Oil extended its gains for a second straight session on Wednesday, rising around 1% after President Trump reimposed a naval blockade on all Iranian ports and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to close additional export corridors used by the U.S. and its allies. FinancialMediaGuide views the fresh round of escalation as confirmation that the ceasefire reached in June has effectively broken down, with both sides now targeting the infrastructure that underpins global energy flows rather than just military assets.
Brent crude futures gained 69 cents, or 0.8%, to $85.42 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 73 cents, or 0.9%, to $80.07. Prices had already settled up 2% at a one-month high on Tuesday as attacks worsened the supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed before the war began.
“Regional energy exports are either shared by all, or denied to all,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement carried by state media on Wednesday, a warning analysts have linked to signals that Tehran may activate Houthi allies in Yemen to close the Bab el-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea. FinancialMediaGuide notes that opening a second maritime chokepoint alongside Hormuz would mark a meaningful escalation beyond the war’s original geographic footprint, putting two of the world’s most critical energy arteries at risk simultaneously.
The U.S. began a fresh round of strikes early Wednesday aimed at degrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the strait, the military said. “I’ll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we’ll hit energy targets,” Trump said in a television interview aired Tuesday night. Iran’s army said it had separately launched drone attacks against U.S. positions at a base in Jordan, while its Revolutionary Guard said it had targeted weapons and storage facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.
“The U.S. naval blockade of ships coming and going from Iranian ports is tightening the oil market, considering that Iranian crude exports were around 1.5 million to 2 million barrels per day in the last two weeks,” said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo. Separately, Goldman Sachs estimated that Gulf export volumes had recovered to more than 80% of pre-war levels following June’s U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, but have since slipped back below 50%, or roughly 11 million barrels a day, over the past week. FinancialMediaGuide points out that this partial recovery-then-relapse pattern in Gulf exports is precisely what has kept oil markets on edge even during periods that appeared, on the surface, to be de-escalating.
Goldman Sachs said Brent could exceed $110 a barrel in the fourth quarter if the stalled recovery in Gulf exports continues. Still, investors remain cautious about pricing in too large a risk premium given the volatility of the headlines. “This is just all part of the war games,” said Saxo Bank head of commodity strategy Ole Hansen. “The market has learned to adopt a little bit of a sanguine approach to some of these big announcements, simply in the sense that they often do not actually materialize.”
For now, both benchmarks remain well below the peaks reached earlier in the conflict, even as the latest strikes and counter-strikes suggest the war has entered a new, more destructive phase. Financial Media Guide concludes that the gap between Goldman’s $110 upside scenario and the market’s current, comparatively restrained pricing shows just how much hinges on whether Gulf export flows stabilize in the coming days or continue to deteriorate.
