Oil Market Brief — March 10, 2026
Oil prices surged to nearly $120 per barrel before plunging nearly 7% to approximately $92 per barrel after President Trump stated the US-Israel war on Iran could end "very soon," a dramatic reversal covered across multiple major outlets. The Strait of Hormuz blockade — removing approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day from global markets — prompted Saudi Aramco to warn of "catastrophic consequences," describing the disruption as "the biggest crisis the region's oil and gas industry has faced." Gulf producers — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, and Kuwait — have collectively slashed output by as much as 6.7 million barrels per day, representing approximately one-third of their combined production capacity. Iran struck Bahrain's BAPCO refinery, which holds 380,000–400,000 bpd of processing capacity, while a separate drone strike halted operations at Abu Dhabi's Ruwais refinery, which processes over 900,000 barrels per day. The G7 agreed to withhold releases from strategic oil reserves, stating that emergency intervention is "not necessary yet," while the US national average gasoline price climbed sharply from $2.90 to $3.48 per gallon in just one month, squeezing consumers at the pump.
Analyst view: A 39% single-session crude oil trading range — the widest on record, according to Barchart — illustrates that oil prices are currently being driven almost entirely by geopolitical headlines rather than confirmed supply-demand fundamentals, creating extreme directional uncertainty. Despite the pullback toward $92 per barrel, benchmark Middle Eastern crude grades Murban and Dubai remain well above $100 per barrel, indicating that underlying physical supply constraints have not materially changed alongside the sentiment-driven price moves. Aramco's own data shows that even with the East-West pipeline ramped to 5 million barrels per day, a 15-million-barrel-per-day global supply shortfall versus normal levels persists — meaning the current price retreat is entirely contingent on conflict resolution occurring before finite storage reserves are exhausted.