#OilEdgesHigher

Crude oil is sitting at $97.62 a barrel today, up over 3% on the day and nearly 17% over the past month alone — a move that has little to do with demand cycles and everything to do with a war reshaping global energy flows.

The trigger was the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz following military action in the Middle East in late February. Around 13 million barrels per day of production has been effectively locked out of global markets as tanker traffic through the strait collapsed. That kind of supply shock does not resolve overnight, and the physical market is pricing that reality in hard — Brent spot cargos hit $124.68 per barrel on Wednesday, nearly $30 above the June futures contract.

Brent has been outpacing WTI throughout this run because it carries more direct exposure to the disrupted shipping lanes and reduced flows between regions near the strait. WTI got some cushion from strong U.S. inventories and the government's move to signal Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases, but even that buffer has limits against a 13-million-barrel-per-day hole.

Gasoline, distillate, and jet fuel prices followed crude sharply higher, as they almost always do when the input cost spikes this fast. The spread between spot and futures tells you the market does not believe supply normalizes quickly — ceasefire talks have gone nowhere so far, with both Washington and Tehran rejecting the latest proposal.

The consensus view among energy analysts right now is that tightness in physical supply persists well into the second half of the year even under an optimistic scenario where the conflict winds down. For anyone watching energy-linked assets, the spot-futures spread is the cleanest live signal of how much longer traders expect this dislocation to run.