Brent crude has collapsed from a wartime peak near $126 per barrel to roughly $72.45, a decline so steep it implies the market has already priced in a full return to pre-conflict normalcy. Three commodity strategists warned Monday that the assumption is dangerously premature. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains far below pre-war volumes, insurance premiums are still elevated, and Iran’s grip on the chokepoint has structurally changed in ways the oil market has not yet absorbed.

Oil’s plunge toward pre-war prices assumes a supply normalization that hasn’t happened and may not happen for months. The Strait of Hormuz is open on paper but functionally impaired, and the market may be underpricing the gap between diplomatic sentiment and physical barrels.

The warnings came from Nikos Petrakakos of Tufton Investment Management, Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects, and Aldo Spanjer of BNP Paribas Markets 360, all speaking on CNBC programs Monday. Their collective message was blunt: the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is fragile, the logistics of reopening a major energy artery are grinding, and the oil market has moved as if the problem is already solved.

A Chokepoint That Isn’t Functioning

The Strait of Hormuz carried roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil supply before the conflict. That flow was severely disrupted during the war, and the disruption has not meaningfully reversed despite the ceasefire. CNBC reported that shipping companies remain deeply reluctant to resume normal transits, citing uncertainty over the peace framework, the presence of sea mines, elevated war-risk insurance premiums, and sanctions exposure.

“Even though there is some more motion going on, in general, we’re nowhere near being back to where it was,” Petrakakos said on CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition.”

Sen was equally direct:

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“Shipping costs are incredibly high right now, and you still can’t find enough shippers willing to go back out in there.”

The physical evidence supports that assessment. The New York Post reported that between March 1 and May 19, some 895 ships crossed the Strait, but at least 358 employed “go dark” shadow fleet tactics by disabling their AIS transponders. The share of outbound tankers going dark surged from 37% in the first month of the conflict to 65% by May. Analytics firm Vortexa described the shift as evidence that “AIS-off behaviour is becoming an accepted operating protocol, not an exceptional measure.”

That is not a functioning chokepoint. That is a workaround masquerading as normalization.

Insurance, Mines, and the Long Road Back

Petrakakos flagged insurance as one of the binding constraints. War-risk premiums remain elevated, and he estimated that insurers will need months of demonstrated stability before they begin to move.

“They really will need to see that this is not just an agreement on paper. They’ll need to see that this is being implemented and actually staying together for a while before we see full normalization of traffic and reduction of premiums.”

He drew a parallel to the Red Sea, where Houthi attacks created a similar insurance overhang that took extended time to resolve. The Hormuz situation, he argued, carries even more complexity because of the formal sanctions regime surrounding Iran. Companies that coordinate directly with Iranian authorities risk future penalties. Petrakakos called it a “slippery slope” and noted that formal coordination with Iran on shipping “is not happening.”

The logistical obstacles extend well beyond insurance. As AP News detailed, analysts estimate mine clearance alone could take six months, with vessels leaving and reloading requiring two to three months and production restarts to prewar levels needing another three months. Approximately 500 commercial vessels remain trapped in the Persian Gulf. Joachim Nagel, head of Germany’s Bundesbank, stated plainly: “It will take months for the oil supply to return to normal.”

Rystad Energy’s chief economist, Claudio Galimberti, offered a useful distinction in the AP report: “Sentiment has clearly improved. But sentiment is not the same as supply.”

Iran’s Changed Position

Beyond the logistics, Petrakakos raised a structural concern that may outlast the current ceasefire cycle. Before the conflict, Iran had little practical control over Strait traffic. That has changed.

“Before this war, Iran really had no power or say over what goes through the Strait of Hormuz. That is a status quo that’s changed going forward. I don’t see Iran going back to where it was before.”

He described Iran’s apparent ambition as establishing “some sort of coordination… pretending as if it’s some sort of canal like the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal, and try to have some control over how the vessels pass through.” Sen reinforced the point, saying Iran “is using its leverage aggressively to make the point that they are the ones that will control shipping, especially through that southern lane.” She added that Western companies are “simply not going to be allowed to pay that toll,” and that Gulf Cooperation Council nations would find such a mechanism unacceptable.

