collective oil production targets for June, with seven member nations set to add a combined 188,000 barrels per day to global output. This marks the third consecutive month of production increases from the alliance, though the planned hike was scaled back slightly following the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal from OPEC earlier this year. Even with the announced target increase, actual growth in global oil supply remains constrained by the ongoing conflict in the region and persistent shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global oil supplies pass each day.