Brent Crude, the benchmark that sets the price of roughly two-thirds of internationally traded oil, fell to about $77.22 on 18 June, down 6.9 per cent from $82.98 and back to a level last seen before the war1. Traders treated the signed Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as a completed reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Not one tanker resumed transit.
The physical strait tells a different story from the screen. No Protection and Indemnity (P&I) club, the mutual insurers that cover roughly 90 per cent of ocean-going tonnage, has lifted its Hormuz war-risk exclusion; premiums sit at four to twenty times pre-war levels, and transits run near 6 per cent of baseline. Mine-clearance crews are still working uncleared waters: an IRGC vessel issued a radio warning to a US warship during that work on signing day. None of that has reached the insurance market that decides whether a hull moves.
Brent had touched $87.33 only days earlier and slipped below $90 when the ceasefire first looked probable; the slide now prices an operational resumption rather than a rising probability of one. If the OFAC waiver never lands, or the 60-day toll-free window lapses into a fee, the gap between paper and water closes upward. Brent at $77 runs several weeks ahead of any operational change in the strait itself.
