Oil prices fell on Friday amid signs that ships were continuing to move through the Strait of Hormuz despite an Iranian attack on a container ship the day before.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, declined over 3 percent to about $73 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell to between $69 and $70 a barrel.
Over the past 24 hours, some crude prices have briefly dipped below the levels not seen since Feb. 27, the eve of the war in Iran. But trading has been jittery in recent sessions, veering between sharp increases and declines, especially after Iran’s military struck a container ship in the strait on Thursday, a reminder of the risk that remains to ships passing through the crucial waterway.
Still, oil prices are on track to record their sixth consecutive weekly decline. And traffic through the strait, around which hundreds of ships are stranded, has picked up markedly in the past week. Negotiators for the United States and Iran have agreed to a 60-day period of talks, while pledging to cease hostilities.
U.S. gasoline prices fell again on Friday, sliding two cents to a national average of $3.90 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days. The average price at the pump has risen more than 30 percent since the war began.
Stock markets tumbled on Friday in a continuation of sharp volatility in technology shares. In Asia, jittery investors continue to wrestle with whether the boom in artificial intelligence spending is all but done or just beginning.
Capping a bruising week, South Korea’s KOSPI fell 5.8 percent. The benchmark index has become a proxy for investor sentiment about A.I. The country’s two chip giants — Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — have outsize influence in dictating the direction of the broader market. Shares of Samsung dropped 5 percent, while SK Hynix fell 8 percent.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell nearly 5 percent, while shares in Taiwan fell 3 percent. Also, stock markets in Hong Kong and mainland China were lower.
Futures on the S&P 500 pointed to a 0.6 percent decline when stocks resume trading in the United States on Friday. In Europe, the Stoxx 600, a broad index that tracks the region’s largest companies, fell nearly 1 percent.
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