Brent Crude Oil Price Surges Past $102 as Trump’s Hormuz Blockade Sends Markets Into Shock

In the energy markets, there are certain mornings when the figure on the screen doesn’t make sense until you read the headline that generated it. That was the kind of morning on Monday, April 13. In just a few hours, Brent crude rose above $103 after opening at about $99, and traders observing the London futures market had already factored in a world that had changed over the weekend. The reason wasn’t complicated, which is uncommon when prices move so quickly.

The weekend’s peace negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad broke down. A U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, aimed at ships entering and leaving Iranian ports, was declared by President Trump. Every day, about a fifth of the world’s petroleum trade passes through that waterway, which is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. When the news broke on Sunday night, traders had to make a quick and difficult calculation: how much supply would be lost and for how long if the blockade persisted.

The numbers under discussion are not abstract concepts. An estimated 1.5 to 1.7 million barrels of Iranian crude are moved daily by Iran’s sanctioned “dark fleet”—a disorganized network of tankers that has been transporting Iranian crude outside of official channels, mainly to buyers in Asia. A blockade that only targets ships traveling to and from Iranian ports wouldn’t directly affect those volumes, but the ongoing attacks on energy infrastructure and the wider chilling effect on Middle East shipping create a market environment that just doesn’t support $95 oil.

Before Sunday night, it hardly held $95. Earlier in the conflict, Saudi Arabia had already revealed that Iranian attacks had cut its production capacity by 600,000 barrels per day; those flows were later restored, but the vulnerability was evident. In response to the announcement of the blockade, Iranian officials warned that any military presence close to the Strait would be considered a violation of the ceasefire. This increases the likelihood of future attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure in the coming days.

In the same way that the S&P 500 is the price of American stocks, Brent crude is the price of oil. It is the figure that is used worldwide, appears in airline fuel contracts, influences the price that refiners pay for crude, and ultimately affects what a driver in Birmingham or Brisbane pays at the pump. Produced from the North Sea and priced in London, it serves as the global benchmark due to its decades-long reliability and the fact that it sets prices for about 80% of all petroleum traded worldwide.

The entire linked chain of energy costs moves with Brent when it moves 7.74% in a single session, albeit at different rates and with different delays. In a matter of weeks, airlines will have to pay more for jet fuel. Freight rates are repriced by shipping companies. Margin compression affects food distributors who depend on trucking and refrigeration. It will take months for the inflationary signal from Monday’s price action to completely permeate the system.

Analysts who had been hesitant to predict $110 oil seem to be reevaluating their timelines rather than their figures at this time. Before Monday morning’s move, Morgan Stanley had already set its Q2 2026 Brent forecast at $110 per barrel; if the blockade continues as planned and Iranian counter-responses follow, that goal appears to be reachable this week. Brent is expected to drop below $90 in the fourth quarter of 2026 and average $76 in 2027, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s longer-term outlook, which is predicated on a resolution or de-escalation taking place in the upcoming months. By the hour, those presumptions seem less certain.

Under the assumption of eventual normalization, the EIA’s forecasts are reasonable models; however, it is unclear whether normalization will occur prior to the summer driving season, which would increase demand and widen the gap between supply and market demands.

There was a brief ceasefire that lasted about a week before reality set in. When the deal was announced on Tuesday of last week, Brent had plummeted; futures fell precipitously, equity markets surged, and oil above $100 seemed more like a transitory than a structural situation. The fissures had already started to show by Friday. Hezbollah and Israel traded blows. Those exchanges were cited by Iran as violations. Vice President Vance went to Islamabad to engage in fruitless negotiations. The price of oil rose back to $99. Following the official collapse of the negotiations on Sunday night, the blockade announcement changed the question from “will ceasefire hold” to “is active escalation now the base case.” That question was addressed with a cost on Monday morning.

Every cycle in this conflict has followed a similar pattern, which is difficult to ignore: brief optimism, price correction, re-escalation, and new price spike. Because major exporters’ spare production capacity has decreased and inventory buffers have been depleted over several episodes, it is becoming more difficult to swiftly unwind the spikes. Over the course of a day, the war premium that had been priced out during the ceasefire week had to be re-priced in, adding to the already complex situation the uncertainty of a U.S. naval blockade action. What transpires in the Strait in the coming days will determine whether Brent stabilizes in the $100–$110 range or moves toward the $120 levels briefly touched in intraday trading on reports of the blockade. These factors include whether tankers cease to move, whether Iran reacts militarily, and whether any diplomatic backchannel results in something that the official talks over the weekend failed to produce.