Oil prices on March 06, 2026, went on to witness a rapid surge due to the rising disruption to global oil supplies, which has been caused by the war between US-Israel war with Iran.
The U.S. futures prices see a surge much faster as compared to the international benchmark Brent futures since Washington said it may as well take action in the futures market in order to combat the growing energy prices.
It is well to be noted that the U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude went on to settle at almost $6.35, or 8.51%, to $81.01, which apparently is the highest ever since July 2024. The Brent crude settled up $4.01, or 4.93%, at around $85.41 per barrel, which, by the way, is the fifth session of gains.
The difference between both benchmarks was most pronounced at 1500 ET. Both the contracts mostly trade in lockstep unless and until there comes a specific alteration that impacts the supply or demand, which is relevant to one of the standards.
A senior White House official said on March 06, 2026, that the U.S. Treasury Department may as well take action in the oil futures market as part of the steps so as to combat the growing energy prices, which are most likely to be announced.
President Donald Trump, on March 06, said that he was not concerned about the growing U.S. gas prices, which are driven due to the widening conflict in Iran, expressing his opinions to Reuters in an exclusive interview that the U.S. military operation was indeed his priority. Trump also remarked that the United States wanted to get involved in choosing the next leader of Iran.
The fact is that Iraq, as well as Qatar, has already gone ahead and shut in oil and gas production because of the shipping paralysis in the Strait of Hormuz. Iraq went ahead and shut down almost 1.5 million barrels per day of crude production, as it is running out of storage for oil it goes on to produce without oil tankers in order to take it away. Qatar, on the other hand, has shut down the production of liquefied natural gas – LNG for the same reason as LNG tankers cannot pass through the Hormuz shipping chokepoint. Kuwait, as well as the UAE, may as well be the next in order to cut the supply as storage space witnesses dearth, opine analysts, traders as well as sources, all of which has caused disruption to global oil supplies.
According to Again Capital’s partner, John Kilduff, “There is no movement in the Strait of Hormuz, so prices will grind higher, and with countries having to shut in production, then we will be delayed even longer because it is not like you can just resume production at full strength; that will be a problem for a while.”
It is well to be noted that almost a fifth of the global oil flows via the Strait.
The senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial, Dennis Kissler, said that “if this persists into next week, the eventual re-starting of production and re-vamping of shipping once the Strait is re-opened will also take time to get back online.”
Consistent Attacks on the Oil Tankers
Apparently, the attacks on oil tankers continued on March 06, 2026, in the Gulf, as Sonangol Namibe, the Bahamas-flagged crude oil tanker, went on to report that its hull was breached post a blast near the port of Khor al Zubair in Iraq.
Said the analyst from UBS, Giovanni Staunovo, those attacks, in addition to the measures by the Chinese to decrease fuel exports, went on to push the prices higher. Interestingly, the refined product market is also demonstrating signals of stress because of the Middle East exports that have been missing.
