Brent crude oil broke above $110 a barrel on Tuesday and held there, with the December contract at $111.08, up $1.53 or 1.40% on the session after opening at $109.15. The high of $111.33 is the strongest level the benchmark has reached in five months.
The move carries a full week of gains behind it rather than one session’s spike. Brent crude oil is up 6.51% over five sessions, 10.61% on the month and 24.15% across three months, according to Oilprice.com, which puts the spot price at $110.84. WTI crossed $100 alongside it at $100.20, a gain of 1.68%, while Murban, the Abu Dhabi grade loaded inside the Gulf, traded above both at $112.00.
Brent Crude Oil Reached $111.33 After Two More Tankers Were Hit Off Jubail
Two vessels were struck in the northern Gulf, one 78 nautical miles northeast of Jubail by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a small boat and a second 68 nautical miles out by an unidentified projectile, ZeroHedge reported citing Bloomberg. Crews on both were reported safe.
Those followed the strikes that took Brent crude oil to its highest settlement since 19 May on Friday at $109.86, and the Houthi claims against Saudi energy sites that carried the price back toward $110 on Monday. Reuters counts at least 18 tanker attacks in the past two weeks, after Iranian strikes on shipping escalated through October.
One week of Brent crude oil, from the $104 low on 15 October through Friday’s jump above $110 and Monday’s dip to the $111.08 reading on Tuesday. Source: Oilprice.comInvestor Takeaway
Brent crude oil clearing $110 for the first time since May puts the benchmark back at a level last seen before the summer, with the move driven by shipping risk rather than by a demand signal.
Kpler Puts Gulf Flows at 8.5 Million Barrels a Day, Down From More Than 20 Million
The volume figures out of the Gulf explain the bid better than the attack headlines do. Kpler data reported by Reuters puts the daily average flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf at 8.5 million barrels, against more than 20 million barrels a day two weeks earlier, per Oilprice.com’s account. Kpler had said exports recovered to pre-war levels earlier in the month before the latest strikes cut them again.
ING’s commodity analysts read the Brent crude oil market as carrying a premium it has not yet been given permission to drop. “Oil prices remain well-supported amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East despite relatively strong Persian Gulf flows,” Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote, adding that the war premium would fade gradually if flows held steady. “Clearly, there are no signs of this yet,” they said.
The Futures Curve Prices Brent $23 Lower in Twelve Months
Traders in the forward market are not betting that this level lasts into next year. December 2027 Brent crude oil settles at $87.71 against $111.08 for December 2026, a discount of $23.37 or about a fifth, and the curve keeps falling to $79.29 by December 2028 and $71.19 by December 2030. Every month between now and then prices lower than the one before it.
That shape puts a date on the market’s own view of the disruption. Backwardation this steep says the squeeze is read as a supply interruption with an end rather than as a permanent reset in the oil price, which is the same conclusion ING reached from the flow data. The curve has been wrong before, and it was pricing a return toward $98 when Brent crude oil was at $105 last week.
The curve prices Brent crude oil $23.37 lower twelve months out, so the market treats the Gulf premium as temporary. Source: Oilprice.com · Chart: FinanceFeedsInvestor Takeaway
A $23.37 discount between the December 2026 and December 2027 Brent crude oil contracts means the forward market is pricing the Gulf premium as temporary, whatever the spot headline says.
Washington Answered With $8 Billion of Diesel Relief for Farmers
The pass-through into pump prices is where the political response has landed this week. The US Department of Agriculture announced an $8 billion Harvest Fuel Relief program on Monday, making one-time payments to farmers to “cover a portion of modeled losses during the 2026 crop year,” Oilprice.com reported. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the money “will help bring certainty to our farmers during this harvest so they can continue to feed our nation.”
American diesel is above $6 a gallon and still climbing, from $6.2665 the previous Monday to $6.3187 the day before the announcement. The package follows the federal tax exemption on dyed diesel and the sanctions waiver on Russian energy that briefly knocked more than $3 off the Brent oil price last week, neither of which has slowed the climb at the pump. Asian LNG has meanwhile passed $30, and the tanker attacks driving all of it show no sign of stopping.