WTI Settles Near $102 as Hormuz Flow Data Dispute Clouds Supply Recovery
Conflicting estimates of Strait of Hormuz throughput are keeping crude bears and bulls deadlocked even as prices ease from their wartime peaks.
NYMEX WTI front-month settled at $101.91 a barrel on Thursday (2026-09-17), down 0.5%, while ICE Brent crude front-month fell 1% to $104.82, as signs of easing Middle East supply disruptions pushed oil lower. By Friday (2026-09-18) midday, NYMEX WTI front-month had extended those losses to around $101.05, according to live market data.6
Crude has rallied more than 70% this year, generating enough inflationary pressure that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday (2026-09-16) and signalled further tightening. Oil at these levels feeds directly into central bank decisions that touch the entire risk complex, and the DXY dollar index was trading at 100.54 on Friday (2026-09-18), up 0.31%, adding a modest headwind for dollar-denominated crude prices.6
The immediate dispute is over how much crude is actually moving through the Strait of Hormuz. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business that 18 million barrels of crude and products transited the strait in a single day during the week of 2026-09-14, with a seven-day average of 11 million barrels per day. Clarksons Research put the daily figure at roughly 8 million barrels. Both readings cover the same waterway over the same period.6
That gap matters because the recovery trajectory implied by each figure is sharply different. At the conflict's worst, proprietary data tracked by The Gold & Silver Club showed as much as 14 million barrels per day of supply constrained, against global demand of around 103 million barrels per day. Any meaningful restoration changes balances, but the Clarksons and Wright figures point to very different degrees of recovery.3,6
Before the crisis, strait throughput exceeded 20 million barrels per day, according to agency data cited by Gulf News. Getting back there requires functional export infrastructure, re-certified tankers, and renewed insurance cover. Energy analysts said traders are balancing optimism over diplomatic progress against longer-term concerns about depleted inventories, damaged infrastructure, and lingering regional uncertainty.1,5
The price weakness this year has been persistent. WTI shed 14% in May alone as ceasefire hopes displaced war premium. The July WTI contract finished the week of Thursday (2026-05-28) at $88.60, down $8.40 or 8.66% on the week, after trading as high as $94.70 intraday. ICE Brent crude front-month dropped to around $94.29 in early trading on Thursday (2026-05-28), according to Oilprice.com data.2,1
From those lows, prices recovered materially. The August WTI contract had traded between a high of $78.14 and a low of $68.90 during the week ending Friday (2026-06-26), as traders continued pricing in more Iranian supply returning to market. The current level near $102 sits well above those troughs, suggesting the market has rebuilt a meaningful supply premium into the price.4
Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at Global Risk Management in Copenhagen, described the Thursday (2026-09-17) dip as "a buy-the-dip opportunity across crude and refined products." That view rests on the assumption that physical tightness from the conflict is not fully resolved and that headline diplomatic progress is outrunning the actual restoration of barrels.6
The broader trend this year has repeatedly punished that positioning. Each escalation that looked durable eventually gave way to diplomatic developments that knocked prices sharply lower within days. One analyst quoted by Rigzone was direct about the limits of any forecast: "We simply don't know how to model the endgame."6
Supply infrastructure disrupted for months does not recover linearly, and Iran's export capacity — even under a normalised diplomatic framework — depends on sanction unwinding, tanker availability, and buyer willingness, all subject to political reversal. The Fed rate move adds a further constraint: higher US rates, delivered partly because of energy-driven inflation, strengthen the dollar and weaken crude demand expectations simultaneously, limiting how far a supply-driven rally can extend.6
The Clarksons weekly throughput figure is now the more concrete number to track. If it converges toward the 11 million barrels per day the US government is claiming, the bear case for crude tightens. If it stays near 8 million, prices have room to rebuild. The two figures are not a minor discrepancy — they describe recoveries of different magnitudes, and only one of them can be right.6,3