Published on 6/27/2026
Oil prices fell by about 3% on Friday and are heading to incur sharp weekly losses as concerns about supplies recede thanks to the exit of more stranded oil tankers from the Strait of Hormuz, while major banks reduced their expectations for oil prices in the coming period.
By 12:00 GMT Friday, Brent crude futures fell $2.50, or 3.32%, to $72.76 per barrel, and US West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell $2.15, or 2.99%, to $69.77 per barrel.
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Brent crude is heading to record a weekly decline of about 9.7%, while West Texas Intermediate crude is trading at a decline of about 8.9% from the settlement price last Thursday before the market closed last Friday on the occasion of an official holiday.
Imminent oversupply
“The prevailing expectation still seems to point to an imminent oversupply,” analyst Tamas Varga of BVM told Reuters.
Shipping data from the London Stock Exchange Group showed that Saudi Aramco resumed loading oil at the port of Ras Tanura in the Gulf on Friday after a pause that lasted nearly four months.
The data reported that two giant crude tankers belonging to the Saudi Bahri Shipping Company were seen being loaded with crude oil at the port. The capacity of each tanker of this type is two million barrels of oil.
“There is a general selling wave in the market as it reacts to the increase in flows out of the Strait of Hormuz, at a time when China has not yet begun to increase demand for crude,” June Goh, senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities, told Reuters.
The two crude oil standards increased by more than 2% each Thursday after an unidentified object hit a ship near Oman, prompting the United Nations International Maritime Organization to suspend a voluntary evacuation program.
On Friday, Iran stressed again its right to control navigation through the strait. Data showed yesterday that shipments of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz rose this week to their highest level since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28.
“If the number of transit flights does not increase significantly next week as well, doubts in the market are likely to increase, which could lead to a rise in oil prices again,” Commerzbank analysts told Reuters on Friday.
Banks reduce their expectations for the price of oil
In the same context, Barclays Bank reduced its expectations for Brent crude prices to $96 per barrel for the year 2026 and to $85 for the year 2027, after it was 100 for the current year and 88 for the next, indicating a recovery in oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Barclays Bank indicated that oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have recovered strongly to reach about 80% of pre-war levels. However, the return to normal is not yet complete.
Other banks reduced their expectations for Brent crude prices as follows:
- UBS lowered its forecast for the price of Brent crude to $85 per barrel at the end of September, from $105 per barrel, and said that the recovery in oil production after the Iran war is likely to be slower than the market expects.
- JP Morgan expects the average price of Brent crude to reach $86 per barrel in the third quarter of 2026 and $80 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2026.
- Bank of America said that fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz could lead to the average price of Brent crude reaching $82 per barrel this year, compared to its previous forecast of $93 per barrel.
- Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast for the price of Brent crude in the fourth quarter from $90 to $80, and lowered its estimate for the average price in 2027 from $80 to $75.
- Morgan Stanley reduced its expectations for the fourth quarter of this year by $15 per barrel to $80, and lowered its expectations for the third quarter to $90 from $100 before that.
