The surprise airstrikes by the U.S. on a Syrian airfield late last week brought an element of geopolitical risk back to the oil markets, adding support to crude prices. Historically, conflict, or even just the threat of conflict, has pushed up oil prices, particularly back when supply was already tight and oil was trading at $100 per barrel. But the three-year bust in oil prices has moved geopolitical risk to the backburner because even a sizable outage in supply could have easily been handled by the enormous glut in the market. To be sure, the Syrian war is not new – it is more than six years old. But the involvement of the U.S. could mark the beginning of a new, wider conflict and it comes just as the oil markets are showing some signs of tightening . The result is a sudden uptick in oil prices, pushing WTI […]