Brent loses $6.04 as Iran-Oman talks target Hormuz reopening
25 August 2026
Brent · past 24 hours ICE · 1-minute · SGT · drag or hover the line for price · tap a circle for the story
Circles are the headlines below, placed at the minute they published; a dashed circle means the source only gave the hour. Shaded bands are the Asian, European and US sessions. All times SGT.
Iran-Oman talks shifted the day toward a possible Hormuz reopening, but outbound transits fell to zero and commodity-vessel traffic hit a three-month low. A Houthi strike hit a Saudi VLCC off Yanbu, keeping Red Sea physical risk live while the diplomatic channel developed. Three sanctioned tankers carrying about 230,000 barrels of Iranian-origin product converged on Hormuz, alongside a fourth vessel that had logged a 219-hour AIS blackout.
Brent closed at $85.96, down $6.04 or 6.57% from the previous session; WTI lost $3.05 or 3.58%. The largest three-minute Brent move was a $0.51 drop at 03:58 SGT and remains unattributed, so no single headline explains the full selloff. Brent-WTI stood at $3.82, while Brent M1-M2 backwardation was $1.80/bbl at the 90th percentile and gasoline and diesel backwardation sat at the 99.8th and 95th percentiles. Managed Money remained at 87.5k lots, the 24th percentile, while volatility cover was 17.7 points below realised volatility, the 3rd-percentile discount.
Relative value
Reading these. Above zero on the M1−M2 panels is backwardation — the prompt barrel is bid over the next one. Not covered: jet time spreads. There is no jet futures curve here (US Gulf spot only, no forward), so the product panel is gasoline and diesel alone.
Next five trading days
Refined-product rows are crack-spread observations, not price forecasts. They stay in the card to show what is known and what is still missing.
Evidence, drivers and limits
Curve and stocks disagree: WTI M1−M12 is in backwardation at the 96th percentile of its own history, while US commercial crude stocks built 4.4 million barrels in the week to 14 Aug. They are read off different clocks — the curve to 23 Aug, the stocks to 14 Aug. This report states the disagreement and does not resolve it.
Direction is withheld: five years of hourly tests found no indicator or tested support/resistance break that beat the relevant baseline.
Scheduled next: 26 Aug 22:30 EIA weekly stocks (historical impact ×6.0).
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