Brent crude settled near $99.25 a barrel on September 22, down about 1.1 percent and back below $100, after Iran signaled it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week — the fifth straight decline, and a crack in a war premium that never needed the strait actually open to keep prices elevated.
Prices touched lows around $97.44 to $98. West Texas Intermediate traded in a $90 to $95 range. The U.S.-Iran conflict, which began in late February, had kept Hormuz — normally about a fifth of seaborne oil — nearly shut. Brent was still roughly 38 percent above pre-crisis levels near $72. A senior Iranian official, cited by Kyodo News and Reuters, said Tehran could reopen the waterway within seven days if Washington eased military pressure and lifted a blockade of Iranian ports. An Iranian delegation in New York for the U.N. General Assembly had authority to talk, with possible contact between President Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Saudi Aramco restarted its East-West pipeline at reduced rates, with Yanbu shipments on the Red Sea expected to resume. About 14 million barrels of Saudi crude were loaded onto seven supertankers in the Gulf over the weekend. Satellite estimates put recent Saudi flows through Hormuz near 2.9 million barrels a day, up from about 700,000 in August. Traffic on Monday was still a trickle: two vessels, against roughly 125 before the war.
Futures are pricing a diplomatic path, not a restored chokepoint. The strait is not open. Refined-product flows remain thin. Losses pared after Trump's U.N. remarks, a reminder that a speech can reprice the barrel faster than a tanker can transit. If talks fail, the fifth down day will look like a squeeze. If they succeed, the remaining premium over pre-war Brent is the next thing to go.
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