US plans to ease sanctions on shadow fleet

• Brent crude falls 1.5% to $104
• IEA says Gulf exports increasing
• Houthis target Eastern Region

The US is reportedly planning to ease sanctions on the shadow fleet transporting oil and petroleum products to lower record-high freight rates.

Brent crude futures fell 1.5 percent to $104.5 a barrel by 03:00 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures lost 1.2 percent to $94. Both benchmarks are up around 40 percent year to date.

The decline came despite intensifying attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, an escalating conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen and fresh Iranian threats against US warships.

Record freight rates have hit demand for US crude, Reuters reported, citing energy secretary Chris Wright’s video address to the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh.

Trump has struck a diesel deal with Russia ahead of the mid-term polls in an effort to cut fuel prices. Prices are more than 40 percent higher on average than a year ago, according to American Automobile Association data.

Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia have continued to exchange retaliatory attacks.

A UAV was intercepted and destroyed in the Eastern Region on Thursday morning, state news agency SPA reported.

Houthi militia spokesperson Yahya Saree said on social media on Thursday that the group had used an air-to-air missile to strike a Saudi Typhoon warplane that had taken off from Taif Air Base.

He added that Khalid International Airport in Riyadh had been hit again on Thursday.

The airport has been closed since the attacks at the weekend, which followed a strike on an administrative building at Saudi Aramco headquarters.

Yemen has been divided for more than a decade between areas controlled by the UN-sanctioned government and those held by the Houthis. The country has suffered economic collapse and widespread poverty.

Further reading:

• Two vessels sink off Oman as Hormuz attacks intensify
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• Why Iran gains more from an open, dangerous Hormuz

US President Donald Trump has said the Houthis were behaving “very badly” and warned that the US could join strikes on Yemen, despite having rejected Saudi Arabia’s previous requests.

Last week, the United Nations secretary-general’s special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said the country had slid back into full-scale war.

“The conflict is intensifying, with Houthi offensives, attacks on Saudi infrastructure and threats to Red Sea shipping raising regional security and economic risks,” he said.

Elsewhere, Iran said it had acquired “significantly more advanced weapons”, although it had relied mainly on older-generation weapons in the early days of the conflict with the US and Israel, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

The IRGC also threatened to sink US warships in the Strait of Hormuz, saying it was “counting the moments”, according to a report by the Tasnim agency.

Crude oil exports from GCC producers rose by more than 4 million barrels per day in September to about 75 percent of pre-war levels, according to the International Energy Agency.

However, Opec cut its forecast for 2026 global oil demand in its October report. It expects demand to grow next year, with stockpiles potentially being replenished.

The conflict in Yemen weighed on the Saudi stock exchange, which dropped 1.7 percent on Wednesday, falling to a 43-month low.

Qatar’s main index slipped 0.7 percent, while Kuwait’s market gauge declined 1.4 percent.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi closed 0.6 percent and 0.4 percent higher, respectively.