·
Brent
crude rose to
around $96/barrel, up 34% since the war began.
·
WTI
crude climbed
nearly 1% to around $92/barrel.
·
Strait
of Hormuz shipping remains severely disrupted, threatening global oil and refined-product
supplies. The waterway normally carries about one-fifth of global oil.
·
Ship-tracking
data showed only about 5
million barrels/day of crude
moving through Hormuz on average over the 28 days through Wednesday.
·
U.S.
diesel prices jumped 9 cents to $5.78/gallon, just below the 2022 record of $5.82.
·
U.S. diesel
prices are now 54%
higher since the war began,
driven by tight global refining capacity and disrupted shipping.
·
Russian
refinery disruptions following
Ukrainian attacks have further reduced diesel exports.
·
U.S.
gasoline also increased
to an average of $4.14/gallon, up 39% since the war began.
·
Higher
diesel costs could increase transportation, farming, manufacturing and infrastructure
costs, eventually feeding into consumer
prices and inflation.
·
Despite
the energy shock, U.S.
stocks remained relatively resilient:
the S&P 500 gained about 1%, while Europe's Stoxx 600 rose about 0.5%.
·
Key
risk: Continued
disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could keep crude and diesel prices elevated and
increase global inflationary pressure.
[ABS News Service/04.09.2026]
The global oil price rose for a fourth straight session on Thursday
(03.09.2026) and the cost of U.S. diesel fuel came within pennies of its highest
level ever, as renewed strikes by the United States and Iran strained the flow of
energy.
“Escalation in the Middle East dashes any hope for a recovery in
refined product flows, leaving markets tight,” analysts at the bank ING wrote in
a note on Thursday.
Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran
and Oman that normally carries a fifth of the world’s oil, has been mostly at a
standstill. The U.S. Navy, which is blockading Iranian oil at sea from exiting the
region, is helping ships navigate the strait, allowing some oil to flow. But two tankers were attacked on Monday off the coast of Oman, highlighting the persistent risk
for ships seeking to export oil from the Persian Gulf.
The Trump administration has sought to play down the disruption.
The U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, said oil passing through the strait reached
prewar levels in recent days. Independent firms that track shipping were skeptical.
“Ship trackers have been estimating much more modest flows,” the
ING analysts wrote. “It makes more sense to look at average flows over longer periods,
rather than a single day, given flows move lots day to day.
Over the 28 days ending Wednesday, a daily average of 7.5 million
of barrels of crude oil was exported from the Persian Gulf past the U.S. blockade,
according to TankerTrackers.com, a ship tracking company. Of that amount, five million barrels of
oil a day on average have been exported through the Strait of Hormuz. The rest has
come out of oil terminals along the Gulf of Oman, TankerTrackers.com said.
·
The price of Brent crude, the global
benchmark for oil, ticked up to about $96 a barrel. The cost of crude has risen
34 percent since the start of the war.
·
West Texas Intermediate crude, the
U.S. benchmark, was up less than 1 percent to around $92 a barrel.
·
The average price of diesel in the
United States jumped nine cents to $5.78 per gallon on Thursday, according to the
AAA motor club, up 54 percent since the start of the war. The last time U.S. diesel
prices approached this level was in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of
Ukraine, peaking at $5.82 a gallon.
·
A big factor in the rise of diesel,
which is derived from oil, is global strain on refining capacity. Attacks by Ukraine
on Russian refineries have forced one of the world’s biggest refiners to suspend
diesel exports. The shipping snarls in the Strait of Hormuz have also reduced the
world’s supply of diesel.
·
Diesel powers a vast chunk of the
global economy. In the United States, it fuels an array of critical infrastructure
like farm equipment, trains and
trucks. In emerging nations like Bangladesh it is used by farmers to power irrigation. As prices climb, businesses
often must pass on the higher costs onto their customers.
·
U.S. gasoline prices also rose on
Thursday, jumping to a national average of $4.14 a gallon, AAA said. The increase
has raised the cost for drivers by 39 percent since the war began.
·
The S&P 500 rose about 1 percent
at the close of trading in the United States on Thursday.
·
In Europe, the Stoxx 600, a broad
index that tracks the region’s largest companies, closed about half a percent higher.
Stocks in Asia were mixed.