Don’t Pop the Champagne: Why the Hormuz Ceasefire May Be a Head Fake for Energy Investors

When I appeared on This Week in Money on April 2, I warned that a ceasefire headline would trigger exactly this kind of knee-jerk drop in oil prices — and that investors should not mistake it for the all-clear. Six days later, the ceasefire was announced and oil posted its largest single-day decline since 2020, falling more than 16%. The call was right. But the more important question for investors is what comes next.

The headlines look great. Oil has cratered. Stocks are surging. A two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran has markets exhaling — and energy investors are already pricing in a return to normal.

Not so fast.

Before we go further, a quick note on benchmarks — because not all ‘oil prices’ are the same, and the distinction matters enormously right now. WTI (West Texas Intermediate) is the US benchmark, produced from light, sweet crude in Texas and the Permian Basin, with prices set at the storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. Brent is the international benchmark, originating in the North Sea, and is used to price roughly two-thirds of the world’s oil — including most of the crude that flows through the Strait of Hormuz. When the Strait closes, it is Brent that feels it most directly. WTI gets dragged along by sentiment, but Brent is the one physically ‘short’ Gulf crude. That distinction will matter a great deal in the weeks ahead.

Oil prices cooled below $100 per barrel following the ceasefire announcement, but remain far above pre-war levels of around $70 per barrel. And the war risk premium coming out of oil prices may be the easy part. What replaces it could be something markets are badly underestimating: a real, physical supply shortage that takes far longer to fix than anyone expects.

The Ceasefire Itself Is Fragile

The fragile ceasefire is likely to face significant challenges, with analysts citing a serious trust deficit on both sides. Iran’s own signals have been contradictory from the start — emphasizing the ceasefire was only temporary, with a statement reading: ‘This is not the end of the war.’ Within hours of the announcement, an Iranian semi-official news agency reported that traffic was suspended in the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, and the speaker of Iran’s parliament declared the US had violated the ceasefire.

Lloyd’s Market Association put it plainly: ‘Time will tell whether it is a pause or a peace but, in the meantime, it is highly unlikely that trade into the Gulf will simply resume. The region remains at heightened risk with none of the underlying tensions resolved.’

Opening the Strait and Restarting Production Are Two Different Things

Even assuming the ceasefire holds, investors expecting an immediate return of supply are making a serious analytical error. Reopening the strait and restarting production operate on completely different timelines — a point I made on This Week in Money on April 2.

As of Tuesday, 187 tankers laden with 172 million barrels of seaborne crude and refined oil products remained stranded inside the Gulf. It is worth noting that this trapped oil is priced off Brent — not WTI — which means the physical shortage is most acute in the international benchmark. If the Strait remains even partially closed, expect Brent to command a significant premium over WTI, because Brent is directly ‘short’ that Gulf supply in a way that the US domestic market is not.

That backlog will not clear overnight. Insurance underwriters must agree to cover ships transiting the region again. Vessels have to sail back into position. And every well must be carefully brought back online — one at a time.

There is also the matter of underground damage: oil wells that sit idle allow water to seep in, minerals to crystallize, and pressure balances to be disrupted — damage that can permanently reduce how much ever comes back.

Qatar’s LNG Is a Multi-Year Problem

The oil story gets the headlines, but the LNG story may be the more lasting wound. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex is the world’s largest LNG production facility and produces about 20% of the global LNG supply, playing a major role in balancing both Asian and European markets.

Missile strikes on March 18 and 19 reduced Qatar’s LNG export capacity by 17%, caused an estimated $20 billion in annual revenue losses, and the damage is expected to take up to five years to repair — forcing Qatar to declare long-term force majeure on some contracts. This is not a temporary disruption. It is a chunk of global energy supply that simply will not come back for years.

The Supply Overhang Nobody Is Talking About

Here is where the picture gets more complex — and more interesting for traders watching the forward curve rather than just flat prices.

