By Seher Dareen
LONDON, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Oil prices held steady on Friday but were on track for a weekly drop as traders weighed stagnant U.S.-Iran diplomatic talks against some crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Brent crude futures were down 4 cents to $89.66 a barrel at 0943 GMT. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 32 cents, or 0.38%, to $83.21.
Both benchmarks were poised to end the week lower, with Brent down 5.1% and WTI falling 4.5%.
"A combination of U.S. tactics moving to economic
sanctions rather than military pressure and talks of Oman-Iran's joint corridor have led to risk premiums declining," said Suvro Sarkar, head of energy research at DBS Bank.
The U.S. announced what it called the "toughest sanctions in history" on Iran earlier in the week. Tehran said the sanctions were an "inhumane and hostile act" that had lost their effectiveness.
The prime minister of Qatar met senior Iranian leaders in Tehran on Thursday, stressing the importance of returning to the pre-war status of open shipping through the international waterway.
However, the tentative recovery of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz - through which 20% of the world's oil supply moves - was choppy.
Seven commodity vessels transited on Thursday, down from 17 a day earlier and below the 10-day average of 15, preliminary shipping data showed on Friday.
The Bab el-Mandeb, another major maritime chokepoint, saw 17 commodity vessels pass through, with six entering and 11 exiting.
Goldman Sachs on Thursday estimated recent total Gulf exports at 15 million to 16 million barrels per day, 7 million to 8 million bpd below pre-war levels but 5 million to 6 million above the lowest point in March.
"We are of the attitude of being prepared for everything but predicting nothing," PVM Oil Futures analyst John Evans said.
"The ramifications on who will be in or out of OPEC, how China's demand is affected, whether the refinery issues of the globe can now be solved are hitched firmly to this bumpy wagon of war."
Trump administration officials are working on a deal to secure long-term access to a portion of Venezuela's crude reserves, sources with knowledge of the negotiations said on Thursday, a move that could ultimately lower the cost of oil imports.
Venezuela is also considering leaving the OPEC oil production group, Bloomberg reported.
Separately, geopolitical tensions escalated after Moscow warned it could strike British military targets inside and outside Ukraine in response to Kyiv's attacks on Russian territory using British-supplied long-range cruise missiles.
Trump, however, said Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attack a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country, and he downplayed media reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe this week had warned Russian officials against such an attack. Britain is one of the founding members of NATO.
Ukraine's military struck a Russian oil refinery in the Yaroslavl region overnight, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Friday.
(Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan and Colleen Howe; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Jacqueline Wong)
