Hormuz tanker strikes hit a weekly high as Brent trades back above 100 dollars

Attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz reached the highest weekly total since the Iran war began, and oil prices rose on Thursday as the flow of ships thinned. Kpler said 10 tankers were struck between 28 September and 4 October, above the previous weekly high of six. On Tuesday only seven tankers transited the strait, less than half the seven-day average and the lowest daily count since 23 July, Kpler data cited by CNN showed. UK Maritime Trade Operations said a tanker north of Qatar was hit by multiple projectiles on Wednesday, with casualties.

Prices did not move as one number. Reuters, writing early on Thursday, had Brent crude up 1.33 dollars, or 1.33 percent, at 101.53 dollars a barrel by 0116 GMT, and West Texas Intermediate up 1.11 dollars, or 1.26 percent, at 89.39. CNN, later in the European morning, had Brent up 4.3 percent at 104.48 and WTI near 92.05. A Hormuz monitor quoting Yahoo Finance had Brent at 105.16 and WTI at 92.67 at 1129 UTC, with the Brent-WTI spread at 12.49 dollars. The spread is the useful figure. A disruption at Hormuz hits waterborne Brent harder than inland American WTI. A gap of more than 12 dollars says the market is pricing a seaborne risk, not a general shortage of oil in Texas.

The same monitor put Brent about 46 percent above a February 2026 baseline near 72 dollars, before the strait crisis. Weekly settlements it listed ran from 101.46 on 2 October to 99.86 on 6 October and 102.96 on 8 October. The day-to-day path is choppy because another force is pulling the other way. Prices settled lower on Wednesday after the International Energy Agency agreed to speed the release of stocks and to put diesel first, under a plan opened in March. Governments are trying to cap record fuel prices and to cover supply lost to the war. The stock release is why Wednesday closed down. The tanker count is why Thursday opened up.

The war context is now in its eighth month, on the Reuters framing of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. Before the war the strait carried shipments equal to about 20 percent of global oil and fuel. Attacks have risen in October even as Gulf producers have pushed more crude out. Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at ANZ, wrote on Thursday that in the past such attacks reduced shipments, and that this time producers seem willing to take the risk because they have no other way to reach the market. That is the operational fact under the price. The oil is moving, at a higher freight and insurance cost, and with crews in the line of fire. A week with 10 struck tankers is not a closure. It is a toll.

A second supply risk sat on the same Thursday tape. Hurricane Isaias, the first Atlantic hurricane of 2026, was in the Gulf of Mexico with a forecast landfall on the northern Gulf coast late Friday or early Saturday. Shell and Chevron had begun to curtail offshore work. US Gulf producers had already shut in about a quarter of oil output and about 16 percent of gas output by Wednesday, on the Marine Minerals Administration count. Hormuz and the Gulf of Mexico are not the same barrel. One is an export gate for Gulf Arab crude. The other is American offshore production and the refineries that sit behind it. Traders adding the two risks in one session is why Brent and petrol both moved.

The number to watch into the weekend is not a single Brent print. It is the daily transit count against the attack count. Seven transits on Tuesday, against a recent average more than twice that, is a flow cut even if producers say they are still loading. If the next Kpler week stays at or above 10 strikes, the 12-dollar Brent-WTI gap has a reason to hold. If transits recover and the IEA barrels land in diesel markets, Wednesday's dip has a reason to return. The casualty report from the tanker north of Qatar is the part no spread captures.