As we noted when oil initially dropped 5% on the U.S.-Iran deal, the market moved fast on headline optimism while the physical supply chain barely budged.

Spanjer offered a slightly more sanguine base case, suggesting Iran could eventually relinquish formal control of the Strait if it found alternative income streams. “The toll system is about income. You can do that in a different way,” he said. Sen noted that Tehran needs to repatriate funds for post-war reconstruction, which could create incentive for compromise. But “could” and “will” remain very different words in a region where agreements on paper have a poor track record of surviving contact with reality.

The Inventory Problem

Spanjer also pointed to a supply-demand dynamic that the headline price decline obscures. Global inventories were drawn down sharply during the conflict, and every importing nation now has a strong incentive to rebuild stocks.

“The narrative that’s come into the market is: ‘How are we going to backfill all the stocks we’ve taken out?’ Every importer in the world is going to build higher stocks.”

Middle East oil losses escalated far more sharply than early estimates suggested: the International Energy Agency reported more than 14 million barrels per day of Gulf oil production shut in by May, with cumulative supply losses from Middle East producers exceeding 1 billion barrels since the conflict began. That kind of sustained drawdown does not reverse overnight.

Spanjer’s year-end price target sits at $80 per barrel, with a 2027 range of $75 to $85. His logic: enough absorption capacity exists for returning barrels to support a rebound from current levels, but not enough to push prices dramatically higher. “I can’t be above $85 because who’s going to fill stocks above $85? I don’t really want to be below $75 because there’s still a lot of opportunistic buying in the market.”

That implies the current price near $72 may already reflect overshoot to the downside. The earlier crash below $80 when the peace deal was announced, which we covered in detail, showed how quickly sentiment can outrun supply fundamentals.

What Metals Investors Should Watch

For gold and silver holders, the oil story matters on multiple levels. Energy prices feed directly into inflation expectations, and the gap between market-implied calm and physical-supply stress creates the kind of mismatch that can produce sharp reversals. A sudden re-pricing of oil risk would ripple through inflation breakevens, real yields, and the dollar.

The broader pattern is familiar to metals investors: markets price in the best-case scenario on headlines, then slowly reprice as the logistics, politics, and plumbing reassert themselves. The ceasefire is real. The sentiment shift is real. But roughly 500 ships remain trapped in the Persian Gulf, three-quarters of them stationary, as Breitbart reported, with tanker company executives warning that a full return to pre-war traffic will take weeks to months.

The oil market’s current posture assumes a smooth glide path back to normalcy. That assumption depends on mine clearance, insurance normalization, sanctions clarity, Iranian cooperation, and a ceasefire that holds. Any one of those could stall.

If Spanjer’s range-bound thesis proves correct, the inflationary impulse from energy may moderate but not vanish. If the optimists are wrong and supply normalization stalls, the repricing could be abrupt. Either way, the inventory rebuild cycle Spanjer described will keep demand for physical barrels elevated for quarters, not weeks.

The easy trade in oil may already be behind us, as we noted previously. What remains is the harder question of whether the world’s most important energy chokepoint actually functions again, or merely looks like it does on a price chart.

Key Risks to Monitor

  • Insurance premium normalization timeline: Petrakakos estimates months, not weeks
  • Mine clearance in the Strait: analysts cited by AP estimate up to six months
  • Iran’s leverage over southern shipping lanes and toll ambitions
  • Sanctions exposure for companies coordinating with Tehran
  • Global inventory rebuild demand keeping physical markets tighter than futures suggest

When the price of oil falls more than 40% from its peak while the chokepoint that caused the spike is still functionally impaired, the market is making a bet. It may be right. But the gap between what the price says and what the shipping lanes show is wide enough to matter, and that kind of gap tends to close in one direction or the other without much warning.