Oil prices tick up over Red Sea attacks, disruptions - Yahoo Finance

Oil prices tick up over Red Sea attacks, disruptions

Recently, Yemen-based Houthi militants attacked commercial shipping vessels traveling through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, in response to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Over 10% of world trade happens through that region, including oil shipments ( CL=F, BZ=F).

Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferré joins the Live show to discuss the current situation as well as how it is currently affecting oil prices.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, investors keeping a close watch on oil prices as more companies reroute trade away from the Red Sea following attacks by Houthi militants backed by Iran. Let's bring in Ines Ferre for more on the story and as we are seeing another climb higher on oil prices today.

INES FERRE: That's right. We're looking at oil that's up more than 1% today. And BP and other companies, shipping companies, have said that they are pausing their shipments, as you spoke about, Akiko, because of Houthi rebels' attacks on ships. And they've suspended shipments around the area of the Red Sea. Now, we want to show you a map of where-- what we're talking about because the Red Sea connects to the Mediterranean Sea by the Suez Canal. And it's the quickest route connecting Europe and Asia.

So around 9% of oil is taken through this route. And some estimates say up to 15% of shipments go through this area. And it's not just oil. It's liquefied natural gas. It's grains. Now, Goldman Sachs put out a note recently saying that they see a limited upside to oil prices because of this. Because they're saying, look, if companies are rerouting, if they're going through the Horn of Africa, for example, then what-- it's not really impacting production, it is just impacting the timeline. It is also impacting shipping costs because the route is much longer.

But let's take a look at what we've seen with crude over the last couple of days. Today, we're up about 1 and 1/2% for WTI and for brent crude. I'm going to pull up a six-day chart here so you can see the price action. Yesterday, we saw crude up more than 2%. And today, we're seeing it up higher as well. As far as where we're at with the prices, we're looking at WTI just above $73 a barrel, brent crude just above $79 per barrel.

We have seen the downward trend over the last couple of months. We saw seven straight weeks of declines. Last week, we saw a little bit of a gain for WTI on the week. But we'll have to see how we end for the-- this week. Year to date, though, we are down for both WTI and for crude. Down more than 4% for WTI, about 3 and 1/2% year to date. So we'll have to see how we end the year with oil prices, guys.