Investec Risk Solutions


Weekly Oil Market Update


Monday, 23 March 2026

Price Table

Source: Investec, Bloomberg

Commoditiy	Price	Weekly Change	50day-Ave	100day-Ave	200day-Ave
Brent ($/b)	113.02	12.81	77.20	69.87	68.79
US WTI ($/b)	99.07	5.57	71.53	65.08	64.82
ICE Gasoil ($/MT)	1,417.00	257.00	839.41	757.76	726.61
Jet CIF NWE ($/MT)	1,692.49	134.06	950.18	830.28	776.87

Tension in global energy markets reached new highs last week and then over the weekend Trump raised the stakes again with his deadline for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

During the week there were several significant progressions in the Middle East. Iran retaliated to the Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas field, by attacking the world’s largest liquified natural gas facility, in Qatar, destroying 17% of its capacity completely, this will be a complete rebuild. This has shown the market that only a few such strikes could destroy the whole facility and oil infrastructure could suffer the same fate, which would plunge the world into an extended energy crisis that would be far, far more serious than even a lengthy closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This seemed to mark a worrying escalation in the conflict, and we saw fresh highs in energy markets as a result. So, there was relief in markets from Benjamin Netanyahu’s press conference on Thursday in which he said Israel would "hold off" from future attacks on Iranian gas fields after being asked to do so by President Trump. Then, on Friday, Trump talked about winding down the conflict, leading to oil markets ending the week off the highs.

Uncertainty has increased once again over the weekend after Trump threatened to destroy all Iranian electricity plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened to traffic within 48-hours. This 48-hour deadline expires this evening. Iran has said it would retaliate if there any attacks on its power plants, which seems to take us back to the fears of last week about energy infrastructure being permanently destroyed. There seem to be three possible outcomes:

  
• Serious ceasefire discussions begin which present a route to reopening the Strait
  
• The deadline expires without progress, but Trump does not follow through on his threat
  
• The deadline expires without progress and Trump does go through with attacking Iranian power plants and the conflict escalates further

The stakes are very high, and it is hard to tell how markets should react. If the deadline is forcing a pathway to the war ending, oil prices could fall significantly. There are no public signs that is happening, but it is possible talks might be going on behind the scenes. If the conflict escalates further and more energy infrastructure is destroyed, the oil market will need to react by reaching a level that forces down oil demand down sufficiently to deal with a long term cut to supply from destroyed infrastructure.

Prices of refined products have increased more significantly than oil and are now extremely high, the question now is how close we are to seeing actual shortages of energy. A number of Asian countries are already trying to reduce consumption by imposing restrictions such as 4-day weeks and encouraging working from home to conserve fuel. Japan, South Korea and China have significant reserves, but a number of other countries are less well prepared. The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei have started to introduce measures aimed at limiting consumption and capping prices. Wholesale diesel prices references are now around 200 \$/b or higher, around the world, even in the US. Jet fuel is generally higher. The IEA called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.

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