{"id":497783,"date":"2026-06-27T06:06:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T06:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/497783\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T06:06:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T06:06:26","slug":"oil-prices-jump-after-attack-halts-shipping-in-strait-of-hormuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/497783\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil Prices Jump After Attack Halts Shipping in Strait of Hormuz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oil prices jumped on Thursday after Iran reportedly struck a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, halting shipping traffic through the crucial waterway.<\/p>\n

The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose over 2 percent to about $75 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, also rose over 2 percent, to around $72 a barrel. <\/p>\n

Prices had fluctuated during the day, at one point dipping to levels not seen since the start of the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Before the strike, traffic through the strait had moved steadily higher this week. On Wednesday, 78 vessels transited the waterway, making it the \u201csingle most transited day since the war began,\u201d according to S&P Global Energy. That is 57 percent of prewar volume on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

The slide in oil prices had gathered pace as efforts to clear a backlog of ships trapped in the Persian Gulf had advanced, easing concerns about supply disruptions. Still, Grace Zwemmer of Oxford Economics, said in a report on supply-chain stress that shipping through the Strait of Hormuz \u201cremains more costly and riskier than before the war due to the potential presence of sea mines and elevated risk premiums.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drop in energy prices \u201cwill bring down freight rates in time,\u201d Ms. Zwemmer said, because fuel is typically the largest operating expense for vessels. But not all freight rates will respond the same way: Tanker rates rose the fastest and have subsequently moderated significantly, while rates for container ships only started to edge up more recently and could take longer to return near prewar prices.<\/p>\n

U.S. gasoline prices, which don\u2019t move in lock step with crude and usually trails increases or drops by a few days, fell slightly on Thursday, to a national average of $3.92 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. Gasoline prices are still up more than 30 percent since the start of the war. The average price of diesel fell 2 cents to $4.96 on Thursday, up 32 percent since the start of the war.<\/p>\n

In stock markets, on Thursday the S&P 500 in the United States ended the trading day relatively unchanged. Strong earnings from the U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology, released after the market closed on Wednesday, appeared to reignite enthusiasm for artificial intelligence-related companies. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index was down around half a percent at the close.<\/p>\n

In Asia, South Korea\u2019s the benchmark KOSPI gained over 6 percent, while Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 moved 4.6 percent higher. Shares in Taiwan rose 0.5 percent. In Europe, the Stoxx 600, a broad index that tracks the region\u2019s largest companies, rose nearly 1 percent, and the FTSE 100 in Britain was up over 0.7 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil prices jumped on Thursday after Iran reportedly struck a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, halting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,209402,16609,111,139,69,211216,209401,248854,5018],"class_list":["post-497783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-fees-and-rates","tag-iran","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oil-petroleum-and-gasoline","tag-prices-fares","tag-standard-poors-500-stock-index","tag-stocks-and-bonds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}