CRUDE WRAP: WTI (V6) SETTLES USD 1.34 HIGHER AT 101.39/BBL; BRENT (X6) SETTLES USD 1.07 HIGHER AT 105.68/BBL

The session is a textbook geopolitical risk-premium round trip: supply-side shocks (an extended Saudi pipeline outage, a downed US drone) built the premium through the morning, and de-escalatory headlines (an energy-infrastructure truce between Ukraine and Russia, signs of an open channel to Tehran) bled it back out into the settle, leaving benchmarks near session lows despite closing higher on the day. Episodes of this kind have tended to resolve on the durability of the supply disruption rather than the rhetoric: confirmed multi-week pipeline outages feed through export loadings and force rerouting, which supports Brent timespreads and the Dated-to-futures differential, while headline-driven spikes without physical follow-through have historically faded within sessions. The WTI-Brent spread behaviour is the tell here, since a Saudi export constraint tightens the seaborne barrel and should widen Brent's premium; if it does not, the market is treating the outage as priced or as demand-capped. The distinction worth drawing is between the pipeline outage, a physical and measurable flow loss, and the Iran headlines, which are two-sided: escalation risks Strait of Hormuz transit and freight/insurance costs, while a step-by-step deal path implies incremental sanctions relief and returning barrels. What is worth watching next is confirmation of repair timelines, Saudi export nominations and any shift in official selling prices, alongside whether diplomatic contact with Tehran produces verifiable steps rather than further competing readouts.