Brent at $92 as premiums idle tankers

Brent crude traded at $92.09 at 01:30 GMT on Wednesday 22 July, up 1.2% and its highest since 11 June, a fourth consecutive daily gain⁠¹.

War-risk premiums for a Strait of Hormuz transit now run at 3% to 10% of a vessel's hull value, against 0.25% before the war⁠². On a $100 million tanker that is $3m to $10m a voyage where it used to be about $250,000. The largest vessels are quoted $10m to $14m, and the charge falls on the charterer rather than the owner.

Whoever books the ship pays that premium up front and adds it to the delivered cost of the barrels. A buyer with any alternative supplier declines the cargo, and the charter is never fixed. So a legal, licensed, fully insurable parcel of crude sits where it is, because nobody at either end of the voyage will carry a $10 million charge the barrels cannot recover. The Lloyd's Market Association is explicit that cover remains available: what suppresses transits is price and crew willingness, not capacity⁠³. Underwriting resets slowly, and crews have longer memories than markets.

CENTCOM (US Central Command) frames the same water differently. Its 21 July statement says US forces have facilitated the transit of roughly 900 commercial vessels and 450 million barrels of crude "since early May", redirected eight vessels and disabled one⁠⁴. No date window is attached to the 900-vessel figure, so it cannot be set against the 66% weekly fall in transits recorded on 21 July. The two counts cover different things over different periods.

In a note dated 20 July, Daan Struyven of Goldman Sachs set out an upside case of Brent above $120 by the fourth quarter, conditional on Hormuz disruption persisting and Persian Gulf flows staying below roughly 45% of pre-war levels⁠⁵. Goldman's base case is $80 in the fourth quarter and about $75 in 2027⁠⁶. The higher number describes what happens if nothing changes, not what the bank expects.