Brent is trading around $96.11 a barrel on Friday, up about 0.6% on the day, roughly 9% on the week and about 21% on the month, per Trading Economics. WTI is at $91.98, up 0.75% on the day and 48.7% over the past year. CNBC had Brent at $96.20 on Thursday after it briefly punched through $97 intraday.

Two separate things are doing the work here, and they're worth keeping apart.

One: the shooting is spreading to the Gulf states. Kuwait's armed forces said they were intercepting incoming Iranian missiles and drones this week — Iran is now hitting US allies around the Gulf, not just trading blows with the US directly. That's a different risk than strikes on Iran itself, because it puts the export infrastructure of countries that actually ship a lot of oil inside the blast radius.

Two: the Strait of Hormuz is only working because a navy is escorting it. CNBC reports 17 million barrels moved through the Strait on Monday under US military protection — described as a wartime record, and still short of the roughly 20 million barrels a day of crude and products that used to transit before the conflict. So the "good news" number is a convoy operation running about 3 million barrels a day below normal. That gap is the risk premium you're looking at.

Who actually eats this

India, more than most. EY's latest count puts India's crude import dependence at 90.4% in FY26, up from 55% in FY99 — domestic output has shrunk to 26.0 MMT while consumption has grown to 243.2 MMT. That's not a sentiment story: it's a direct input-cost line for the state refiners, IOC, BPCL and HPCL, who buy crude at import parity and then have to decide whether to hold pump prices or protect marketing margins. A 21% move in a month is the kind of number that forces that choice.

What flips it: Trump said this week he doesn't think the conflict "will be very much longer." If that turns into an actual ceasefire or a normalised Hormuz, the escort premium unwinds fast. Watch two things — whether Strait transits climb back toward the pre-war 20 million barrels a day, and whether Brent holds $90. Lose $90 and this month's move is mostly gone.

As of 09:50 IST, 4 Sep 2026. Sources: Trading Economics — Brent, Trading Economics — WTI, CNBC, EY India. For discussion and education only — not investment advice. Verify before acting.