#夏日创作营 The ceasefire agreement has become paper waste, and oil prices surged 16% in a single week! The Strait of Hormuz is replaying history, but this time Saudi Arabia kept a fallback plan

This week, the crude oil market went through a sharp repricing triggered by a geopolitical powder keg. Brent crude saw a dramatic weekly jump of about 16%, closing at $88.08 and reaching a new high in more than a month, marking a third consecutive week of gains. U.S. crude surged in tandem, closing at $81.77, with a notably strong weekly increase. The driver of this move was not a slow evolution in supply-and-demand fundamentals, but the rapid escalation—faster than the market expected—in the intensity and frequency of military strikes by both sides after the Iran-U.S. ceasefire agreement collapsed. As airstrikes stretched from night into daylight, and as retaliatory targets expanded from military facilities to power plants and seawater desalination plants, crude oil pricing logic abruptly shifted from stock and demand expectations to a risk-premium model rooted in supply disruption. What also unsettled the market was that tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen sharply, and Iran’s urging of the Houthis—“if power facilities are attacked, they will block the Red Sea”—has pushed this alternative route onto the front line as well.

Brent crude: pushing toward the upper band of the Bollinger band; technicals confirm a strong rebound
This week’s Brent crude price action shows a typical V-shaped reversal. After a historic peak at $119.45 in March 2026, oil prices underwent a deep pullback lasting several months, with a low around $70.13. After support was confirmed near the $70 level recently, rebound momentum quickly built up; this week, the move accelerated upward. The current price at $88.08 is already approaching the upper Bollinger band at $88.54.

On the technical indicators front, the Bollinger midline is at 78.15, and the current price is far above the midline, placing it in a strong zone. The MACD histogram is positive in red at 4.71, and the DIFF line has crossed above the DEA line, forming a clear “golden cross” signal, with bullish momentum continuing to strengthen. The price pattern suggests this rebound has technical and news-driven resonance support, but it will also directly face technical suppression at the upper Bollinger band of $88.54. Given the massive drop from $119.45 to $70.13 earlier, the current level sits in the key Fibonacci retracement region of that downleg; the tug-of-war here will determine whether the rebound can upgrade into a trend reversal.

WTI crude: breaking out in sync; speculative capital accelerates in
WTI crude has moved highly in line with Brent. After topping out at $119.48, it fell all the way to $67.04; this week it rebounded strongly to $81.77. From a technical structure perspective, the current price lies between the Bollinger midline at 74.30 and the upper band at 83.73, leaving about $2 of room before the upper band. Compared with Brent, technical pressure is slightly lighter. The MACD red histogram continues to expand; the DIFF line crosses upward over the DEA, and the golden cross signal is equally clear, indicating good continuity for the rebound trend.

Flows data provides key confirmation. Based on data released by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Friday, for the week ended July 14, speculators increased their net long position in WTI crude oil futures and options by 4,379 contracts to 70,059 contracts. A well-known foreign media outlet reported that this figure does not yet include the portion of NYMEX financial crude oil futures contracts that are usually included in the statistics, because that data was not provided this week; therefore, the actual increase in net speculative longs could be more significant than the book number. The marginal change in the position structure sends a signal: amid the persistent expansion of geopolitical risk premia, capital is shifting from waiting to betting, even though the overall net long size still remains at a historically neutral-to-low level.

Geopolitical catalyst: Hormuz constrained; Red Sea threat hangs overhead
The core driver behind this week’s oil price move comes from a full-scale escalation of the U.S.-Iran conflict. A detailed report by a well-known foreign media outlet outlines a clear escalation chain: after the ceasefire agreement broke down, the U.S. carried out strikes on bridges and airports inside Iran. Tehran, in retaliation, attacked Kuwait’s power plants and seawater desalination plants and said it had launched its first direct strike on U.S. facilities inside Syria. Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, commented that the market is reacting to increasingly intensified hostilities; if more tankers are attacked and damaged, oil prices will keep rising because shipowners simply do not want to sail into the Persian Gulf.

Changes in shipping traffic provide real-world support for the above assessment. Before the conflict broke out, about 20% of global oil supply passed through the Strait of Hormuz; now that figure has fallen significantly. At the same time, Iran has urged the Houthis to block Red Sea shipping lanes if the U.S. attacks its power infrastructure. Tamas Varga, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates, said in a report that this threat hits the key point—Saudi Arabia has diverted most exports via the east-west oil pipelines to the Red Sea port of Yanbu to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Data shows that crude shipments from Yanbu have jumped from about 973k barrels per day in the same period last year to roughly 4.0 million barrels per day recently, carrying more than 70% of Saudi Arabia’s normal export volume. This means that if the Red Sea route is truly disrupted, Saudi Arabia’s alternative export path would also face risk, and the buffer space for global crude supply would be severely compressed.

Notably, in another conflict zone, the Ukrainian military said Thursday it struck Russian refineries in the Yaroslavl region. While this incident has not yet shown marginal impact on oil prices, the parallel build-up of multiple geopolitical signals is creating a highly fragile supply environment.

This week’s surge in oil prices is, at its core, a concentrated release of a geopolitical risk premium. In the oversold zone around $70, short-covering and an increase in speculative long positions have combined forces, pushing prices toward technical resistance near the upper Bollinger band. In the short term, the intensity of the U.S.-Iran conflict remains the only key variable determining oil prices. If the threat of Red Sea shipping disruption evolves from verbal warnings into actual action, it is not impossible for Brent to challenge the upper band—even to break above it. Conversely, if both sides release a restraint signal at some point, the premium piled up due to panic would face rapid compression. The incremental net longs revealed by CFTC position data are still moderate, which may suggest that some capital is still waiting for a clearer entry signal—either for Hormuz to truly shut down, or for Yanbu to be pulled into the risk zone. Until supply routes are not fully blocked, every surge in oil prices will implicitly contain the possibility of a pullback. $XTIUSD ‌