The Brent oil price rose above $100 per barrel for the first time since July on Wednesday.
Brent hit $100.45 per barrel in early trading today after two straight days of gains, with the Brent price closing at $97.92 per barrel on Tuesday. The last time it closed at $100 per barrel or above was on July 23, at $100.69 per barrel.
“Oil investors are expressing their view about the impact of the latest bout of escalation in the Middle East in an unambiguous way,” Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, said in a market comment on the oil price rising above $100 per barrel, which was sent to Rigzone today.
“They are voting with their dollar, and this vote strongly indicates that unless the Strait of Hormuz re-opens, and oil starts flowing again uninterruptedly, supply will not be aligned with demand in the foreseeable future,” Varga added.
In an exclusive interview with Rigzone on Tuesday, Art Hogan, Chief Market Strategist at B. Riley Wealth, said $100 a barrel for Brent crude looked “inevitable”, adding that WTI crude was “within shout[ing] distance of the century mark”.
“Energy prices are kicking off the holiday shortened week moving higher, as the escalation of military activity with Iran continues,” Hogan told Rigzone yesterday.
“There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight for the war in the region, and as such oil prices will continue to move higher,” he added.
Hogan projected, in a separate exclusive interview with Rigzone on September 2, that the Brent crude oil price could hit $100 in the next week “if … there is no resolution to reopening the Strait of Hormuz”.
Although Hogan highlighted that WTI crude was $10 lower, he told Rigzone that this commodity “could follow with similar trajectory over the course of the next month”.
In a market analysis sent to Rigzone early on Wednesday, Naeem Aslam, CIO at Zaye Capital Markets, highlighted that Brent crude was trading around $99.49 per barrel and that WTI was trading around $94.63 per barrel, “with both benchmarks extending … gains as geopolitical risk adds a larger supply premium to the market”.
“The immediate driver is renewed tension across Middle Eastern energy and shipping routes, where attacks on energy infrastructure, tanker disruptions, and threats around major transit corridors have increased the risk that physical barrels become harder to move even if production capacity remains available,” Aslam highlighted.
Aslam warned in the analysis that oil “can move rapidly toward $100 when supply risk dominates sentiment yet remain vulnerable to sharp pullbacks whenever de-escalation headlines reduce the geopolitical premium”.
The CIO at Zaye Capital Markets went on to note that the broader supply picture is supporting prices.
“OPEC+ has kept September required production levels unchanged for October, meaning the market is not receiving an immediate additional supply cushion from the group,” he said.
“The latest IEA assessment shows global oil supply is forecast to decline by 4.3 million barrels per day in 2026, while the third-quarter market deficit is estimated at 1.8 million barrels per day,” he added.
“Observed inventories had already fallen by 410 million barrels from the start of the Middle East conflict through July. However, there is an important demand counterweight: the IEA also forecasts global demand declining by 1.6 million barrels per day this year as higher fuel costs and disrupted trade begin to reduce consumption,” he continued.
“For Zaye Capital Markets, this creates a two-sided market where supply tightness supports prices, but demand destruction can cap the upside if crude remains elevated for too long,” Aslam warned.
Aaron Kildow, Crude Commodity Owner at Sparta Commodities, highlighted in crude market commentary sent to Rigzone today that “financial crude oil markets rallied this past week as hostilities ramped again between the U.S. and Iran while physical markets were strengthened by renewed interest from buyers in the Far East”.
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