Forbes:

Eight countries, including China and India, will be looking for alternative sources of crude supply starting today. Those eight countries - the other six are Greece, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey - were granted temporary waivers last May when President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-era executive agreement with Iran, and re-implemented U.S. sanctions on countries who continued to purchase exported Iranian crude.

Early Monday morning, the Trump Administration formally announced that these waivers would not be renewed once they expire in early May. This move will take as much as 1 million additional barrels of oil off of the international market , and crude futures jumped to new 2019 highs after the Washington Post first reported the Administration's pending announcement on Sunday afternoon.

The global supply/demand equation has already tightened significantly this year, after the OPEC-plus nations combined to reduce their own exports by over 1 million barrels of oil per day (bopd). That move, combined with slowing U.S. shale production growth and ongoing robust global demand growth, has reversed the downward trajectory of oil prices that took place durin the fourth quarter of 2018.

“President Donald J. Trump has decided not to reissue Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs) when they expire in early May,” the White House said in a statement. “This decision is intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.”

At the same time, the White House also said that the U.S. will work with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to ensure "that global oil markets remain adequately supplied. We have agreed to take timely action to assure that global demand is met as all Iranian oil is removed from the market."

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