Oil falls six dollars in two sessions while American aircraft strike Iranian territory
Brent rose on the Qeshm report, then dropped 4.25% the next day to $99.20. The market is pricing a ceasefire on the week the shooting resumed — and only seven vessels crossed Hormuz on 2 November.
Brent crude rose 0.33% to $105.12 a barrel in early Asian trade on Tuesday 3 November on the first reports of the Qeshm strike, CNBC reported, sourcing Reuters. By the 4 November close Trading Economics had Brent at $99.20, down 4.25% on the day, with WTI at $88.30. Roughly six dollars came off Brent in two sessions in which the United States bombed Iranian soil and Tehran publicly rejected the American diplomatic reply. One caution before that becomes a trend: the same Trading Economics data put the WTI move at 8.11% against Brent’s 4.25% in a single session, a spread wide enough to warrant checking against ICE and CME settlements rather than a vendor’s prior-day baseline.
The physical picture has not loosened in step with the price. Windward, a commercial maritime-intelligence firm, logged seven vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz on 2 November — five inbound, two outbound — under its own heading “Hormuz Crossings Dip to Seven.” UNCTAD puts 2024 transits at around 20 million barrels of oil a day and has recorded transits falling by roughly 95% since the conflict began. Ships are still being hit: Windward logged a vessel struck by a projectile at anchor on 21 October about 11 nautical miles west of Bukha, Oman, crew safe. United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group with a declared position on Iran, reported in its 3 November shipping update that the damaged tanker RITI, struck on 29 October near Khasab, was observed in the southern Hormuz corridor. Al Jazeera reported a further tanker attacked in the Strait on 3 November, without naming the vessel.
Assessment: Two markets are disagreeing and only one of them has to be right. Futures are trading the Qatari channel — a strike read as a closing gesture, the kind a government makes before it settles — while hull insurers and charterers are still trading a closed waterway. Single-digit daily crossings and a 95% collapse in transits are not conditions that unwind on sentiment. The resolution is arithmetic: if crossings stay in single digits through next week, the barrel is mispriced and re-rates violently. Treat the vendor numbers as indicative until exchange settlements confirm them, and treat UANI’s vessel reporting as what it is — advocacy with good AIS data.