International credit rating agency Fitch Ratings has upwardly revised its assumptions for global oil prices for 2026 and 2027, sort of yes. This change comes from the higher view that the Strait of Hormuz will stay effectively closed for longer than first thought, because the geopolitical tensions with Iran are still ongoing.
Earlier assessments were banking on a short disturbance, about one to two months. But now analysts look at it, and they estimate that this important shipping corridor could be shut for something like five months. With this new schedule, a soft reopening of the strait isn’t expected to really start until around July 2026.
Prolonged Hormuz Closure Shifts Price Projections
The Strait of Hormuz is a crucial artery for the global energy market. Historically, it moves something like 15 million barrels of crude oil and 5 million barrels of petroleum products each day, or at least that’s the usual ballpark. That big throughput makes up roughly 20% of the world’s total daily oil consumption, so if there is any long closure, then it’s basically a big deal everywhere.
Because of this bottleneck, Fitch thinks the price of Brent crude will hover around $100 to $110 per barrel from May into July. Still, they expect a fast correction once the shipping lines can resume, so it could slip back toward about $70 per barrel by September, you know, after the initial shock.
Overall, the agency has nudged up its average oil price forecast for 2026 from $70 to $87 per barrel. For 2027, the baseline view is also a touch higher, going from $63 up to $65 per barrel.
Supply Adaptations and Global Inventories Buffer Impact
Fitch says that since the regional energy infrastructure has so far avoided any material damage, oil output should come back to near-normal levels, within a few weeks after the strait is reopened. And, to make up for the volumes lost during the blockade, OPEC is expected to ramp up supply almost to its top limit, using the pre-conflict spare capacity of 3.6 million barrels per day or so.
At the same time, non-OPEC countries are likely to push more crude into the market by around 3 million barrels per day. Based on EIA-tracked data trends, a combined 1.2 million barrels should come from the United States and Latin America, while the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Venezuela will add another 1 million barrels.
A tougher worldwide shortage is then softened by the fact that large crude reserves were already built up before the fighting. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global oil inventories were at 8.2 billion barrels in January 2026, meaning, in theory, they could replace Hormuz transits for more than a year. China alone keeps about 1.2 billion barrels in storage, so it has a kind of separate buffer, sufficient to maintain its import requirements for over eight months.
