Brent Crude settled at $105.33 per barrel on Saturday 25 April, the largest weekly gain (roughly 16%) since the war began and approximately 57% above the pre-war baseline of about $671. The settlement came five days after the indefinite ceasefire announcement that briefly knocked the contract back. Brent is the global crude benchmark used to price two-thirds of the world's traded oil; a move of this scale on a ceasefire week is a market correction against the underlying assumption.
Brent has now ignored two pieces of de-escalation paper inside a fortnight: the indefinite-ceasefire announcement and the Lebanon ceasefire extension on 23 April. Traders are pricing the inverse of the diplomatic track; the carrier concentration in CENTCOM AOR, the IRGC's verbal escalation and the AIS-blank Hormuz transits are now the dominant inputs.
Insurance, not navies, sets the structural floor under the price. With the major Protection and Indemnity clubs out of Iranian waters and war-risk premiums into double-digit millions per trip, the cost of moving a barrel through the strait has stepped up regardless of whether kinetic events occur on a given day. For European and UK forecourt prices, $105 Brent through the bank-holiday window keeps pump prices elevated; for Indian, Korean and Japanese refiners pricing forward cargoes, the unpriceable insurance leg is now the binding cost driver.
