It’s been a long time since geopolitical developments caused major movements in the oil price, but the escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran, combined with the sudden military clashes in Iraq, has pushed geopolitical risk back on to the agenda for the oil market. “Geopolitical risks to the oil market have continued to intensify,” Goldman Sachs wrote in an October 17 research note. In addition to Iraq and Iran, the decline in Venezuela’s oil production “appears to be accelerating,” while the resurgence in output from Libya and Nigeria continues to be fragile. “There remains high uncertainty on the potential impact of these new tensions on the oil market.” But it’s Iraq and Iran that have really raised fears of outages. As of October 17, preliminary reports suggest that about 350,000 bpd of oil production from the Kirkuk oil fields were disrupted, with conflicting reports about whether or not […]