{"id":532165,"date":"2026-03-19T04:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T04:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/532165\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T04:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T04:54:19","slug":"could-oil-hit-200-a-barrel-analysts-no-longer-think-its-far-fetched-energy-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/532165\/","title":{"rendered":"Could oil hit $200 a barrel? Analysts no longer think it\u2019s far-fetched | Energy News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after the United States and Israel first attacked Iran on February 28, analysts warned that war could drive oil prices above $100 a barrel.<\/p>\n

Now, less than three weeks into the conflict, market watchers are seriously considering the possibility of prices surpassing $150 or even $200.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

On March 9, the price of Brent crude \u2013 the global benchmark \u2013 hit nearly $120 and has not dropped below the $100 threshold since March 13. An Israeli strike on Iran\u2019s South Pars gas field on March 18, prompting Iranian attacks on oil and gas facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, further pushed crude prices up<\/a> on Wednesday to above $108 a barrel.<\/p>\n

Analysts widely agree that prices have room to move much higher if the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for about one-fifth of global oil supplies in peacetime, remains effectively closed in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

The only\u00a0real\u00a0point of\u00a0contention\u00a0is\u00a0by\u00a0how much.<\/p>\n

\u201cBenchmark Middle Eastern crudes like Oman and Dubai have already crossed the $150 threshold, so $200 is already within sight, even if not for Brent and West Texas Intermediate,\u201d Vandana Hari, the founder of oil market analysis provider Vanda Insights, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much further crude climbs from here almost entirely hinges on how much longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed,\u201d Hari said.<\/p>\n

After Iran declared the strait closed early in the conflict \u2013 and threatened to strike any ships attempting to pass \u2013 traffic all but stopped.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump has failed to attract international support for a naval convoy to reopen in, while countries are scrambling to do deals with Iran for safe passage. Only a handful of ships<\/a> \u2013 mostly Indian, Pakistani, Turkish and Chinese-flagged vessels \u2013 have been allowed to pass in recent days.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0countries\u00a0have committed to releasing 400 million barrels\u00a0of oil\u00a0from emergency stockpiles in coordination with the\u00a0International Energy Agency,\u00a0the reserves\u00a0cannot\u00a0fully\u00a0offset<\/a> the halt of shipping, in effect, through the waterway.<\/p>\n

Singapore-based OCBC Group Research estimates that the global market is facing a daily shortfall of about 10 million barrels even when the reserves are taken into account.<\/p>\n

Wood Mackenzie analysts said last week that Brent could soon hit $150 and that $200 was not \u201coutside the realms of possibility\u201d in 2026.<\/p>\n

Iran has also invoked the prospect of $200 oil, warning through a military spokesperson last week that the world should \u201cget ready\u201d for such a spike.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrategic reserves and replacement barrels can stabilise prices if the market believes supply will meet demand, but if flows through Hormuz were materially disrupted for a sustained period, prices well above $100, even approaching $200, are plausible,\u201d Chad Norville, president of industry publication Rigzone, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn several\u00a0respects\u00a0the conditions today could allow for an even more dramatic move than the Gulf War, given the larger share of global supply potentially at risk and the wider imbalance between supply and demand that presents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"oil\"Gasoline prices are displayed at a petrol station in Portland, Oregon, on March 16, 2026 [Jenny Kane\/AP]<\/p>\n

Oil prices at\u00a0$150 or higher\u00a0would weigh heavily on\u00a0the\u00a0global economy.<\/p>\n

The International Monetary Fund estimates that every 10 percent rise in oil prices, sustained over a year, would correspond with a 0.4 percent increase in global inflation and a 0.15 percent reduction in economic growth.<\/p>\n

The highest Brent crude has ever reached is $147.50 per barrel at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s dollars, the all-time peak equates to about $224.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Brent futures topped $112, their highest in more than a week.<\/p>\n

\u201c$200 oil would be a major handbrake to the world economy,\u201d Adi Imsirovic, an energy expert at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera. He described the prospect of prices hitting such levels as \u201cperfectly possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would impact inflation, growth, employment and in some cases cause shortages of not just fuel but also materials such as fertilisers, plastics and the like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sasha Foss, an energy market analyst at Marex, London, offered a more sanguine outlook, however, calling the prospect of $200 Brent \u201cpretty outlandish\u201d.<\/p>\n

Foss pointed to substantial increases in output by various countries, including the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Guyana, as well as the existence of alternative supply routes, such as Saudi Arabia\u2019s East-West Pipeline, as causes for optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really saw on the back of the Russia-Ukraine war \u2026 the adage that a cure for high prices is high prices,\u201d Foss told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a lot of production increases from other regions in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

While prices will depend heavily on the resumption of traffic through the Hormuz Strait, their trajectory will also be shaped by the law of supply and demand in other ways, too.<\/p>\n

\"oil\"A drone view of oil storage containers and facilities of the TotalEnergies refinery in the Leuna Chemical Complex, in Leuna, Germany, on March 17, 2026 [Annegret Hilse\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

Buyers of goods and services typically start cutting back on consumption once prices rise above a certain level, a phenomenon known as \u201cdemand destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n

While demand for oil is less elastic than for most goods because it is difficult to replace or go without, prices would still moderate and start to come down after rising past a certain point.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody knows what that level\u00a0is\u00a0but it may well be above previous nominal highs at $147 a barrel,\u201d\u00a0Bob\u00a0McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

How high oil prices rise will depend on how fast \u201ctwo countervailing tendencies \u2013 buyers chasing fewer barrels at any cost verses buyers exiting the market through demand destruction \u2013 play out\u201d against each other, Gregor Semieniuk, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after the United States and Israel first attacked Iran on February 28, analysts warned that war could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1926,23,3995,1204,101,1872,1076,3140,129,3,45063,21,19,22,20,25,1209,231941,24],"class_list":["post-532165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-africa","tag-america","tag-asia","tag-asia-pacific","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-europe","tag-latin-america","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}