Crude prices slid to their lowest level in 11 days on Monday, as easing supply fears out of Saudi Arabia combined with fresh hope for diplomatic progress between Washington and Tehran to pull oil sharply off its recent highs.
Brent crude's November contract settled at $100.34 a barrel, down $3.53, or 3.4%, while the West Texas Intermediate October contract — which expires Tuesday — fell $4.52, or 4.5%, to $95.78, according to a report from Rigzone. Both benchmarks remain well above summer levels but retreated from the multi-week peaks reached after drone strikes disrupted Saudi pipeline capacity earlier this month.
The primary driver was evidence that Saudi Arabia has largely worked around the damage. Satellite tracking showed the kingdom's oil loadings from its main Persian Gulf port jumped over the weekend to the highest ship count since June, as Riyadh redirected barrels that had previously moved through the now-shuttered East-West pipeline, according to coverage from The National.
Diplomacy added a second tailwind. President Trump said Monday he would be open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of this week's United Nations General Assembly in New York, while Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran had conveyed conditions to mediators for resuming talks aimed at ending its war with the United States, per RTÉ's markets desk.
Focus has shifted to improving oil and LNG flows through Hormuz and the possibility of diplomatic progress at the UN General Assembly.
Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst
Risks Still on the Table
Traders cautioned the retreat does not signal an all-clear. Saudi Arabia issued air-raid alerts for Riyadh over the weekend, a reminder that the underlying conflict remains active, while Libya's largest oil field sharply cut output after an armed group closed a connecting pipeline — a separate supply risk that could limit how far prices fall from here.
With the WTI front-month contract rolling over Tuesday, traders expect added volatility this week as positioning shifts to November delivery. Markets will also be watching whether Trump and Pezeshkian's diplomatic signaling advances into anything concrete at the UN gathering, a development that could determine whether Monday's slide extends or proves temporary.
