US crude futures posted a 35.63% weekly gain — the largest in the history of the contract, which dates to 1983. No single week during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 2008 run to $147, or the 2020 pandemic collapse and recovery produced a comparable move. Brent reached $92.69 on Friday, briefly touching $94, having risen approximately 27% since strikes began on 28 February. Qatar's energy minister warned of $150 per barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Morgan Stanley raised its 2026 Brent forecast to $80 from $62.50 — a revision already $12 below spot prices at the time of publication, a measure of the speed at which the market has outrun institutional forecasting.
VLCC freight rates hit an all-time high of $423,736 per day — a 94% increase from the prior Friday close. In stable markets, VLCC day rates typically range between $30,000 and $50,000. At current rates, shipping costs alone add approximately $3–4 per barrel before crude reaches a refinery — a surcharge borne by every oil-importing economy whether or not it is party to the conflict. Physical supply has also been hit directly: Iran struck the Shaybah oilfield, targeting approximately one million barrels per day of Saudi production capacity, and Bahrain's BAPCO Sitra refinery, which processes 267,000–380,000 barrels per day, shut two crude processing units for safety inspection after Thursday's missile strike. But the supply destruction is secondary to the structural problem beneath it.
Every major Protection & Indemnity club's War risk coverage for The Persian Gulf expired at midnight on 5 March. More than 150 vessels sit at anchor in The Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea. Trump's Development Finance Corporation insurance programme and promised Navy convoy escorts remain non-operational; the US Navy has not launched a single escorted commercial passage. The energy disruption now operates on two separate and independent timelines. The military timeline could theoretically end with a ceasefire tomorrow. The insurance timeline cannot. P&I reassessments require weeks of underwriting review, loss modelling, and reinsurance negotiation regardless of what happens on the battlefield. Commercial shipping through Hormuz is effectively suspended even if hostilities cease today. Goldman Sachs's revised Q2 forecast of $76 per barrel is arithmetically consistent with restored Hormuz flow before June — an assumption that requires the insurance market to move faster than its institutional structure has ever permitted. For oil-importing economies — the eurozone, Japan, South Korea, India — the question is no longer what the war does to prices but how long the insurance gap persists after the war ends. The answer, based on prior P&I reassessment cycles, is measured in weeks to months, not days.
