“Ships of the World, start your engines,” Donald Trump declared on Truth Social on Sunday. “Let the oil flow!”
This was the president’s way of announcing that the United States and Iran had reached an agreement to end their war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Although the exact details have not been released, the deal reportedly includes a 60-day cease-fire during which the two sides will negotiate a more permanent settlement. Since the announcement, the price of oil has fallen to about $80 a barrel, the lowest point since early March. But there’s a big difference between reopening the Strait of Hormuz on paper and resuming the flow of oil through it. A return to the pre-war status quo is still very far off—if it ever happens at all.
The most obvious barrier to the smooth flow of oil is that the two sides seem to have conflicting accounts of what the deal actually says, calling into question whether it will be honored. The Trump administration has insisted that it will consider the strait reopened only if Iran agrees not to impose tolls on passing ships. But yesterday, after the cease-fire was announced, Iranian officials said that they would charge “fees” on transiting ships—which sounds an awful lot like a toll. Another point of contention: Iranian officials have said that the cease-fire agreement includes a cessation of Israel’s military activities in Lebanon, whereas American officials have said the opposite.
If these disagreements are not settled, the deal could collapse before it is even implemented. And even if the deal is implemented, it could fall apart down the line. The two sides are far apart on crucial issues, including Iran’s nuclear program. Trump told The New York Times on Sunday, for example, that if Iran does not agree to end the program, attacks on Tehran will resume.
The result is a veil of uncertainty that could dissuade oil producers from resuming operations, insurance companies from reducing currently sky-high rates, and “Ships of the World” from starting their engines. Several shipping executives have told reporters that they will need weeks or months of assurances before they send ships back to the Persian Gulf.
The situation in the Strait could come to resemble the one in the Red Sea. Although Yemen’s Houthi rebels formally halted their two-year rocket campaign against Western ships in the area last November, just half as many oil tankers are making the passage compared with 2023. “If you’re a shipping company, do you really want to send in your vessels knowing the deal could fall apart and they could be stuck for who knows how long?” Jason Bordoff, the founding director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. “If you’re an oil producer, do you really want to put in all the money and effort to restart your production, only to have to shut it down again? These are the kinds of trade-offs everyone will need to weigh.”
Even if the confidence of the oil industry is restored, major challenges will remain. The most immediate concern is that the strait is littered with Iranian naval mines. Nobody, including the Iranians themselves, appears to be aware of exactly how many mines are out there or where they are located. Most experts estimate that mine-sweeping will take at least a few weeks. A leaked Pentagon briefing to Congress in April was more pessimistic: It estimated that clearing the strait of mines would take up to six months. On top of that are the various logistical hurdles involved in restarting a global industry as complicated as oil. “We learned this lesson the hard way during COVID: When you shut down big, complex global supply chains, they take time to come back,” Arnab Datta, a managing director at the think tank Employ America who specializes in energy markets, told me. Last month, the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company told the Atlantic Council that “even if this conflict ends tomorrow, it will take at least four months to get back to 80 percent of pre-conflict flows” and that “full flows will not return before the first or even second quarter of 2027.”
Once the oil supply gets back to normal, prices might not. “Everyone now knows Iran can close the strait whenever they want,” Gregory Brew, the Eurasia Group’s senior analyst for Iran and energy, told me. That risk will be built into oil prices moving forward. Meanwhile, countries that have dipped into their oil reserves during the conflict will need to replenish them. (U.S.-government stockpiles, for example, are at their lowest level since the early 1980s.)
Countries that didn’t have big reserves in the first place, such as India, will look to build them. This could create elevated demand for oil that will send prices higher for the foreseeable future. “Prior to this war, oil prices were headed to $40 to $50 per barrel,” Rory Johnston, an oil-markets analyst who writes the widely cited newsletter Commodity Context, told me. “Now it would be miraculous if we got below $70.”
These predictions might turn out to be overly pessimistic. When the Iran war broke out, analysts almost unanimously warned that a three-month closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be a doomsday scenario for the global oil system. They were wrong. Prices spiked, but far less than the experts had predicted. The oil market turned out to be surprisingly resilient. It could surprise everyone again. But if it doesn’t, the economic consequences of the Iran war will be felt for many years to come.
