
Oil Rebounds on Trump Threats on Russian Crude Buyers
Brent crude futures gained $1.11, or 1.6%, to $68.75 a barrel by 1119 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude was up $1.12, or 1.7%, at $66.28 a barrel.
Both oil contracts fell by more than $1 on Tuesday to settle at their lowest in five weeks, marking a fourth session of losses.
"Prices bounced up on the potential higher tariffs on India but the market is waiting for some sort of a formal implementation as well as which elements in the market are to be affected," said Rystad analyst Janiv Shah.
Trump renewed threats to impose higher import tariffs on Indian goods over the country's buying of Russian energy. India, along with China, is a major buyer of Russian oil, Reuters reported.
"Expectations appear that India may reduce its buying of Russian crude, but I can't see them doing so entirely as they have been making supernormal profits on buying cheap Russian crude," said Ashley Kelty, an analyst at Panmure Liberum.
US envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Wednesday on a last-minute mission to seek a breakthrough in the Ukraine war, two days before the expiry of a deadline set by Trump for Russia to agree to peace or face new sanctions.
Rystad's Shah said that although the meeting could lead to some concessions, a planned supply increase from the OPEC+ group would offset a potential decline in Russian oil supply.
The market was also finding support from a fall in US crude inventories last week, analysts said, as sources citing American Petroleum Institute figures said on Tuesday that stockpiles had fallen by 4.2 million barrels.
That compares with a Reuters poll estimate of a 600,000 barrels draw for the week to August 1.
"For all that has been thrown the oil market's way geopolitically, Brent futures have struggled to even hold the floor at $70 a barrel for any convincing length of time," said independent analyst Gaurav Sharma.
Brent is down 9.4% so far this year, which Sharma said was due to the market remaining well supplied at a time of uncertain demand. That, along with a cloudy macro-economic outlook, made the case for any lasting bullishness in crude unlikely, he added.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet
WASHINGTON: Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold a high-stakes meeting about the Ukraine war on Friday in Alaska, which the United States bought from Russia more than 150 years ago. Russian influence still endures in parts of the remote state on the northwest edge of the North American continent, which extends just a few miles from Russia. When Danish explorer Vitus Bering first sailed through the narrow strait that separates Asia and the Americas in 1728, it was on an expedition for Tsarist Russia. The discovery of what is now known as the Bering Strait revealed the existence of Alaska to the West — however Indigenous people had been living there for thousands of years. Bering's expedition kicked off a century of Russian seal hunting, with the first colony set up on the southern Kodiak island. In 1799, Tsar Paul I established the Russian-American Company to take advantage of the lucrative fur trade, which often involved clashes with the Indigenous inhabitants. However the hunters overexploited the seals and sea otters, whose populations collapsed, taking with them the settlers' economy. The Russian empire sold the territory to Washington for $7.2 million in 1867. The purchase of an area more than twice the size of Texas was widely criticized in the US at the time, even dubbed 'Seward's folly' after the deal's mastermind, secretary of state William Seward. The Russian Orthodox Church established itself in Alaska after the creation of the Russian-American Company, and remains one of the most significant remaining Russian influences in the state. More than 35 churches, some with distinctive onion-shaped domes, dot the Alaskan coast, according to an organization dedicated to preserving the buildings. Alaska's Orthodox diocese says it is the oldest in North America, and even maintains a seminary on Kodiak island. A local dialect derived from Russian mixed with Indigenous languages survived for decades in various communities — particularly near the state's largest city Anchorage — though it has now essentially vanished. However near the massive glaciers on the southern Kenai peninsula, the Russian language is still being taught. A small rural school of an Orthodox community known as the 'Old Believers' set up in the 1960s teaches Russian to around a hundred students. One of the most famous statements about the proximity of Alaska and Russia was made in 2008 by Sarah Palin, the state's then-governor — and the vice presidential pick of Republican candidate John McCain. 'They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska,' Palin said. While it is not possible to see Russia from the Alaskan mainland, two islands facing each other in the Bering Strait are separated by just 2.5 miles (four kilometers). Russia's Big Diomede island is just west of the American Little Diomede island, where a few dozen people live. Further south, two Russians landed on the remote St. Lawrence island — which is a few dozen miles from the Russian coast — in October, 2022 to seek asylum. They fled just weeks after Putin ordered an unpopular mobilization of citizens to boost his invasion of Ukraine. For years, the US military has said it regularly intercepts Russian aircraft that venture too close to American airspace in the region. However Russia is ostensibly not interested in reclaiming the territory it once held, with Putin saying in 2014 that Alaska is 'too cold.'


