Oil prices eased Tuesday from a five-month high, as markets weighed a new Trump administration executive order loosening sanctions tied to Russian energy exports against mounting signs that the war between Iran, Israel and the United States has choked off a much larger share of global oil shipments than the sanctions fight ever did.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, settled Monday at $109.55 a barrel, a five-month high, before slipping back toward that level in early Tuesday trading, according to Business Standard. West Texas Intermediate traded near $99 a barrel.
Hormuz Shipping Still Running at Less Than Half Capacity
The bigger story remains the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil normally passes. Average daily crude shipments through the strait fell to about 8.5 million barrels a day over the past week, down from more than 20 million before the conflict escalated, according to shipping-data provider Kpler, cited in continuing coverage of the US-Israel-Iran war. Reuters has tallied at least 18 attacks on tankers transiting the strait over the past two weeks alone, using the same Kpler data.
Those disruptions have done more to support prices than Washington's sanctions campaign against Iran and Russia, which intensified in late August but initially coincided with falling, not rising, prices. Monday's partial sanctions rollback on Russian energy exports — part of a broader diplomatic push the White House has tied to the deepening rift with Ukraine over a potential peace settlement — removed one source of upward pressure just as the Hormuz risk premium was building.
Iran has offered a seven-day ceasefire proposal that would end the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, lift sanctions on Iranian oil, reopen the strait and restart direct talks over Tehran's nuclear program; President Trump rejected the offer in late September, and Iran says it remains on the table.
OPEC+ has so far held its November output quotas steady, betting that supply discipline plus the Gulf disruption will keep prices supported without the group needing to open the taps further — a wait-and-see approach that leaves spare capacity, and the strait itself, as the market's main swing factors through the rest of the fourth quarter.
For now, traders are left balancing two conflicting forces — easing sanctions on one side, and a war that keeps disrupting the physical flow of oil on the other — with no clear signal yet about which will dominate heading into November.
