Oil Surges Past $80 as Hormuz Shipping Collapses
Brent crude jumped almost 6% to more than $80 a barrel, its highest in weeks, as the blockade threat and the strikes drove a war premium back into oil. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has all but stopped: maritime trackers counted only a handful of vessels over the weekend against a peacetime norm of around 130 a day, with crossings down by more than half on the week. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil normally passes through the strait, so the disruption reaches every economy that imports energy.
A near-6% jump is a serious move but still short of the panic a permanent closure would bring, and that gap is the market’s wager that the strait will not stay shut — because closure hurts Iran’s own exports and invites the overwhelming American response Tehran has so far avoided. But the shipping data is the real story: a chokepoint carrying a fifth of the world’s oil moving at a trickle, with insurers pulling cover, war-risk premiums soaring and owners routing around it where they can. For Britain, a net energy importer, the transmission is quick, through petrol, diesel and the gas price that sets bills. A sustained disruption would feed straight into inflation and land on the desk of an incoming government within days of it taking office. Watch where oil settles as the US session closes, tanker traffic and insurance costs, and whether OPEC signals it will pump more.