US Energy Secretary Rick Perry was quoted by media as saying that the global oil market "is going to be stressed" when US sanctions against buyers of Iranian crude return in November.
Perry emphasized that the US government was confident that increased production from Saudi Arabia and Russia could meet the supply gap.
"The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in place for emergency natural disasters," Platts energy news services quoted Perry as telling reporters at the World Gas Conference in Washington, DC on Thursday. "So I would not recommend [tapping it], and I don't think the president would either."
"We look at this as an opportunity for OPEC members to fill this gap, if you will," he added.
Earlier, the CNBC had quoted experts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as saying that disruption to crude oil supplies from Iran as a result of US sanctions could push oil prices to as high as $90 a barrel.
“We are in a very attractive oil price environment and our house view is that oil will hit $90 by the end of the second quarter of next year,” said Hootan Yazhari, head of frontier markets equity research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In May, US President Donald Trump announced that he would pull America out of a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and re-impose the sanctions that the deal had envisaged to be lifted.
He has already emphasized that the sanctions which would be imposed on Iran would be “at the highest level”.
The sanctions would include a universal ban on Iran over buying or acquiring US dollars as well as restrictions over purchases of crude oil from the country and investing in its oil sector projects.
