21MAR

Goldman: Brent could break 2008 record

3 min read

07:22UTC

Goldman Sachs warned Brent crude could surpass its 2008 all-time record of $147.50 within two months if Hormuz flows stay depressed. Refiners are already paying $126 per barrel on the spot market — the futures price hides the real cost.

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ConflictAssessed

Key takeaway

Goldman's $147.50 scenario is a floor, not a ceiling, if supply destruction rather than demand drives this spike.

Daan Struyven, Goldman Sachs's head of oil research, warned that Brent Crude could exceed its 2008 all-time intraday record of $147.50 if flows through the strait of Hormuz remain depressed for 60 days⁠¹. Brent closed Thursday at $112.19, 66% above the pre-war $67.41 — but the headline understates what buyers actually pay. Bloomberg reported a record $14.20-per-barrel premium on spot physical barrels over next-month futures⁠², the widest backwardation on record. Refiners are paying an effective $126 or more for delivered crude.

Struyven's 60-day threshold — roughly late May — aligns with disclosed military timelines. IDF Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told CNN the air force has plans "through at least Passover" in mid-April with "deeper plans for even three weeks beyond that". If the war runs to that horizon, Hormuz stays constrained for precisely the period Goldman identifies. Other named analysts — Ann-Louise Hittle of Wood Mackenzie, Vandana Hari of Vanda Insights, Adi Imsirovic of Oxford — have each warned of $150–$200 oil over the past week; Chatham House forecast $130 Brent and Eurozone contraction if the conflict lasts months. Goldman puts a number on the clock: 60 days.

The supply picture worsened the same day. Iraq declared Force majeure on all foreign-operated oilfields, unable to export through Hormuz, with storage at capacity and production cuts ordered. The US Treasury responded by lifting sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian crude already on tankers — roughly 1.5 days of global consumption. Three weeks ago crude futures were in contango, a structure reflecting expectations of plentiful future supply. The curve has since inverted to record backwardation — a market pricing physical shortages that deepen, not resolve.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Goldman Sachs is warning that oil could reach the highest price ever recorded — a level last seen during the 2008 financial crisis. But 2008's peak was caused by high demand and corrected itself when demand collapsed in the recession. This crisis is caused by supply being physically cut off. Supply does not self-correct the way demand does. There is no automatic market mechanism that brings prices back down unless the conflict ends or the world economy slows enough to reduce consumption — and both take time. Goldman's $147.50 figure should be understood as a price the market may pass through on the way higher, not a ceiling it would naturally bounce off.

Deep Analysis

Synthesis

The structural difference from 2008 means the typical correction mechanism — demand destruction triggering a price collapse — would in this case require a global recession severe enough to offset the physical supply destruction. This sets a much higher sustained price floor than analysts calibrated to demand-cycle models are likely pricing. The Goldman forecast deserves to be read as a conservative scenario, not an extreme one.

Escalation

The 60-day Hormuz disruption threshold Goldman cites as the $147 trigger is rapidly approaching. If hostilities commenced in late February, the 60-day mark falls in late April — coinciding precisely with the expiry of the Treasury's sanctions waiver on 19 April. Market and policy pressure converge at the same moment, with no buffer mechanism currently in place.

What could happen next?

Risk
If Hormuz disruption extends past 60 days, Goldman's $147.50 scenario becomes the base case rather than a tail risk.
Short term · Suggested
Consequence
At $147+ Brent, airline capacity cuts and petrochemical facility closures shift from speculative outcomes to probable ones.
Medium term · Suggested
Risk
Oil-importing emerging market economies face sovereign debt stress as surging import costs and dollar strength compound simultaneously.
Medium term · Suggested
Opportunity
A sustained spike above $147 would accelerate EV adoption and renewable energy investment faster than any policy framework has yet achieved.
Long term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-leaning sources from India

India

LeftRight

Primary parallel: The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo produced a 400% price increase over six months through supply denial rather than demand growth, and required political resolution — not market correction — to unwind; today's supply-destruction dynamic is structurally closer to 1973 than to 2008.

