Well that escalated, didnt it? Brent Oil was sat around $70 a barrel last Friday looking like it might drift lower and then the US and Israel went and bombed Iran over the weekend and everything changed.

By Monday morning the Brent Oil price had gapped up 9 percent to nearly $80 and WTI wasnt far behind jumping about 8.5 percent to $73.

That was just the warm up though because by Friday Brent had smashed through $90 and briefly touched $94 which is the highest since late 2023. WTI cracked $90 for the first time in years too settling around $91. Thats a near 30 percent move in a week which is absolutely insane.

The Strait of Hormuz is the story really.. about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil goes through that narrow bit of water between Iran and Oman, and Irans Revolutionary Guard declared it closed on Monday. Tankers started piling up on either side unable to get insurance or just flat out refusing to risk it. Rystad Energy called it an effective halt of traffic which is not the kind of language you want to hear when you’re talking about 15 million barrels a day of crude oil.

Iran hit back hard too.. missiles and drones flying at US bases in Qatar Kuwait Bahrain and the UAE. QatarEnergy shut down LNG production after their facilities got hit which sent European natural gas futures rocketing 45 percent in a single session. Saudi Arabia had to close units at Ras Tanura their biggest refinery after drone debris caused a fire. The whole Gulf is basically a warzone right now and the insurance market is in tatters.

OPEC tried to calm things down by announcing a 206 thousand barrel per day production increase from April but honestly thats a drop in the ocean when you’re potentially losing 7 to 11 million barrels of flow through Hormuz. Morgan Stanley jacked their Brent forecast up to $80 from $62 and some analysts are saying $100 is on the table if this drags on. Trump himself said the strikes could last weeks which is not exactly reassuring.

The knock on effects are everywhere.. airlines tanking, shipping stocks in chaos, defence names like Lockheed and Northrop flying. Meanwhile Exxon and Chevron are laughing all the way to the bank.