Brent Oil Falls to $102.09, WTI Drops Below $100

Brent crude fell 1.71 percent today, September 21, to $102.09 a barrel. The drop came a day after the price stood at $103.21, a level our business desk covered in the previous report (Brent at $103.21, European gas above 80 euros per MWh). November Brent futures extended their decline, and WTI for October delivery lost 1.96 percent to $98.33 a barrel, slipping below the $100 mark for the first time in recent days.

On Amsterdam’s TTF exchange, October gas futures traded at €80.545 per megawatt-hour this morning, almost unchanged from the level of just above €80 seen a day earlier.

Why Middle East Flows Are Still Keeping Prices Down

According to JPMorgan Chase analysts, cited by CNBC, oil supplies from the Middle East have stayed strong despite disruptions on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline. Total flows from the region averaged 17.1 million barrels a day over the past ten days, 6.1 million barrels a day below the average for all of 2025.

Markets are nonetheless watching closely how much any new disruption could cut into global supply. On Saturday, Iran-backed Houthi forces launched missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, and analysts are now focused on how badly a repeat of such attacks could disrupt flows through the East-West pipeline, the key route that carries Saudi crude to the Red Sea.

Who’s Gaining on European Markets

Even as energy prices fell, European stock markets were mostly higher around 10 a.m. Germany’s DAX gained 0.74 percent, France’s CAC 40 rose 0.59 percent, Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.42 percent, and Italy’s FTSE MIB jumped 0.86 percent. Moscow’s IMOEX index bucked the trend, falling 0.56 percent.

Technology and financial stocks led the gains. Shares of Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML rose 2.8 percent, matching the gain posted by Germany’s Infineon. French bank Societe Generale climbed 3.6 percent after raising its own profitability target, putting it among the top gainers on the broader STOXX 600 index.

US markets, closed Friday ahead of the weekend, ended with a mixed picture. The Dow Jones slipped 0.18 percent to 51,682.64 points, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both rose, up 0.17 percent to 7,650.50 points and 0.39 percent to 26,522.55 points respectively.

Gold and the Euro

Gold fell to $4,352.46 an ounce, while the euro traded at $1.14758. Wheat bucked the broader trend among the commodities in this roundup, rising to $7.2349 a bushel.

Next Marker: the Trump-Xi Meeting

In the coming days, investors are focused above all on the planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Its outcome will shape where energy prices head next, since trade relations between the world’s two largest economies feed directly into demand for oil and gas. Markets are also watching the Middle East in parallel, where new attacks on infrastructure could quickly reverse the current downward trend in prices, much as happened once before after the disruption on the Saudi pipeline.