Worried about petrol prices spiking again? There’s some relief on the way — oil just took a nosedive as tankers finally start moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Here’s the lowdown from cbinews.tv:

Oil prices slipped by 2% early Friday, 26 June 2026, and they’re on track for a pretty rough week overall. Why the drop? Well, those supply worries we’ve all been hearing about are finally easing up. Stranded tankers are now moving out of the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s calming the market down.

Brent crude fell $1.47, or 1.95%, to $73.79 a barrel as of 0421 GMT. Over in the US, West Texas Intermediate dropped $1.44, or 2%, landing at $70.48 a barrel.

Big news driving this: Saudi Aramco restarted oil loading on Friday at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf. That’s after a near four-month pause, according to shipping data from LSEG. Two Very Large Crude Carriers were spotted loading up, with another one waiting its turn. And just so you know — each VLCC can carry 2 million barrels. That’s a lot of oil back in play.

“There’s a general selloff as the market reacts to the increased flows exiting the Strait of Hormuz and China not yet picking up crude demand,” June Goh, senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities said

It’s been a bumpy week though. Both benchmarks actually jumped more than 2% on Thursday after a cargo vessel got hit by an unknown projectile near Oman. The UN’s shipping agency even suspended its voluntary evacuation scheme after that. Two US officials told Reuters that Iran fired on the cargo ship as it tried to pass through the strait. Iranian authorities have since said the security of vessels passing outside designated Hormuz routes isn’t guaranteed.

Still, the bigger picture this week? Brent and WTI are both heading for losses of around 8%.

Data out Thursday showed crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz climbed to their highest level since the US-Israeli conflict with Iran kicked off in February. A ceasefire deal reopened the waterway, and concerns over how long it’d stay open boosted trade. But don’t get too excited — overall traffic is still just a fraction of the 125 ships per day average we saw before the 28 February conflict began.

“Much of the increase reflects previously stranded vessels leaving the Persian Gulf. Vessel flows into the Gulf remain much more modest. It suggests that once stranded vessels have moved out, we could see a pullback in flows,” ING analysts said in a statement to cbinews.tv.

Source: cbinews.tv

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