Bunker Fuel Doubles to $845 Per Metric Ton as Hormuz Crisis Reprices Marine Freight
Bloomberg's latest figure puts bunker fuel at double its January level, exposing shipping lines to weekly cost overruns above $70 million and reshaping global cargo calendars.
Bunker fuel has reached $845 per metric ton, double its price from the start of 2026, Bloomberg reported, as the Hormuz crisis extends into a period that is repricing the entire marine fuel complex. ICE Brent crude front-month was trading at $103.38 per barrel on Wednesday (2026-09-23). The distillate markets that feed marine fuel blending are under concurrent supply pressure from geopolitics, refinery outages and weakening spare capacity across three continents.1
Shipping lines are absorbing extraordinary costs — or attempting to pass them on. Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen put his company's additional weekly fuel bill at 50-60 million euros ($58-70 million) and said the carrier intended to recover those costs from customers, comparing it to paying more at the petrol station. Whether cargo shippers will absorb that pass-through without redirecting volumes is a calculation freight desks have been running since spring.1
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc said in early May 2026 that "the cost impact of this energy shock is unprecedented both in terms of size, the speed at which it has unfolded, and the dislocations it has created in the market." That assessment came before bunker fuel reached $845. Two months of further crude appreciation have added to the burden.1
The crude trajectory underpinning bunker costs has not softened. Global refinery runs are down 7 million barrels per day from a year earlier and have averaged nearly 6 million barrels per day below seasonal norms since March, Goldman Sachs commodity strategist Daan Struyven warned at the start of the week of September 1 (2026-09-01). Bunker fuel tracks the crude and distillate complex closely. There is little buffer in the current refinery picture to absorb further demand spikes.3
Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refinery infrastructure have tightened that picture further. The Saratov refinery stopped oil processing on July 9 (2026-07-09) after drone damage. The Syzran facility on the Volga, with processing capacity around 300,000 barrels per day, halted on July 12 (2026-07-12) after a primary processing unit was hit. The Salavat petrochemical complex in Bashkortostan, capable of processing over 9 million metric tons of oil per year, halted on July 14 (2026-07-14), according to industry sources. Taken together, those disruptions removed substantial Russian throughput at a moment when the global system had virtually no spare capacity to compensate.2
US retail diesel prices climbed to $5.783 per gallon on Wednesday (2026-09-02), surpassing the wartime peak set in April, the American Automobile Association reported — the highest since mid-2022. Heating oil futures were at $4.76 per gallon on Wednesday (2026-09-23). Neither is bunker fuel, but both confirm the distillate supply tightness that is feeding marine fuel costs higher.4,3
Trade flows have already adjusted. The Hormuz crisis brought forward the peak container shipping season to spring, ahead of anticipated further cost rises, oilprice.com reported in June. The Port of Los Angeles recorded 449,370 loaded twenty-foot equivalent units in May 2026, up 26% from a year earlier, per Port figures published in the week of June 15 (2026-06-15). That front-loading was commercially rational. But it also means underlying demand may be softer in the fourth quarter than headline volume figures suggest.1
Carriers are responding structurally on vessel economics. Dorian LPG signed a deal in early September (2026-09-07) with Hanwha Ocean for three 90,000-cubic-metre dual-fuel Panamax very large gas carriers, valued at around $345 million total, Rigzone reported. Dual-fuel capacity allows vessels to switch between conventional marine fuels and LNG or LPG, hedging against bunker price spikes. Those vessels will not enter service immediately; the near-term cost exposure across the fleet is unchanged.5
With ICE Brent front-month above $100 and global refinery throughput running roughly 6 million barrels per day below seasonal norms, the supply case for sustained elevated bunker prices is difficult to argue against on current data. The variable is demand-side softening in the fourth quarter, given the spring front-loading of cargo volumes. If Russian refinery capacity returns faster than conflict damage currently suggests, or if Hormuz tensions ease unexpectedly, distillate availability could recover enough to pressure bunker costs lower. Until then, carriers facing $845 per metric ton marine fuel have little room to delay those pass-through conversations with cargo customers.3,1,2