Counter-parallel: The 2008 $147.50 intraday peak was demand-driven — fuelled by rapid emerging-market growth and speculative positioning — and self-corrected within months when the global financial crisis destroyed demand; that correction mechanism does not exist in a supply-destruction scenario.

Why it’s relevant now

The structural distinction is analytically critical: a demand-driven spike corrects quickly through recession; a supply-destruction spike corrects only through political settlement or physical infrastructure recovery — both far slower processes that sustain elevated prices longer than financial models calibrated to 2008 will predict.

Aviation fuel would likely exceed $5 per gallon in the US at $147 Brent, pushing major carriers toward route suspensions, capacity cuts, or requests for government liquidity support. Petrochemical feedstock costs would spike simultaneously, affecting plastics, synthetic fertilisers, and pharmaceutical intermediates — sectors rarely foregrounded in oil coverage but acutely price-sensitive to sustained crude elevation.

Emerging market central banks face a compounding squeeze: import costs rising in dollar terms while safe-haven dollar strength simultaneously increases their debt-service burdens on dollar-denominated liabilities. Sovereign debt stress events in oil-importing emerging markets are a material tail risk at the $147 threshold, not a remote scenario.

Consensus view: The IEA's Emergency Response Manual estimates that a 60-day Hormuz closure would require coordinated emergency releases of 1.5–2.0 billion barrels to stabilise markets — roughly twice the scale of current IEA member reserve commitments, suggesting the policy buffer is structurally insufficient.

Counter-view: The Energy Research Institute of China's National Development and Reform Commission has argued that Asian demand flexibility, combined with SPR releases from China, India, and Japan, could suppress spot price spikes below Western forecasts by reducing these economies' exposure to dollar-denominated spot markets.

Key tension: Whether coordinated IEA releases can physically bridge the supply gap, or whether the shortfall is large enough that only demand destruction — a global recession — provides the eventual price correction.

Sources:Business Standard

Mentions:Goldman Sachs →Bloomberg →Chatham House →China →Force majeure →Eurozone →Brent Crude →Vandana Hari →Effie Defrin →Israel Defense Forces (IDF) →Strait of Hormuz →US Treasury →Ann-Louise Hittle →Vanda Insights →Adi Imsirovic →Wood Mackenzie →Daan Struyven →1973 Arab Oil Embargo →

First Reported In

Update #43 · Trump floats wind-down, deploys 2,200 more

Business Standard· 21 Mar 2026

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Different Perspectives

Russia

Russia vetoed the same renewal on 17 September, arguing that Britain, France and Germany never validly triggered the snapback that reimposed the pre-2015 UN resolutions. No panel was ever seated under that mandate, so the UN list decays fastest for states that screen against it rather than against the American one.

China

China vetoed renewal of the UN sanctions monitoring mandate on 17 September, arguing that Resolution 2231 terminated on 18 October 2025 and that the Security Council should drop Iran's nuclear file altogether. On that reading there is nothing to monitor, so the sanctions survive and their enforcement does not.

Iraq

Baghdad saw the last American counter-Islamic State troops leave its territory on 30 September, completing a timetable it agreed with Washington in September 2024. Iraqi airspace deconfliction passes to Baghdad, which still has an open inquiry into the Maysan drone launches that has named nobody.

Pakistan

Treasury names Waseem Pasha Tajammal of Rawalpindi as the Cavalier group's chairman and places one of the designated incorporations in Islamabad. QatarEnergy separately told Pakistan that liquefied natural gas cargo cancellations would run through November, so Islamabad carries an enforcement question and a supply gap at once.

Turkey

Treasury named a Cavalier Dynamics company incorporated in Istanbul among the ten nodes it designated on 29 September, and Ankara has published no response. Turkey imported a record 120,000 barrels a day of Indian diesel in August, cutting Russia's share of its diesel imports to 20 per cent.

India

Suraj Yadav, a wiper from Uttar Pradesh, was killed aboard the Cape Dao on 23 September, and 19 of the ship's 20 Indian crew were taken off alive. India's September imports ran at 575,000 barrels a day from Iraq and 566,000 from Saudi Arabia, back to pre-conflict rates.