Hormuz price decouples from flow: Brent lost $9.50 in 5 sessions, regained $4.06 on 23 September; 3 ships in the strait, US stocks up 2.97 million barrels

Five sessions down, one session back

According to Investing.com's historical table, after closing at $108.75 on 15 September, Brent futures fell for 5 consecutive sessions on 16, 17, 18, 21 and 22 September: $105.83, $104.82, $103.87, $100.34 and $99.25. The total loss was $9.50, or 8.74%. On 23 September the price swung within a $5.93 band between $97.93 and $103.86 and closed 4.09% higher at $103.31; the gain of $4.06 is about 43% of the five-day loss. Data providers diverge on the close: TradingEconomics gives $102.92 for the same day, up 3.86%, while Fortune recorded the price at $102.03, up 2.78%, at 10.00 US Eastern Time.

The rationale for the fall was expectational, not physical: on 22 September news of Iran's 7-day reopening offer and a 3-hour meeting with the US pushed the price below $100; that part was covered in our 23 September report on the two channels in Hormuz. This report asks a different question: while the price fell 8.74%, had the numbers coming from the strait, the pipeline and inventories really eased that much? The 3 data sets below show that the $4.06 rebound on 23 September was a correction of expectations having run ahead of physical flow.

7 conditions on the table, 3 ships in the strait

According to a 23 September report in the state-aligned Kayhan, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran has 7 conditions and that the strait will not reopen unless the US implements them first; reports on 22 September referred to 3 conditions, and whether the 3 are a subset of the 7 could not be verified. According to TradingEconomics, President Pezeshkian also told the UN on 23 September that Tehran will not negotiate under pressure. At around 06.30 UTC that morning the bulk carrier Cape Dao was struck 2.5 nautical miles off the Musandam coast; according to gCaptain, the IMO counts 83 incidents and 23 seafarer deaths since 28 February.

On the count side, according to a Reuters report published by Baird Maritime at 09.45 UTC on 23 September, Kpler data show 3 commodity vessels transited the strait on 22 September, all outbound, one of them a Panamax tanker; the figure for 21 September was 4, and the 10-day average about 15. There is a contradiction here that we must be transparent about: in our 22 September entry, relying on preliminary Kpler data also relayed by Baird Maritime, we reported 2 ships for 21 September. The same source chain gives 2 and 4 for the same day, one day apart; Reuters also notes that figures may change because of vessels that switch off their transponders. Which figure is definitive could not be verified; both are below 4% of the pre-war baseline of about 125.

The exit gate on the Red Sea side is not fully open either: according to the same Reuters data, 22 commodity vessels transited Bab el-Mandeb on 22 September, against a 10-day average of about 26. Because every Saudi cargo from Yanbu to Asia has to pass through this gate, the 1,200 km bypass depends on a second chokepoint.

The bypass: how much can the 1,200 km line carry

According to The National, the 1,200 km East-West pipeline, shut by the drone strikes of 13 September, was restarted on 22 September. According to sources cited by Hydrocarbon Processing, the line is pumping at low throughput, full recovery may take weeks, and the target is 4 million barrels a day, equivalent to about 4% of global supply; 1 cargo bound for China was due to load at Yanbu on 22 September. Aramco gave no timetable; the line's throughput after 22 September appears in no open source as a figure and could not be verified.

During the 9 days the line was shut, Saudi Arabia shifted its loadings to the Gulf: according to The National, 7 supertankers with a combined capacity of 14 million barrels loaded at Gulf terminals by the weekend, and according to the Reuters data cited in our previous report, Saudi oil flowed through Hormuz at an average of 2.9 million barrels a day over 6 days. This explains why visible ship counts and physical flow diverge, but not enough to justify the 22 September price fall: the 4 million barrel line is at low throughput, a significant share of cargoes crossing Hormuz are outside AIS, and both routes have been attacked at least once in the last 11 days. According to Hydrocarbon Processing, traders positioning tankers for ship-to-ship transfers at 2 ports in Egypt, Port Said and Sidi Kerir, suggests that part of the Yanbu volume will head to the Mediterranean.

Why US stocks could not stop the price

According to the EIA's weekly table published on 23 September, commercial crude stocks rose 2.969 million barrels to 426.4 million in the week to 18 September. According to TradingEconomics, the market had expected a 0.6 million barrel draw, while the API had reported a 1.8 million barrel build. The composition of the build matters: crude exports fell from 4.831 million to 3.281 million barrels a day, a drop of 1.55 million barrels a day; imports fell by 1.181 million barrels a day and net imports rose by 369 thousand barrels a day. Spread over the week, this gap comes to about 2.6 million barrels, close to the size of the stock build. Refinery runs also fell by 519 thousand barrels a day, utilisation dropped 2.8 points to 94%, and stocks at Cushing rose 2.27 million barrels to 23.7 million.

In other words, the 2.97 million barrels are not global abundance but barrels left in the US's own ports. The price read it that way too: according to TradingEconomics, WTI rose only 1.81% to $92.26 on 23 September while Brent rose 4.09%; the 2.28-point gap between the two benchmarks shows that the stock data weighed on the local price without touching the international benchmark. The buffer's lifespan is also limited: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stands at 284.6 million barrels, 121.4 million barrels, or 29.9%, below the 406.0 million of a year earlier; commercial stocks are only 11.6 million barrels, 2.8%, above a year ago. Because weekly export data are volatile, whether the 1.55 million barrel drop is a one-week deviation or a trend will become clear in the next 2 reports.

Türkiye: the path from price to bill

According to Endeks24, citing Trade Ministry data, Türkiye's foreign trade deficit in August 2026 rose 22.3% year on year to 5.24 billion dollars, and the January-August deficit rose 9.3% to 65.8 billion dollars. The export-to-import coverage ratio stood at 81.8% in August and 98.8% excluding energy; in other words, the energy item carries most of the deficit. According to Fortune, Brent on the morning of 23 September was 50.37% higher than a year earlier; the $4.06 between the $99.25 close on 22 September and $103.31 on 23 September is large enough to make a direct difference to Türkiye's September and October bill.

The currency and reserves side shows that the capacity to absorb this price is narrowing: according to our 23 September entry, the dollar hit a record 48.84 lira, and according to market calculations the CBRT's gross reserves fell by 13.9 billion dollars over 4 weeks to 174.5 billion dollars; official data are due on 24 September. Had Brent's 5-day fall held, the first relief to the energy bill would have shown up in October data; the 23 September rebound took back at least 43% of that relief in a single day.