Stripping away the price action and looking at volume alone makes the $95.30 battleground even clearer:

May WTI has returned almost exactly to its point of control — the most actively traded price over the past four weeks — at $95.30 per barrel. That level is now a battleground, defining where the most crowded trades are positioned as ceasefire news gets priced in and discounted in real time.

What happens next depends heavily on the sheer volume of oil that is now or will soon be available to market. Consider the pile-up: roughly 200 million barrels are trapped in ships behind the strait waiting to move. The IEA has authorized a record 400 million barrel emergency reserve release — the largest in its history — though much of that supply arrives slowly and unevenly. Add in hundreds of millions of barrels of unsanctioned oil in floating storage, and an estimated 300 million barrels sitting in onshore Saudi storage, and the total supply overhang could approach a billion barrels seeking buyers simultaneously.

That is not a bullish backdrop for prices in the near term.

Layer on top of that a looming market share battle — Gulf Cooperation Council producers and Saudi Arabia competing aggressively with Iran and Russia for Asian buyers, with Canada potentially also in the mix — and the downside pressure on prices becomes significant once logistics begin to normalize.

What the May/June Spread Is Telling Us

A note on benchmarks before explaining the spread — because the two markets are telling slightly different stories right now. WTI (NYMEX) reflects US storage conditions at Cushing, Oklahoma, and domestic supply balances. Brent (ICE) reflects the immediate global seaborne emergency — it is the more honest, real-time indicator of whether the world actually believes the Strait is reopening. When you see the Brent spread collapsing, that is the signal that matters most. WTI will follow, but Brent leads.

The May/June front spread has already collapsed more than 50% in a single session. For novice investors, here is what that means in plain language.

Oil trades not just as a single price today, but as a series of contracts for delivery in future months. The ‘spread’ between two consecutive months — in this case May and June delivery — reflects how urgently the market needs oil right now versus one month from now. When a crisis is acute, traders pay a steep premium for oil delivered immediately because supply is tight and every barrel today is precious. That premium — the gap between May and June prices — is what had been inflated by the war.

When that spread collapses by more than half in a morning, it is the market’s way of saying: ‘We think the emergency is easing. Supply is coming.’ It is not just war premium unwinding — it is the forward curve beginning to price in what a genuine supply restoration looks like. Think of it as the market’s first exhale.

For more advanced investors, the Brent/WTI spread is a trade in itself. If the ceasefire fails and the Strait remains closed, Brent will likely outperform WTI significantly as the spread widens — Brent is directly exposed to the physical shortage in a way WTI is not. If the ceasefire holds and Gulf oil begins flowing freely again, the spread should narrow as that supply floods back into seaborne markets. Watching that spread in the coming days will tell you more about what the market truly believes than any headline will.

The catch, of course, is that the market may be exhaling too soon.

What Investors Should Watch For

Most investors will get excited by the ceasefire headline and assume energy prices will fall — and they likely will, at first. But the actual physical production will not be back for months. And depending on underground damage sustained during the shutdown, some of that supply may never fully return.

The sequence to watch: the war risk premium falls first, oil prices drop, markets cheer. Then the realization sets in that the switch does not just flip back on — and prices find a floor, or climb again, driven by genuine physical shortage rather than fear.

Energy and commodity markets are likely to remain on a structurally higher floor regardless of the ceasefire outcome, as governments restock in anticipation of renewed conflict, keeping prices elevated well above pre-war levels.

For investors typically focused on flat prices, now is the time to be watching the curve — the flies, the Q4 spreads, and the structure of the forward market. That is where the real story is being told right now.

Technical levels to watch on the downside: $93 is the bottom of the parallel uptrend channel, then $81 and $75 as next targets — before the market eventually confronts the reality that a billion barrels of pent-up supply does not solve a multi-year infrastructure repair problem. At that point, the trade reverses.

WTI vs. Brent — A Quick Cheat Sheet

The Brent/WTI spread is the single best real-time indicator of whether the market truly believes the Strait of Hormuz is reopening. Watch it closely.