Oil prices have fallen sharply amid tentative hopes for a deal to end the US-Israel war on Iran.
Brent crude, the primary benchmark for global oil prices, fell more than 5 percent on Sunday as US President Donald Trump gave mixed signals on the prospects for a permanent end to the conflict.
Brent futures for July stood at $97.94 a barrel as of 04:00 GMT, down about 9 percent from a month ago but still up by more than a third compared with before the start of the war.
Japan’s benchmark stock index, the Nikkei 225, surged more than 3 percent in morning trading, hitting an all-time high after closing at a record peak on Friday.
Trump said in a social media post on Sunday that negotiations with Tehran were proceeding in an “orderly and constructive manner”, but he had instructed officials “not to rush into a deal”.
“Both sides must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s remarks came after he raised hopes for a breakthrough on Saturday by announcing that a deal had been “largely negotiated,” with the terms including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
“Fundamentally, there is no change to the underlying picture, where 10-11 million barrels per day of crude oil continue to be shut-in for every day the Strait of Hormuz remains shut,” June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.
“However, markets are expecting a gush of 100 million barrels of crude oil from the stranded ships to flow out once the deal is in place.”