Brent Crude rose toward $73 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate above $69 within hours of the Hormuz strike1, unwinding a calm that had settled over five trading sessions. Brent is the benchmark that prices roughly two-thirds of the world's traded crude; WTI is its US counterpart. Both had drifted lower as the corridor reopened and traders wrote down the war premium.
That calm had gone further than a lull. Thirty-five tankers cleared the strait at pre-war rates on 2 July, the first such count of the conflict, and Saudi Arabia had pushed 34 million barrels through Hormuz since the June truce2. The recovery rested on shipowners absorbing risk their insurers still refused to price down, which is why a single hit could take it back in an afternoon.
The transmission runs straight to the pump. Al Rekayyat was carrying gas, not crude, so the strike put liquefied natural gas alongside oil in the price risk for the first time in the corridor dispute, and both feed household petrol and heating bills.
