Brent Crude rose to about $78.67 a barrel on 8 July, up roughly 6 per cent, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at about $74.82, its sharpest single-day rise since the war's opening spike in March . 1 Brent is the benchmark that prices about two-thirds of internationally traded crude, so a move of this size feeds petrol, diesel and airline fares within weeks. It had sat near $73 after the Al Rekayyat strike alone .
Prices fell through every earlier shock of this conflict. Brent dropped to $71.99 through the June bombing of Qeshm Island , and the second quarter closed down about 30 per cent, the steepest quarterly fall since 2020 . What moved the market this time was not one more incident but a strike and a retaliation landing in the same cycle, which raises the probability traders assign to an actual closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia floated an expansion of a Red Sea pipeline to route crude around Hormuz, and tankers began making U-turns in the Gulf, according to trade reporting. 2 The thirty-five tankers that cleared the strait at pre-war rates on 2 July now move under a threat level the market has finally chosen to price. A Saudi pipeline, if pursued, is a multi-year structural hedge rather than a quick fix, and tanker diversions tighten Gulf supply just as OPEC+ was adding barrels.
