Global oil prices held above $100 per barrel on Friday, March 13, 2026, as Iran’s new supreme leader vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed indefinitely, dashing hopes of a quick end to what the International Energy Agency (IEA) has called the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded at just over $99 a barrel on Friday morning after closing at $100.46 on Thursday, its highest settlement since August 2022. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US benchmark, hovered around $93.70. Brent has surged roughly 35 percent since the United States and Israel launched joint air strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026.
The latest leg of the rally was driven by a statement from Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s newly installed supreme leader and son of former leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening strikes of the war. Delivered through Iranian state television, Khamenei’s statement declared that the Strait of Hormuz would remain shut as what he called a “tool of pressure,” while warning of possible further strikes against US military bases in the region.
The waterway, which ordinarily carries approximately one fifth of the world’s daily oil output, has been effectively closed to commercial shipping since early March. Attacks on at least 16 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels have been recorded across the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the past two weeks alone, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO). Iran has also been laying naval mines in the waterway, though the US military said it destroyed 16 Iranian minelaying vessels this week.
Gulf oil producers have been forced to cut production sharply as storage tanks fill up with barrels that have nowhere to go. The IEA estimated in its March 2026 Oil Market Report that total production cuts across Gulf countries had reached at least 10 million barrels per day by March 10. Global oil supply is projected to fall by 8 million barrels per day in March alone.
The scale of the crisis has prompted an unprecedented emergency response. On Wednesday, 32 IEA member nations agreed to release a combined 400 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves, the largest coordinated reserve release in history, with the United States alone contributing 172 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Markets remained largely unmoved, however, with strategists at Dutch bank ING noting in a research note that the release would cover at most a quarter of the supply gap caused by the Strait closure.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately announced a temporary licence authorising countries to purchase Russian crude oil stranded at sea, in an effort to expand available supply. The measure also failed to push prices materially lower. Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Thursday that the American navy was “not ready” to begin escorting commercial tankers through the Strait, but that such operations could begin by the end of the month.
Goldman Sachs revised its Brent price forecast upward by 20 percent on Friday, projecting an average of $100 per barrel in March, declining to $85 in April on the assumption of a three-week disruption. However, the bank warned that if the closure extends to two months, its end-of-year forecast would rise from $71 to $93 per barrel. ExxonMobil’s chief economist Tyler Goodspeed told CNBC that he saw more scenarios in which the strait remained “effectively closed harder for longer” than scenarios where normal traffic resumed quickly.
Oxford energy security expert Adi Imsirovic summarised the market’s frustration plainly. “The key problem is a lack of tangible goals in this war,” he said. “It makes it hard for oil traders to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
