Oil Spiked on Tanker Attacks and a Gulf Storm. Now the Crude Market Is Split.

The price of crude lurched higher again on Thursday, with Brent climbing more than 4% toward $105 a barrel and U.S. WTI pushing past $92, according to reporting from CNN and The National. Two shocks hit at once: a record week of tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, and Hurricane Isaias forcing oil companies to shut in a slice of U.S. Gulf of Mexico production. Both are genuine losses of supply.

The question is how long either one lasts. A squeeze that keeps a floor under oil for months would reset the inflation math the Fed is already wrestling with. A risk premium that drains away once the storm passes and ships keep sailing would not. Traders spent the week pulling in both directions.

Ten Tankers Hit, and a Quarter of the Gulf Offline

The attack data is stark. Ten tankers were struck in the Strait of Hormuz between September 28 and October 4, the worst week of the conflict and above the previous high of six, according to Kpler figures cited by CNN and The National. Traffic through the strait fell to a two-month low; only seven commodity vessels crossed last Tuesday, the fewest since July 23. The strait normally handles a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, so when ships stop moving through it, the market notices.

The second shock is weather. As Hurricane Isaias approached the coast this week, operators shut in about 25% of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil output, roughly 512,000 barrels a day, with Shell and Chevron (CVX) among the companies curbing offshore production, per Anadolu Agency and Investing.com. That is a second block of supply pulled from the market at the same time.

The agencies that track the barrels see a tight year. The International Energy Agency’s September report put 2026 global oil supply on course to fall by 5.7 million barrels a day, to 100.7 million, and pushed its expected recovery in Gulf output out to 2027, noting that more than 10 million barrels a day of regional supply was shut in on security risks. That leaves little slack in the system.

The Barrels Are Finding Another Way Out

The counterargument starts with a number the bulls tend to skip. Even with Hormuz throttled, Middle East crude exports have held near pre-war levels, because shipments out of the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea have more than doubled to 6.7 million barrels a day, Kpler data showed. Crossings through the strait itself fell 27% from the prior week’s wartime high but were still back at their September average. Producers, as ANZ’s Daniel Hynes put it, appear willing to accept the risk of sailing because there is no other route to market. By Wednesday, transits had already ticked back up.

The hurricane piece is, by design, temporary. Offshore shut-ins are precautionary evacuations, and Gulf production has historically come back within days to weeks once a storm clears, as the EIA documented after Hurricane Ida. The barrels offline this week will return as Isaias moves through.

Then there is demand, which is moving the wrong way for a sustained rally. The same IEA report that flagged tight supply also cut its 2026 demand outlook, projecting a 2.5 million-barrel-a-day decline on the year as stalled U.S.-Iran talks weigh on consumption, with the losses concentrated in middle distillates and petrochemical feedstocks across Asia. This market has seen the pattern before: earlier in 2026, crude erased its entire wartime premium once tanker traffic recovered and attention turned to oversupply. The agency’s own 2027 math points that way again, with supply set to rebound by 8 million barrels a day against a demand recovery of 2.6 million.

What the data shows

The equity market was not pricing a lasting shock, at least not at Wednesday’s close, before Thursday’s jump. Energy was the weakest major sector on the day, with the sector’s benchmark ETF (XLE) down 0.6%. Oilfield-services giant Schlumberger (SLB) fell 4.1%, Chevron slipped 1.2%, and Exxon Mobil (XOM) eased 0.3% to $164.05, still well under its 52-week high of $176.41. The exceptions told their own story: refiner Valero (VLO) rose 1.2% and ConocoPhillips (COP) added 0.4%.

That split matters. If traders believed crude was headed structurally higher, producers and drillers would typically lead, not lag. Instead the tape showed caution, with the names most exposed to the oil price among the day’s laggards. The broad market was quiet too: the S&P 500 eased 0.35% to 7,774, and the VIX sat near 15.5, historically subdued.

What would settle it

The IEA publishes its next monthly Oil Market Report on October 14, which will show whether the agency still expects the Gulf to reopen in 2027 and how far it has marked down demand. The EIA’s weekly petroleum status report, out each Wednesday, will track U.S. crude inventories and refinery runs. And the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement will report how quickly Gulf of Mexico output returns as the storm passes.

The rest hangs on the strait. Whether Hormuz traffic normalizes or the attacks escalate will do more to the price of oil than any single data release, and the IEA has tied the timing of a Gulf recovery to the state of U.S.-Iran negotiations. One reading sees a thin supply cushion and a chokepoint under fire. The other sees rerouted cargoes and a demand side that is already shrinking. The next two weeks of shipping data and inventories will show which one the barrels confirm.

This is a general-market summary for information only — not investment advice, and not a recommendation regarding any security.