DUBAI, Aug. 18 -- Oil prices today are doing what they declined to do on Monday's deadline, which is move. Brent crude is above $91 a barrel, a third consecutive session of gains, and the market has finally decided the expiry of the US-Iran memorandum was worth pricing in after all.

It did not reach that conclusion when the sixty-day window actually ran out. It reached it when Donald Trump said out loud that he would not be extending anything.

Oil Prices Today, August 18, 2026: Crude Benchmarks

Brent is quoted near $90.97 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate is above $84. On Monday, the day the window ran out, Brent closed at $90.87 and WTI at $84.50.

Monday morning, Brent had moved twenty cents on the deadline, and read that stillness a...