Brent at $108.87 with a War Premium That Refuses to Quit

Brent settled at $108.87 a barrel this evening, down 1.86% on the day. That is the headline number, and it tells you almost nothing until you look at where it sits relative to a month ago, a quarter ago, and the geopolitical map.

WTI, for its part, closed at $101.60, essentially flat at -0.14%. The narrowing spread between the two benchmarks is the quiet story underneath the noisy one.

The noisy one, of course, is the Iran war. Headlines this weekend confirmed that Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Ar…