Arab News
8 hours ago
- Arab News
The great corridor conundrum
It is a truth universally acknowledged — or at least universally marketed — that the Middle East is once again poised to be the beating heart of global commerce. Enter the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, known as IMEC, a vision unveiled in September 2023 with the flourish of a G20 communique and the optimism of a startup pitch deck. India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the EU, France, Italy, Germany and the US all signed on, proclaiming IMEC not just as a trade route but as proof that geography in the 21st century can still be redrawn. The idea is seductive: a twin corridor network, one stretching from India to the Arabian Gulf, the other from the Gulf to Europe, sewn together by ports, railways and digital cables. In theory, the scheme could shave eight to 10 days off shipping times compared to the Suez route, reduce freight costs and serve as a 'values-based' counterweight to China's Belt and Road Initiative. In practice, however, bold lines on a map are the easy part; turning them into steel, concrete and functional customs regimes is where so many grand visions are lost. Early cost estimates place IMEC's price tag between $20 billion and $30 billion, a figure almost certain to rise once engineering, land acquisition and security needs are taken into account. The project began as an Indian initiative, later embraced by the EU and Saudi Arabia. Yet, unlike the Belt and Road Initiative or the International North-South Transport Corridor, India has not set up a dedicated implementing body, nor has it committed actual funding. That omission is more than a bureaucratic footnote: without clear governance and committed capital, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor risks becoming a PowerPoint concept rather than a functioning trade artery. Financing will almost certainly rely on India-EU partnerships, with Saudi Arabia and the US playing indispensable roles. Washington's stance is broadly positive, though it views IMEC through the lens of a larger strategic agenda tied to the Abraham Accords. For India, the calculus is more complex. A faster, more reliable route to Europe could boost exports, yet New Delhi's domestic infrastructure ambitions — from high-speed rail to renewable power grids — already stretch fiscal resources. Adding to the equation, President Donald Trump's recently announced 50 percent tariffs on certain Indian exports has introduced a strategic wrinkle: can a corridor partly championed by Washington truly offset the economic sting of US protectionism? The new corridor's backers frame it as a cleaner, more transparent alternative, but politics and geography are not easily tamed Dr. John Sfakianakis The IMEC plan enters a crowded field. The Belt and Road Initiative, since its launch in 2013, has channeled an estimated $1 trillion into more than 150 countries, financing everything from deep-water ports in Pakistan to railways in East Africa. The International North-South Transport Corridor is already moving goods across Eurasia and the Suez Canal — IMEC's implicit rival — still handles more than 12 percent of global trade and is investing heavily in capacity upgrades. The new corridor's backers frame it as a cleaner, more transparent alternative, but politics and geography are not easily tamed. European shippers may think twice if tensions with Iran escalate. India's commitment could waver if EU carbon tariffs trigger a deeper trade rift. For Greece, IMEC presents a more parochial contest: who gets to be the European gateway? The port of Piraeus is the obvious candidate, but it is majority-owned by a Chinese company, an awkward fact for a project marketed as a hedge against Beijing's influence. Thessaloniki might offer an alternative, yet both ports face the same structural flaw — an underdeveloped railway network with poor links to the Balkans and beyond. In the hard reality of freight logistics, ports are only as useful as the railways that feed them. Without a robust and interconnected backbone, the dream of containers rolling smoothly from Mumbai to Munich will remain stubbornly out of reach. Security risks loom just as large. The corridor skirts maritime zones where Iran has flexed its naval muscles more than once, while the overland legs could be vulnerable to cyberattacks, drone strikes and political unrest. The recent military conflicts in the Middle East have already slowed planning for the corridor, effectively 'freezing' parts of its development. The Red Sea's recent spate of security incidents has shown how quickly global supply chains can be thrown off course by a single attack. The Belt and Road Initiative has learned to build redundancy into its networks — alternative ports, backup lines, diversified shipping lanes — and IMEC will need to do the same if it hopes to withstand inevitable shocks. The economic logic is also not as clear-cut as its boosters suggest. Rail freight from India to Europe