U.S. Gasoline Tops $3 as Iran Conflict Sends Fuel Prices Higher

(RTTNews) - Partially offsetting the gains from five consecutive sessions, crude oil prices have plunged on Friday as investors opted to book profits made from the recent trades. While U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to intensify attacks on Iran, investors analyzed the imp

Saudi Arabia, which at the start of the Iran war redirected virtually all crude exports through its East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, has seen crude exports from Yanbu crumble by 41% to about 2.39 million barrels per day (bpd) by June, from a peak of 4.07 million bpd in March, Wood Mackenzie vessel tracking and cargo data showed. Despite the near-total concentration of exports through Yanbu, volumes have declined steadily from the March peak, according to WoodMac's tracking data. By...

The dual disruption of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb is tightening global oil flows, raising transport costs and fueling expectations of $100 oil. Friday, July 24, 2026 The double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb has turbo-boosted oil prices this week, with both ICE Brent and WTI gaining $10 per barrel on the week. Whilst technically the Bab el-Mandeb could be bypassed through the Suez Canal, resulting in longer routes and higher costs, the dramatic decline in transits via the...

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company ADNOC has issued its seventh tender offering crude from the United Arab Emirates since the beginning of June, expecting to sell millions of barrels of oil between August and October, both from within and outside the Persian Gulf. Despite the renewed threats to supply from the Strait of Hormuz and the new threats to shipping in the Red Sea by the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, ADNOC is inviting interested buyers to bid by the middle of next week for crude loading...

Chinese refiners have bought up all crude oil cargoes set to load from Russia’s Far East port of Kozmino in August weeks earlier than usual, traders with knowledge of the market told Bloomberg on Friday, as risks to Middle Eastern supply spiked this week with attacks on tankers in the Red Sea. China has been snapping up the cargoes at a faster pace, which raised the price of the Russian Far Eastern crude blend ESPO to a discount of just $1 per barrel to the price of ICE Brent, up from a...

OPEC+ is expected to approve another production target increase when eight key producers meet on August 2, extending a months-long campaign to unwind voluntary supply cuts that have existed largely on paper since the Iran war upended Gulf exports. Reuters reported Thursday that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and Oman are expected to raise their combined September production target by another 188,000 barrels per day, matching the increases announced for June, July, and...

India is on track to export the highest volume of refined petroleum products in months as refining margins have jumped with the re-escalation of the Middle East conflict. India is estimated to ship as many as 1.55 million barrels per day (bpd) of light and middle distillates in July, per data by commodity analysts Kpler cited by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell. The July volumes would be nearly double the fuel export volumes of just 866,000 bpd in May, when the Strait of Hormuz crisis hit crude...

Russia's largest Black Sea oil export terminal has effectively gone offline just days after drone attacks shut down the neighboring Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, tightening another artery that moves crude onto the global market. The Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk hasn’t loaded a crude tanker since July 21. Sheskharis exported an average of about 650,000 barrels per day during the first half of the year. Losing those barrels, even temporarily, comes on top of...

The world isn't just staring down another weather event. It's staring down a weather event colliding with a supply-driven oil shock. JPMorgan warned Friday that a "super" El Niño combined with higher energy prices from the Middle East conflict could slow the decline in global inflation next year, adding roughly 0.3 percentage points to headline inflation worldwide. The bank puts the odds of the current El Niño strengthening into a "very strong" or "super" event at 81% by the end of the year,...

Indian refiners are in search of crude supply from as far as Angola in Africa and Venezuela in South America as their term supplies from the Middle East are trapped again and unable to reach India as planned. Some of the biggest state-held refiners in India, the world’s third-largest crude oil importer, are looking for and testing new crude grades, to offset part of the supply lost to the Middle East conflict, senior refinery executives told Indian outlet Economic Times. “We diversified our...

At least one oil tanker carrying Saudi crude oil has transited the Bab al-Mandeb Strait with its transponder switched off as risks to vessels in the Red Sea spiked this week after the Houthis announced a blockade on Saudi shipments and targeted vessels offshore Yemen. The Merbabu tanker, owned by a Greek company and laden with Saudi crude oil, transited the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the so-called dark mode, which many shippers and tanker operators used for months to move undetected to hostile...

Crude oil prices were on course for a sizable weekly gain today, as the Strait of Hormuz remains almost entirely paralysed and the Yemeni Houthis target tankers in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. To make matters worse, Kazakhstan has suspended oil flows via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium system following Ukrainian drone attacks. At the time of writing, Brent crude was trading at $100.30 per barrel, with West Texas Intermediate at $91.70 per barrel, both up by over $10 per barrel since...