Oil Price Chart: How the Iran War Repriced a Barrel

The oil market put a number on the Iran war before any institution could put a reliable number on its human cost. That number changed by the hour. It rose when shipping stopped, fell when talks appeared possible and rose again when attacks reached energy infrastructure.

The oil price chart to open first

Start with the live oil price chart, then open its separate Brent and WTI views. Brent prices oil delivered into the seaborne market and is the usual world benchmark. WTI is centred on the United States. The benchmark guide explains why the two can move together without carrying the same price.

Two benchmarks, two views

For this war, Brent tells the cleaner first story. The fighting affected tankers, Gulf terminals and the Strait of Hormuz. Those are global trade routes. WTI still matters because American stocks, pipelines and refinery demand can soften or deepen a world shock inside the US market.

Why the Strait of Hormuz moved the chart

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that 20.9 million barrels a day moved through Hormuz in the first half of 2025. That was about 20 per cent of world petroleum-liquids consumption. Existing pipelines could bypass only part of that flow.

This is why a threat to the strait can move prices even before a barrel is lost. Buyers price the chance of delay. Shipowners add risk. Insurers charge more or withdraw cover. That first risk premium can appear before a physical shortage. When the route actually closed during the 2026 Iran war, the feared supply problem became a physical one.

The global energy data page helps put that scale beside world supply. It also stops a common error: treating Iran's own production as the whole issue. The larger exposure came from every Gulf exporter whose cargo normally crossed the same narrow water.

A dated timeline of the Iran-war oil shock

The chart did not trace a simple rise and fall. It moved through a pre-war risk premium, an observed collapse in shipping and production, emergency stock releases, partial recovery in tanker traffic, negotiations and renewed attacks. These are the dates that explain the largest moves.

From roughly $70 to nearly $120, then back again

• 27 FebruaryPre-war baseline: Brent was trading at roughly $70–$72 a barrel before the US-Israeli strikes began. That range is the useful baseline; choosing an earlier February low would exaggerate the war gain.
• 28 February–2 MarchWar and the first disruption: the strikes began on 28 February. By the first full trading session, reports already described interrupted tanker traffic and damaged production facilities. The move was therefore no longer only a fear premium: the market had evidence of physical disruption.
• 9 MarchThe largest intraday reversal: the Associated Press recorded Brent at $119.50 and WTI at $119.48 before both fell below $90 after President Trump said he believed the war was nearly over. Tanker traffic had not recovered. The reversal priced a change in expected duration, not a restored barrel of supply.
• 11–18 MarchConfirmed supply loss and emergency action: the International Energy Agency estimated that flows through Hormuz had fallen from almost 20 million barrels a day to near standstill and Gulf production was being curtailed by at least 10 million barrels a day. IEA members agreed on 11 March to make 400 million barrels of emergency stocks available. Shipping data later showed only 89 vessels crossed from 1–15 March, versus roughly 100–135 passages on a normal day.
• 25 MarchSelective passage, no reopening: AP found that most traffic remained halted, although Iranian-linked ships and a small number of vessels backed by diplomatic arrangements got through. Brent was around $100, about 35 per cent above its pre-war level. A few successful transits did not amount to normal trade.
• 29 AprilSecond-quarter high: Brent front-month futures reached $118 as restricted Hormuz flows kept Middle Eastern crude away from international buyers. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the average daily Brent swing in April and May was $4 a barrel, four times the same-period average in 2025.
• 18 May–26 JuneDiplomacy and a physical response: EIA data show Brent falling by more than $1 a barrel per day on average from 18 May to 17 June as negotiated pauses raised expectations of reopening. A US-Iran memorandum on 17 June was followed by more tanker movements. Brent reached $72 on 26 June. This fall combined diplomatic expectations with observable shipping improvement.
• July–9 SeptemberThe agreement unravels: renewed military strikes lifted prices in early July. By 9 September, new attacks and collapsing talks had pushed Brent above $100 again. The return to triple digits showed that June's low depended on the expected reopening actually lasting.
• Late SeptemberWorkarounds, but a large gap remained: analysts cited by AP estimated that at least 6 million barrels a day were moving through a protected night-time shuttle and about 2 million through the UAE pipeline to Fujairah. Roughly 7 million barrels a day of the pre-war flow was still missing. Inventory draws, lower demand and alternative supply kept crude around the $100 range rather than the $140–$150 levels feared under a full blockade.

The sequence explains why a falling price did not always mean that the physical shortage had ended. On 9 March, words changed the expected duration of the war. In June, both diplomacy and tanker movements changed. By late September, bypass pipelines, costly ship-to-ship transfers, inventory draws and weaker demand had absorbed part of the missing supply even though normal passage through Hormuz had not returned.

It still does not establish that every move came from one headline. Currency moves, demand forecasts, inventories and speculative positioning continued at the same time. The IEA shipping monitor also warns that ships can switch off or falsify tracking signals, so any precise traffic count carries uncertainty.

The same caution applies to the Minab school strike. It belongs at the centre of the war's human record, but a same-day oil move cannot tell us how traders weighed that event. Co-movement is not causation. Markets react to expected cash flows and supply. Moral weight has no dependable price series.

From a barrel of oil to inflation

Oil enters household prices directly through petrol, diesel, heating and air travel. It also enters indirectly through freight, farming, chemicals and packaging. The pass-through to headline inflation is uneven because taxes, subsidies, exchange rates and refinery capacity differ from one country to another.

What the Federal Reserve found

A Federal Reserve model found that the oil-price jump around Russia's 2022 invasion added almost one percentage point to US headline inflation on impact, while the effect on core inflation was much smaller. A separate Fed study found small but measurable second-round effects on food and core prices, often with long delays.

The IMF's June 2026 assessment said oil remained about 30 per cent above its pre-war level while higher energy costs were lifting inflation pressure in import-dependent economies. This is the bridge to the companion gold and war-inflation chart. Inflation can support demand for a hedge, but higher interest rates can pull the other way.

What the Iran oil line cannot count

A barrel chart is fast, public and precise. Those strengths can make it look like the complete record. It is not. It measures the price of a contract. It does not measure who missed medicine, which school closed or how a family absorbed a higher food bill.

The contrast matters on this site. Counting Iraqi civilian deaths took names, hospital records and reports gathered over years. Oil prices arrived every second. The easier number often dominates the news because it is ready first, not because it matters most.

Read the chart as an economic trace of the war: benchmark by benchmark, date by date, and with uncertainty kept in view. Read the archive timeline beside it for the events a market series leaves out. Together they show two different kinds of consequence without pretending that one can stand in for the other.