Brent Crude fell to $99.83 per barrel on Friday morning — briefly below the $100 threshold it first breached on a closing basis four days earlier — after reports circulated that an India-flagged tanker had sailed through the strait of Hormuz. The tanker was in fact moving east of Hormuz, carrying gasoline bound for Africa. An Indian government official corrected the record. The market reversed within hours.
This is the third time in a fortnight that unverified or false information about Hormuz transit has moved oil prices. Energy Secretary Chris Wright's since-deleted 10 March claim that the US Navy had already escorted a tanker through the strait briefly sent prices down approximately 12 per cent intraday before the retraction. President Trump's 8 March statement that the war would end "very soon" triggered a $30 intraday reversal from Brent's $119.50 peak. In each case, the correction was swift and complete: prices returned to or exceeded their prior level once the claim dissolved. The oil market has become a real-time lie detector for Hormuz claims, and every test so far has registered false.
Brent remains on track for a weekly gain of roughly 8 per cent. WTI fell to $94.44 but is heading for a 4 per cent weekly rise. The IRGC's declaration that "not a litre of oil" would pass through Hormuz, combined with the IEA's assessment that Gulf flows have fallen to "a trickle", has established the market's baseline assumption: the strait is functionally closed. Tanker traffic through Hormuz is down 90 per cent from pre-war levels. The IEA's record 400-million-barrel strategic reserve release failed to shift that assumption. The pattern is fixed — every hint of reopening, whether false, premature, or aspirational, produces a dip that reverses within hours. Only verified, sustained commercial transit will move prices down durably, and neither the military capacity nor the diplomatic framework to provide it exists today.
