West Texas Intermediate crude was changing hands at $90.58 a barrel on Tuesday, up 0.40% on the day but extending a far more dramatic move over the preceding week, with prices climbing 10.13% since the prior Tuesday and 57.03% since the start of the year, according to pricing data reviewed on AlternativeMarkets.AI, a Madison Labs research site. The advance follows US strikes on Iranian targets that have unsettled shipping through one of the world's most consequential energy corridors.
The immediate catalyst is geopolitical. Ship-tracking firm Kpler reported that tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen well below its ten-day average, with only four vessels observed transiting the chokepoint in a recent stretch, a sign that owners and charterers are growing wary of moving cargo through the waterway while US-Iran tensions remain elevated. OilPrice.com separately reported that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have resorted to rare ship-to-ship transfers of liquefied natural gas outside the Gulf, offloading cargoes from vessels loaded in the Persian Gulf onto other ships further from the strait, an unusual workaround that underscores how seriously exporters are treating the risk of disruption.
For traders, the reduced tanker flow and the broader re-escalation in the Middle East carry a straightforward interpretation: any credible threat to Hormuz, through which a substantial share of global seaborne oil and gas passes, tends to be priced into crude almost immediately, even before physical supply is actually curtailed. That dynamic helps explain why WTI's gains have compounded on a monthly and yearly basis, up 12.72% over the past month and 38.07% versus a year ago, even as the day-to-day price action on Tuesday showed only a modest gain.
The stakes extend beyond the futures pit. OilPrice.com also reported that diesel cracks, the premium refiners earn on turning crude into diesel, have hit record highs, a squeeze it attributed to the combination of Middle East re-escalation and a Russian ban on diesel exports amid continued Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries. Separately, Pakistan was reported to have rejected an LNG cargo priced at roughly three times pre-war levels, raising the prospect of extended blackouts, a concrete illustration of how energy-price shocks in one region can ripple into supply decisions elsewhere.
The current spike sits atop a rally that has been building for months, driven by a mix of OPEC+ supply discipline, resilient global demand, and now acute geopolitical risk. Crude's year-to-date gain of more than 57%, if it holds, would mark one of the sharper annual moves for the benchmark in recent memory, though the scale of that advance also means prices remain sensitive to any de-escalation as much as further escalation.
The oil move is unfolding alongside broader risk-off pressure across markets. A Yahoo Finance report on Dow Jones futures noted that President Trump's warning on Iran sparked losses across equities even as shares of SpaceX-linked and Tesla-linked names rallied on separate news. Major technology and software stocks including Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, and Palantir were each down between roughly 3% and 5% on the day, alongside declines in Blackstone, Intuit, Applied Materials, ServiceNow and Union Pacific, according to the market data reviewed. Cryptocurrencies also traded lower, with Bitcoin down 2.1% and Ethereum down 4.0% over 24 hours, part of a broader pullback that included XRP, Solana and Zcash. Whether these moves reflect a direct read-through from oil markets or a separate risk-averse mood tied to geopolitical headlines is not established by the available data, and should be treated as parallel market activity rather than a confirmed causal link.
Elsewhere in energy, longer-term supply dynamics are also in focus. Yahoo Finance reported that firms including Chevron, ONGC and GE Vernova are on track to sign final agreements in Venezuela, and separately that President Trump said Exxon would enter Venezuela as US oil investment there ramps up. The US Energy Secretary has said Venezuelan crude output could more than double in coming years, a projection attributed specifically to that official rather than to the market at large.
Looking ahead, participants are likely to keep watching Hormuz tanker counts from firms like Kpler, diesel crack spreads, and any official statements out of Washington or Tehran for signs of further escalation or a potential de-escalation. Given the size of the year-to-date move already priced into WTI, traders and refiners alike are treating both outcomes as live possibilities rather than certainties, according to the reporting cited above.