Oil traders got a flash of relief when Iran’s foreign minister said the Strait of Hormuz was ‘completely open’, and Brent crude promptly dropped 10 percent to $90 a barrel. The relief did not last. Iran reversed course within hours and attacked an Indian tanker, and the next session brought only a 5 percent rebound, leaving the benchmark still about $20 below its late-March peak even as an American blockade keeps more Iranian oil stuck in the Gulf.
That whipsaw captures the real tension in global energy markets: the physical flow of crude looks less clear than the headlines suggest, and the market is pricing both access and disruption at once. A tanker attack keeps insurance, shipping routes and delivery schedules under pressure, while the trapped barrels in the Gulf mean supply is not freely reaching buyers even if the strait remains technically open.
For consumers and refiners, that leaves prices exposed to another sudden leg up. For traders, the message is harsher: a day’s peace can vanish in an hour, and the market is still treating the Gulf as a place where logistics can turn into a crisis fast.
