Brent at $98 after the midterms, and a war without a ceasefire

Brent crude settled at $98.29 a barrel on Thursday, up 3.8% on the day, after plunging more than 8% on Wednesday to its lowest settlement since 31 August¹. West Texas Intermediate rose 2.7% to $90.52¹. Over about a week, Brent had still cheapened by roughly 12%, to around $97 earlier on Thursday, tagesschau reported, from levels above $117 two weeks earlier².

The midweek drop was a political read: after Republican losses in the US midterms, investors cut the odds of further escalation in the US–Israeli war with Iran^1,2. Eurasia Group trimmed its probability of renewed US strikes to 60% from 65%, cut the chance of a deal to 10% from 20%, and raised the chance of a continued standoff to 30% from 15%¹. President Trump himself acknowledged that the war had played a role in the Republican defeat².

Thursday’s bounce was the other half of the same ledger: fresh attacks on tankers and the plain fact that no ceasefire has been signed¹. “The peace talks are currently confined largely to rhetoric,” Capital.com’s Kyle Rodda told German outlets². Eurasia still puts a renewed escalation that could push Brent back into a $110–$125 range as a live risk¹.

For Europe the channel is familiar. Dearer oil and gas feed fuel and power bills; cheaper oil eases them, with a lag. The useful habit is to treat a one-day percentage as a temperature, not a treaty. Nothing here is a forecast.