might be faster than sea, but it is more expensive — often 30 percent to 50 percent higher per container — and speed alone may not convince shippers to absorb the cost premium. Digital and energy links, another selling point of IMEC, may produce returns sooner, but they lack the visual and political symbolism of a freight train gliding across the desert. Clear governance structures, dependable funding and disciplined execution are what will make or break this project Dr. John Sfakianakis And yet, even in its current state, the corridor is a modest diplomatic success. It has brought India and the Gulf states closer, signaled Europe's willingness to invest in non-Chinese infrastructure and given Washington a convening role in a grouping that is neither a formal trade bloc nor a military alliance. But diplomacy alone cannot move freight. Clear governance structures, dependable funding and disciplined execution are what will make or break this project. The real challenge will be execution. Coordinating engineering standards, securing rights of way, harmonizing customs rules and aligning digital protocols will require a level of bureaucratic choreography that even Brussels might find daunting. The oft-cited 'phased implementation' risks becoming a euphemism for indefinite delay and, unless each segment of the corridor can operate viably on its own, the entire chain could stall. The Belt and Road Initiative's history offers no shortage of cautionary tales: gleaming ports that sit empty, railway lines mired in debt and high-profile launches followed by quiet decay. IMEC's planners would do well to study these examples — and place less emphasis on ribbon-cutting ceremonies and more on the unglamorous business of making infrastructure work in practice. So, can IMEC deliver? Possibly — but only if it exchanges vision statements for procurement schedules, diplomatic handshakes for binding contracts and high-level endorsements for on-the-ground problem solving. The world has no shortage of trade corridors. What it lacks are corridors that deliver on their promises. IMEC has the map, the mandate and the moment. Whether it has the machinery — and the mettle — remains the billion-dollar question. • Dr. John Sfakianakis is chief economist at the Gulf Research Center.


Arab News
9 hours ago
- Arab News
Trump wants to evict homeless from Washington and send them ‘far from the capital'
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump pledged on Sunday to evict homeless people from the nation's capital and jail criminals, despite Washington's mayor arguing there is no current spike in crime. 'The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don't have to move out. We're going to put you in jail where you belong,' Trump posted on the Truth Social platform. The White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington. The Republican president controls only federal land and buildings in the city. Trump is planning to hold a press conference on Monday to 'stop violent crime in Washington, D.C.' It was not clear whether he would announce more details about his eviction plan then. Trump's Truth Social post included pictures of tents and D.C. streets with some garbage on them. 'I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,' he said. According to the Community Partnership, an organization working to reduce homelessness in D.C., on any given night there are 3,782 single persons experiencing homelessness in the city of about 700,000 people. Most of the homeless individuals are in emergency shelters or transitional housing. About 800 are considered unsheltered or 'on the street,' the organization says. A White House official said on Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed in the city following a violent attack on a young Trump administration staffer that angered the president. The Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, said on Sunday the capital was 'not experiencing a crime spike.' 'It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023,' Bowser said on MSNBC's The Weekend. 'We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.' The city's police department reports that violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 was down by 26 percent in D.C. compared with last year while overall crime was down about 7 percent. Bowser said Trump is 'very aware' of the city's work with federal law enforcement after meeting with Trump several weeks ago in the Oval Office. The US Congress has control of D.C.'s budget after the district was established in 1790 with land from neighboring Virginia and Maryland, but resident voters elect a mayor and city council. For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking the law that established local elected leadership, which Trump would have to sign. Bowser on Sunday noted the president's ability to call up the National Guard if he wanted, a tactic the administration used recently in Los Angeles after immigration protests over the objections of local officials.