Oil Breaches $110 as Iran War Keeps Strait of Hormuz Closed

Oil prices crossed $110 per barrel for the first time since the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with no signs of slowing in what has been the fastest oil rally since the 1980s, Jake Conley reported for Yahoo Finance.

The conflict has brought tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to a standstill.

Futures on the international benchmark Brent crude and the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude both jumped more than 25% to cross $110 per barrel in overnight trading as of 11 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Brent crude and WTI have now gained more than 50% and 60%, respectively, since the conflict began. US futures slipped into the red as the session opened.

Futures on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 both lost roughly 1.5%, while contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped a steeper 2%.

Since the US and Israel began air strikes against Iran on Feb. 28—killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and stoking violent retaliation from the Iranian regime—oil prices have soared, notching their largest weekly gain since at least 1985.

Critically, the conflict has brought tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to a standstill.

Roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day, or about a fifth of the world’s seaborne crude supply, passes through the waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the wider international market each day.

Data from Vortexa show that roughly 16 million barrels per day of oil have been stranded behind the strait and cut off from the global market.