By Rebecca Feng
Analysts and commodities trading company executives are expressing shock at what they call a disconnect between market pricing and reality.
Prices of the most-active Brent futures contract are holding below $100 a barrel despite escalating tension in the Strait of Hormuz and the cancellation of U.S.-Iran peace talks. Just today, two attacks on ships in the waterway showed that the fight for control of the strait continues and spooked shipowners and crew members. Here's what I'm hearing from experts and industry leaders at the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland:
"The lack of price discovery that we are seeing is so worrying to me, because in reality we are storing up a bigger problem for the future," said Amrita Sen, founder and director of market intelligence at Energy Aspects. Price discovery refers to the process of buyers and sellers determining the fair price of a good or an asset in the futures market. "Futures prices are meant to do the job of giving signals to sort out supply and demand. We are doing the opposite," she said in a panel.
In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the market didn't experience nearly as large a physical disruption as this time, and yet oil prices went much higher and stayed between $110 and $125 a barrel for months, said Saad Rahim, chief economist at Swiss commodity trader Trafigura, at the conference yesterday. "This time, the scale seems to be something where the market cannot get its head around it, and therefore it says, we are not going to think about it."
That was a sentiment echoed by other market participants in Lausanne, where conference attendees highlighted the non-negligible chance of more escalation and a drawn-out war. They highlighted that the world is already losing an average of 10 million barrels a day of crude oil and 5 million barrels a day of oil products. Hits to the world's supply of fertilizers and chemicals are also severe.
In recent trading, Brent futures floated 0.5% higher to $99 a barrel, while WTI futures gained 0.3% to $90 a barrel. Since the beginning of the war, the price of Brent crude has climbed roughly 36%.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 22, 2026 08:47 ET (12:47 GMT)
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