Crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz reached their highest volume since the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran began, Reuters reported on June 25, 2026, and oil briefly broke below $73 per barrel — the market's last prewar price level — on the same day.

Brent crude futures settled at $73.74 per barrel on June 24, a decline of 4.3%, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate settled at $70.34, down 3.9%, according to Reuters. The moves extended a broader selloff: oil had already dropped roughly 5% on June 14 when President Trump announced a deal with Iran to reopen the strait, per CNBC.

The backdrop stretches back to February 28, 2026, when U.S. and Israeli forces launched close to 900 strikes in 12 hours against Iranian missile stockpiles, air defense networks, and military installations. Iran responded by declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed — triggering a fuel crisis that rippled through global commodity markets. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and five seriously wounded in Iranian retaliatory strikes on a military base in Kuwait, Al Jazeera reported that day.

Throughput Recovery: Real but Incomplete

U.S. Central Command reported 55 merchant vessels transited Hormuz last Saturday carrying more than 17 million barrels of oil, Reuters reported on June 22. That is a meaningful increase from the near-paralysis of the spring, but it remains well short of the 130–140 daily vessel crossings that characterized prewar traffic, as CNBC noted earlier this month. An early signal of restored confidence came June 19, when three Saudi-flagged supertankers carrying roughly 6 million barrels exited the strait.

The supply-chain stress is visible in hire rates. Tanker rates outside Hormuz reached $190,500 per day as of June 23 — up from $106,500 just a week earlier — according to ship brokers cited by Reuters. That near-doubling reflects both pent-up export demand from Gulf producers and the premium carriers are extracting while uncertainty persists.

The Risk Premium Hasn't Cleared

The price moves and headline throughput figures mask a more cautious picture on the risk side. On June 25, a cargo vessel was struck by an unknown projectile near Oman, Reuters reported, immediately reviving concerns about supply disruption. No group claimed responsibility.

War-risk insurance remains a structural drag. Al Jazeera reported in late April that even a fully reopened strait could push insurance premiums up by approximately 0.25% of vessel value — a cost that, at scale, flows through to end-market fuel prices and freight economics. With the Oman incident unresolved and Iran's political posture still opaque, underwriters are unlikely to reprice aggressively downward in the near term.

The combination of a formal diplomatic agreement, partial traffic recovery, and a price retest of prewar levels looks, on the surface, like normalization. It isn't quite that yet. The June 25 projectile strike and the persistent gap between current throughput and prewar vessel counts suggest the strait remains operationally constrained — open for commerce, but not fully reconstituted as the frictionless chokepoint it was before February.

What the oil market is pricing, in effect, is a probability distribution: Trump's June 14 deal reduces the tail risk of a prolonged blockade, but the shipping industry is not yet treating Hormuz as routine. Until daily crossings recover toward the 130-vessel range and war-risk premiums compress, the corridor will continue to carry a structural cost premium above its prewar baseline — one that Gulf producers, tanker operators, and end consumers are now quietly negotiating over who bears.