The Callisto tanker sits anchored in Port Sultan Qaboos as the traffic is down in the Strait of Hormuz, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Muscat, Oman, March 12, 2026.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, held above $100 on Friday morning as the U.S.-Iran war heads toward its third week.
By 5:40 a.m. ET, Brent futures were 0.7% higher, pulling back from earlier gains to trade at $101.15 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up by 0.1% at $95.87 per barrel, also paring earlier rises.
Crude oil prices
Oil prices have notched another week of gains, with Brent futures up more than 9%. It follows the 27.9% rise seen last week, which marked the biggest weekly gain in oil prices since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. WTI futures, which saw their best week since 1983 last week, are on course to end this week 5.8% higher.
Traders are continuing to monitor developments in the Middle East, where the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran is soon to stretch into a third week. Overnight, President Donald Trump hinted that an end to the conflict was not imminent.
"We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time," he said, before calling on his followers to "watch what happens" to the Iranian regime on Friday.
On Friday morning, Axios reported that Trump had claimed on a call with G7 leaders earlier this week that Iran was "about to surrender." A day later, Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed to keep fighting in a message delivered via state television.
A number of foreign ships in or near the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil shipping route that has seen a blockade amid the escalating conflict, have been struck by ammunition this week. The attacks fed into concerns that a prolonged war could translate to a global economic shock.
"Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilised," Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's military command, said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Oil prices remain elevated even after the International Energy Agency agreed to release a record 400 million barrels of oil from its emergency reserves and the White House moved to temporarily waive certain sanctions on Russian exports.
In a note on Friday morning, Barclays' Emmanuel Cau said investors were becoming increasingly jittery after initially pricing in a short-lived conflict.
"Investors still believe in the Trump put, hence global equities are not down as much as in past oil shocks," they said. "But nervousness is growing by the day and the longer the Strait of Hormuz stays closed the more stagflationary markets will turn. Watch central banks next week amid hawkish repricing in rates."
Speaking to CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Friday, Amjad Bseisu, CEO of British petroleum production company EnQuest, said the oil market has "never seen something of this magnitude before."
"Every day we see a delay, there's another 20 million barrels [wiped off the market], and that will have an impact, and continues to have an impact," he said.
"I think this will be probably longer and harder as a crisis than before, and probably something we need to just watch out for the downsides rather than the upsides."
Bseisu noted that the last time there was a similar reduction in global oil supply was the Arab embargo of the 1970s.
"Then we saw quadrupling of prices, and I think we've seen prices here come up 50% but I do think this is going to be quite a long run," he told CNBC.
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