
Two oil tankers reversed course as they approached the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, just hours after the US naval blockade against Iranian ports took effect, according to maritime tracking platform MarineTraffic. Brent crude for June delivery closed up 4.4% at $99.36 per barrel, while US benchmark WTI rose 2.6% to $99.08, according to Bloomberg.
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By Gwynne Dyer - The Iranians know they have won, but President Trump doesn’t get it yet. He’s still at the stage of counting up the US and Israeli air-strikes and assuming that those numbers mean a US victory is possible. But five gets you ten that the Iranians are already thinking about nuclear weapons. Not their own, which don’t exist. America’s.

”If the (Iran) conflict is contained soon, the hit to confidence may be temporary, but a prolonged crisis could prompt more precautionary saving and further discretionary spending cuts,” warned Moody’s in a report on the current war in the Middle East, and the impact for US households.

Brent crude, the European benchmark, closed Monday at $112.78 per barrel and continued climbing in the futures market past $114, its highest level since July 2022. Oil has surged roughly 55% in March, the largest monthly gain since the contract's inception in 1988.

Chilean President José Antonio Kast's government faced its first street protests since taking office on March 11 this week, after a historic fuel price increase hit consumers and rapidly eroded public support for the far-right leader.

Uruguay's government announced on Friday a 7% fuel price increase effective April 1, as a direct consequence of rising oil prices driven by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of the world's crude oil supply transits.

Iran rejected on Wednesday the 15-point proposal put forward by the Trump administration to end the war, calling its terms excessive and detached from reality, while international mediators scramble to arrange a direct meeting between representatives of both countries that could be, they warn, the last chance to prevent a broader escalation.

Oil prices could surpass $150 per barrel and approach $200 if the Strait of Hormuz blockade persists, according to energy industry analysts — a level that would make a global recession virtually inevitable.

Saudi Arabia is stepping up the use of its pipeline network to the Red Sea to keep crude exports moving while the Strait of Hormuz remains heavily disrupted by the war with Iran. The key route is the Abqaiq-Yanbu system, also known as the East-West Pipeline or Petroline, which links Gulf oil fields with the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea. That infrastructure has become the kingdom’s main escape route around Hormuz, the chokepoint that normally carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank head into this week’s policy meetings in a far more uncertain environment than they faced just two weeks ago. The Fed meets on March 17-18, and the ECB on March 18-19, just after the Middle East war pushed oil prices above US$100 a barrel and forced markets to rethink the expected path of interest rates. Even so, neither institution is expected to change borrowing costs at these meetings.