Brent crude closed at $143.67 a barrel on May 28, 2026, its highest nominal price since July 2008. An analysis published by HormuzTracker.tech says the climb has been faster than in any earlier oil shock: oil doubled in 47 days, from $68 on March 15 to $139 on May 1. In 1973 it took 197 days, and in 1990, 94.
The reason is the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s closure of it has removed roughly 17 million barrels a day from the market, the volume that normally moves through the strait. The analysis calls the situation worse than most past crises.
1973 and 1990
The Arab oil embargo began in October 1973, when OAPEC announced it against nations backing Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It cut output by about 5 million barrels a day, roughly 10 percent of world supply, and the price rose from $3 to $12 in five months. In 2026 dollars, that is about $21 to $78. The embargo led to the creation of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the International Energy Agency, and to heavy investment in oil from the North Sea and Alaska.
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 took about 4.5 million barrels a day off the market, and prices doubled from around $20 to $40 within three months. The spike faded quickly. Saudi Arabia, with spare capacity, raised output by 3 million barrels a day within weeks, and the IEA coordinated a release of 2.5 million barrels a day from strategic stocks. Prices were already falling by January 1991, when the coalition air campaign began.
2008 and 2022
The 2008 spike came from demand, not lost supply. Strong buying from China, India and other emerging economies, plus speculation and a weak dollar, took oil from $60 in early 2007 to $147 in July 2008. When the financial crisis struck, oil fell to $33 by December. Demand-driven spikes can reverse fast, the analysis says; supply-driven ones last as long as the disruption does.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Brent rose from $90 in late January to $129 in March. Sanctions and Western buyers’ voluntary embargoes disrupted about 5 million barrels a day of Russian exports. The largest SPR release in history, 180 million barrels, helped contain prices, and Russian crude kept flowing to China and India at a discount. Supply was redirected rather than lost.
No release valve
This time, the analysis argues, nothing can be redirected, because the oil behind the blockade cannot reach any buyer at any price. Saudi Arabia cannot play its 1990 role either. Its Petroline pipeline to the Red Sea carries at most about 5 million barrels a day, out of roughly 10 million produced, so half its output is as trapped as everyone else’s. Pipelines combined can move at most 7 million barrels a day, leaving about 10 million off the market. Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope adds two weeks to voyages but produces no new oil.
The SPR is thinner too. It holds roughly 370 million barrels, about 18 days of US consumption, against about 700 million barrels and 35 days in 2008. The 2022 drawdown left it at its lowest since 1983, and the analysis says the Trump administration has been slow to refill it.
Amrita Sen, director of research at Energy Aspects, told the author: “The market has been pricing in a reopening of Hormuz for the past three weeks. That assumption is the only thing keeping prices below $180. If the Muscat talks collapse, I do not see what prevents a move to $200 or beyond.” At $200, the analysis says, US gasoline would cost roughly $6 to $7 a gallon, and petrol in Europe would top 2.50 euros a liter.
A trader at Vitol, speaking off the record, put it this way: “In every previous crisis, there was always someone who could produce more, release more, or redirect more. This is the first crisis where there is literally nobody who can add a single barrel to the market that is not already being produced.”
