A Two-Week Truce Under Strain
Oil found its feet again on 09 April 2026, in Asian morning trade, as investors judged whether the conditional US-Iran ceasefire could survive its first days. The truce, meant to run two weeks, was already fraying. Israel had sent a wave of deadly strikes into Lebanon, and Tehran had promised a response built to induce regret should the attacks continue.
The day before, crude had plunged on the announcement of an agreement that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz. That chokepoint had been badly disrupted after Iran threatened vessels attempting the crossing, in retaliation for the US-Israeli air campaign against it.
The Numbers on the Day
Brent, the global benchmark, rose 2.2% to $96.70, or £72.18, and US-traded West Texas Intermediate added 2.8% and finished at $96.90. Both sat far above their levels before the war began on 28 February.
Talks between Iran and the US remained “still fragile”, according to Sim Moh Siong, a strategist at OCBC bank, and that fragility, he said, was part of what kept crude expensive. Energy shipments through the strait, he added, would be what the market watched most closely in the days ahead, and it was unclear how Tehran planned to police the movement of ships.
Danny Price of the consultancy Frontier Economics judged the relationship “obviously fragile”. Notably, with some damaged oil and gas facilities needing long repairs, he expected prices to stay elevated for at least a year.
Asian equity markets, for their part, slipped slightly on the Wednesday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.5%, and the Kospi in South Korea closed 1.2% lower.
A Deadline, and a Warning at Sea
The ceasefire had been announced on the Tuesday evening, Washington time, shortly before a deadline of 20:00 EDT, which was 00:00 GMT on Wednesday, that US President Donald Trump had set. He had warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” should the talks collapse. One of the conditions was that ships could once more use Hormuz safely.
Reality lagged the paperwork. Iran’s navy had warned that ships trying to cross without permission “will be targeted and destroyed”, a warning the shipping brokerage SSY relayed and BBC Verify confirmed. Just a scattering of ships had made the passage since the deal was struck, far below the roughly 130 vessels a day that transited before the war. Clearing the backlog would take a minimum of 10 days, by the reckoning of maritime tracking firm Pole Star Global, even if traffic returned to its usual volume. Malaysia, India and the Philippines had each negotiated safe passage for their own ships.
Lebanon sat at the edge of the arrangement, with the sides disagreeing over whether it was covered at all. On the Wednesday, Israel carried out its heaviest bombardment of Lebanon in this conflict, and at least 182 people were killed. Hezbollah said it had launched rockets at northern Israel, calling it a response to ceasefire violations. The salient point for the oil market was simpler: US Vice President JD Vance was due in Pakistan on the Saturday for talks with Iran. The strait, for all the noise about its reopening, was still counting its crossers by the handful.
