Oil risks fresh shocks as Iran appears to assert control over the key waterway
News that ships had been turned back by Iran at the Strait of Hormuz boosted crude futures on Thursday.
Energy markets are being dealt another curveball.
Iranian authorities ordered at least three oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz to turn back, and two additional ships appeared to reverse course as well, maritime intelligence company Windward said Thursday.
According to Windward, an Iranian radio transmission warned all vessels in the area that any crossing without identification signals or Iranian permissions would be at their own risk.
The ships that turned back were navigating close to the coast of Oman, an area previously thought to be outside Iranian control, Windward said.
The news boosted oil futures prices, which had been modestly higher on Thursday after a string of losses in recent sessions and monthly losses approaching 20%.
Crude's front-month contract trading in New York (CL00) settled 2.3% higher at $71.92 a barrel Thursday, its largest one-day percentage rise in three weeks and the first gain after losses in four straight sessions. The front-month London-traded Brent (BRN00) contract rose 2.1% to settle at $75.26 a barrel, its biggest one-day percentage gain in more than three weeks and its first gain following three days of losses.
Adding to concerns, the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, a Royal Navy organization, said Thursday it had received a report of an attack on a ship a few miles southeast of Dahit, Oman. It was the first such report in or near Hormuz since mid-June.
A cargo vessel was hit by an unknown projectile, according to the report. There were no casualties, but the ship's bridge was damaged.
U.S. officials confirmed the attack, identifying the vessel as Singapore-flagged, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Thursday's tanker traffic turnarounds marked a reversal for Hormuz flows. Wednesday saw a recent peak in transits, with 49 in total, the highest single-day count of the conflict, Windward said Thursday.
Before the start of the war, about a fifth of the world's supply of crude and crude products such as diesel flowed through the Strait of Hormuz, which has emerged as a key bargaining chip for Iran and a pressure point in the negotiations around a cease-fire.
Don't miss: Oil tankers are being lured back into the Strait of Hormuz by big payouts
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Bahrain to meet with Persian Gulf leaders, said in an interview on Fox News that the U.S. was "interested in whether or not ships are moving." If they are not, or if ships are threatened, he said, that would be a violation of the agreement signed a week ago. The interview was posted on X by a White House account.
The Thursday developments come as worries about Middle Eastern oil supplies drying up had started to ease in recent days.
Some investors had instead begun to fret about a potential near-term supply glut as oil held in ships trapped in the Gulf started to hit markets in Asia and Europe.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice to look into retail gasoline prices, characterizing the amount of oil coming through the strait in recent days as a "flood" and a "gusher."
Related: Gas prices aren't falling fast enough for Trump. Here's when drivers can expect more relief.
Still, plenty of investors cautioned that worries over a famine-to-feast scenario were unwarranted and that just a few confirmed incidents in the area could easily turn the clock back on the flow through the strait.
"The market still looks oversold, not oversupplied, and the 'well-supplied' signal out of Asia is a drawdown, not necessarily an influx of Hormuz barrels," said Kyle Bertamini, an analyst with Enverus Intelligence Research.
Asia looks well-supplied currently because refiners can tap into massive stockpiles, particularly in China, Bertamini said. Crude stockpiles in developing countries are at multidecade lows, and in the U.S., gasoline and distillate stocks also sit below the five-year average, with demand still firm, he added.
The "flood" of oil "is really one branch of a fork," said Aarathi Krishnan, CEO of Raksha Intelligence Futures. It's not a straight line from cease-fire to a reopened strait to barrels flooding back to a surplus, and no single one of those steps is automatic, she said.
"The cease-fire is a 60-day memorandum with the nuclear questions still unresolved," Krishnan said. An eventual normalization could mean a corridor that requires a toll.
The barrels of oil themselves depend on the de-mining of the strait, transit terms and restart timelines. In addition, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries still has the option to defend crude prices if they fall too far, she said.
"Each of those is a conditional, and you do not get the flood unless they all resolve the same way," Krishnan said. A glut may or may not happen, and calling it an oversupply likely assumes that the next year runs in a straight line, which energy markets almost never do, she added.
Most experts are working with the assumption that it will still take several weeks, if not months, before Middle Eastern production normalizes. And when it does, at least some portion of that production will no longer transit through Hormuz, as several Gulf countries have sought overland alternatives such as new pipelines and pipeline expansions.
See also: Energy markets will never be the same, even after the Iran cease-fire deal
-Claudia Assis
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June 25, 2026 16:03 ET (20:03 GMT)
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