Oil Risk Premium Drains as Hormuz Tanker Flows Resume After Ceasefire
The ceasefire framework has revived shipping through the strait, but OPEC and the IEA disagree sharply on what demand does next.
ICE Brent crude front-month stood at $73.08 at Friday's close (2026-06-26), a level that Waleed Said, a technical analyst at GivTrade, attributed to the market continuing to price out a risk premium accumulated during months of Strait of Hormuz disruption. "Oil is moving lower because tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz have resumed after the ceasefire framework, reducing immediate fears of a major supply disruption," Said wrote in a note sent to Rigzone on Friday (2026-06-26).8
The fall from the conflict's peak has been steep. ICE Brent crashed 13.3% to $94.75 on Wednesday (2026-05-20) — its largest single-session fall since 2020 — when President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire, halting hostilities that had severed supply flows from the Gulf. NYMEX WTI crude front-month fell 16.4% the same session. Since then, both benchmarks have continued to decline as physical conditions through the strait normalise.1
The severity of the earlier disruption had been visible in vessel tracking data. On Monday (2026-05-18), commercial shipping through Hormuz had slowed to near-standstill, with just one ship exiting the Gulf while two entered. By Wednesday (2026-05-20), three supertankers that had waited in the Gulf for more than two months — carrying six million barrels of Middle East crude — were finally crossing the strait bound for Asian markets.7,2
Said was careful to say the current slide is not a straightforward demand signal. Trump's public statements, he wrote, are moving crude through three simultaneous channels: demand expectations, supply chain confidence, and geopolitical risk pricing. Disentangling them is complicated by divergent agency forecasts that point in opposite directions.8
OPEC has lowered its 2026 demand growth forecast to 970,000 barrels per day. The IEA, by contrast, expects global oil demand to decline by 1.1 million barrels per day year over year in 2026, with global supply falling by 3.9 million barrels per day. One implies continued positive demand growth, the other a market rebalancing at lower volumes. Both frames affect where the conflict-premium unwind stabilises.8
Early in the conflict, when Hormuz was effectively closed, the EIA had described global oil markets as entering "a period of heightened volatility and uncertainty," noting that nearly 20% of global oil supply had flowed through the strait before military action. WTI crude surged 7.45% in the week of 2026-05-14 as supply-risk bids accumulated, before the ceasefire wiped out those gains and more.6,5
Some analysts had positioned for far higher levels. Citi had argued in mid-May that oil markets were underpricing the risk of prolonged supply disruption and expected ICE Brent to reach $120 a barrel near-term; PVM analysts warned that global oil stocks could reach critically low levels if the closure persisted. Neither scenario materialised.2,3
Iran's position during negotiations adds one complicating variable that the strait reopening alone does not resolve. Tehran's response to U.S. proposals included demands for an immediate end to the economic siege on the country and guarantees for the freedom of Iranian oil exports. Whether the ceasefire framework has addressed those conditions determines how durably physical supply normalises beyond the immediate resumption of tanker crossings.4
NYMEX WTI crude front-month at $69.23 at Friday's close (2026-06-26), with Dubai crude at $79.67 and the OPEC basket at $77.37, leaves a wide range of benchmarks below levels that would historically encourage OPEC+ production discipline. If the cartel responds to the price slide with coordinated output cuts, that introduces a separate variable into the supply calculus — one that Said's analysis of the Hormuz premium unwind does not fully account for.8