Crude bears price a fast Hormuz restart the tankers haven't delivered

Crude bears price a fast Hormuz restart the tankers haven't delivered Brent's near 9% weekly drop assumes Gulf barrels return fast, but record SPR draws and a slow tanker restart suggest the physical market stays tighter than the curve. Brent's August contract on ICE was trading near $79.15 a barrel, down about 0.88% from its previous close, while NYMEX WTI for July fell 0.74% to $75.31, after Iran and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding to end their Gulf war and reopen Hormuz.⁴ Prices are down about 9% on a weekly basis as the deal promised a return of regional supply.⁴ Traders are pricing a quick restart of the roughly 20 million barrels a day the Gulf normally ships to world markets, the flow that vanished when the war erupted.² If those barrels come back on schedule, the selloff is justified; if they do not, the futures curve has run ahead of the physical market.⁴ The restart so far is thin. Three supertankers carrying 6 million barrels of oil crossed Hormuz on Thursday (2026-06-18), according to Kpler data cited by CNBC, a crossing some read as normalisation.⁴ That 6 million barrels is a small fraction of the roughly 20 million barrels a day that moved through the chokepoint before fighting began.^4,2 Hormuz was effectively shut by Iran after hostilities started on 28 February, and rebuilding tanker schedules, insurance cover and inspection routines takes weeks, not days.⁴ A single day's crossings tells you little about whether the full cadence has resumed. The supply cushion that capped the spike is also thinner than it looks. The US Energy Information Administration said the country drew nearly 10 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the seven days to 2026-05-11, the largest weekly withdrawal on record.¹ Those barrels have to be replaced, and a government that was selling into the rally turns into a buyer once prices soften, putting a floor under prices that was absent through the conflict.¹ The world's spare-barrel buffer is finite too. Speaking at a G7 finance meeting in Paris, the IEA's Fatih Birol said releases of strategic reserves had added 2.5 million barrels a day to supply but warned the stocks were "not endless".³ When those releases stop, a slice of the supply now weighing on prices goes with them.³ Forecasters have not chased spot all the way down. Trading Economics' macro models still see crude trading well above current levels by the end of the quarter, a gap with the front of the curve that only closes if physical barrels arrive faster than the logistics allow.² The check on the bear case is concrete. Watch whether US weekly EIA data begin to show SPR buying, and whether tanker traffic through Hormuz rebuilds toward the 20 million barrels a day it carried before the war.^1,2 Until the barrels actually move, the curve is pricing a supply return the physical market has yet to deliver.⁴