Brent Crude Tops $108 as Saudi Output Sinks to Lowest Since 1990 and Tanker Rates Hit Record $800,000 a Day

Since the U.S.-Iran shooting war reignited earlier this month, the fight has moved from missiles and warships onto the balance sheets of every driver filling up a tank. Brent crude, the global benchmark, closed at $101.21 a barrel on Wednesday, September 9, its first close above $100 since July, according to CNN. By Friday morning, September 11, Brent futures were changing hands near $108.68 and WTI near $103.45, according to Angel One, with both benchmarks up more than 6% on Thursday alone and roughly 13% for the week, the strongest weekly gain since mid-July.

Trading Economics reported crude slipped back to around $101 on Friday in what it called a likely technical correction, but the broader trend for the week is unmistakably up. Brent and WTI are both up more than 65% for the year, per CNN.

Saudi Arabia's Output Collapses

The most concrete number in this story isn't a futures price. It's Saudi Arabia's own production data. Riyadh told OPEC that its crude output fell 1.9 million barrels a day in August to 6.238 million barrels a day, according to a communication obtained by Bloomberg and reported by Energy News Beat. That's the lowest level Saudi Arabia has reported since 1990, at the start of the Gulf War.

Saudi Arabia attributed the drop directly to renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities squeezing its export routes, per that same Energy News Beat report. Secondary trackers, including Bloomberg's own survey, put actual Saudi output closer to 6.9 to 7.3 million barrels a day, a reminder that self-reported OPEC figures and independent estimates don't always match. But the official number is the one that matters for OPEC quota math, and Riyadh is telling the cartel it can't move its own barrels.

OPEC as a group saw output fall 640,000 barrels a day in August, according to a Reuters survey cited by Interactive Brokers and Trading Economics. That's happening even as OPEC+ had been raising official production targets to unwind 2023 voluntary cuts. The paper quotas don't matter if the tankers can't load.

Shipping Costs Go Vertical

The supply problem isn't that oil ran out. It's that shipping it out of the Persian Gulf has become dramatically more expensive and dangerous. The daily rate to charter a very large crude carrier (VLCC) from the Middle East to China hit an all-time high of nearly $800,000, according to Bloomberg data cited by ZeroHedge. A supertanker run from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Asia now costs a lump-sum fee of $29.5 million, before war-risk insurance and delay costs.

Shipbroker Fearnleys wrote in its weekly report for the week ended September 9 that the market is so tight nobody would be shocked to see rates blow past even those record levels for prompt Gulf-to-East routes. Equinor's global head of crude trading, Alex Grant, told Bloomberg at the APPEC conference in Singapore that "the market is quite stressed" with multiple bottlenecks hitting at once.

Data firm Kpler forecasts VLCC daily earnings will stay above $100,000 a day into next year, more than double historic levels, according to reporting aggregated by Ground News. That's not a spike. That's a new baseline.

The Military Backdrop

The shipping panic traces directly to specific attacks. CNN reported U.S. Central Command struck four Iranian tankers in the Gulf of Oman and one near Kharg Island on Tuesday, September 8, after Iran attempted a ballistic missile strike on a U.S. Navy warship. Angel One reported that Iran then said it hit 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday after the U.S. struck five more Iranian tankers. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned of a stronger response to any further U.S. attacks, per Angel One.

Houthi forces, aligned with Iran, struck Saudi energy infrastructure this week and seized Yemen's port of Mocha on Thursday, according to Angel One, widening the conflict's footprint over the Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb Strait on top of the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump has warned the U.S. could target Iran's Pickaxe Mountain site near the damaged Natanz enrichment facility, Angel One reported.

Trading Economics reported that top White House advisers have discussed with Trump the possibility the war could drag on beyond the end of his current term in January 2029. Iranian leaders are reportedly determined to keep fighting despite the economic toll, viewing the conflict as existential, per that same report.

The Counterargument, and the Bill at the Pump

Skeptics of the crisis framing have a fair point. Friday's pullback to around $101 shows the market isn't in freefall, and the EIA actually raised its forecast for 2027 U.S. crude production to 14.3 million barrels a day, according to Trading Economics, a sign American shale can eventually fill some of the gap. OPEC itself has cut its 2026 global demand growth forecast to just 380,000 barrels a day, its fifth straight downward revision, suggesting weaker demand could cap how high prices climb.

But that's a longer-term offset, not an answer for this week's bill. GasBuddy data cited by Angel One shows the U.S. national average diesel price crossed $6 a gallon for the first time. CNN reported the average gasoline price jumped 7.3 cents in a single day on Wednesday, the biggest one-day increase since May 1. The IEA also cut its 2026 forecast for Russian crude output by 125,000 barrels a day to 8.7 million, citing continued Ukrainian strikes on refineries, another supply line getting squeezed at the same time as the Gulf.

The open question heading into next week is whether China keeps buying at its current pace. Analysts told Interactive Brokers that if the world's largest crude importer stays firm, any new Gulf shipping disruption has a faster path into even higher prices at the pump.