Cease-What?

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me. 

But this time, NOBODY was fooled. 

I’ll admit the moment I started seeing rumors of a ceasefire before President Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline on Tuesday, there was the small glimmer of hope that it was true. 

Then reality quickly set in. 

All you had to do was take a look at each side’s non-negotiables to understand that any ceasefire news was doomed. Each one of conditions in Iran’s 10-point peace plan were hard red lines for the Trump administration. 

Put them side by side and then ask how a ceasefire was even announced. 

The U.S. wants the Strait of Hormuz wide open. Iran expects to retain control and decide which tankers get through the choke point. 

Iran assumes they would have the right to enrich uranium. President Trump insists that’s a big NO. 

You get the idea… yet somehow a ceasefire was praised publicly, with each side claiming victory. 

Soon, the bombs started falling once again, and now the oil market is entering the next stage of this global energy crisis. 

Cease-What?

Perhaps the biggest surprise was seeing how everyone reacted.

Tuesday night, Trump announced a two-week pause with Iran. 

Markets immediately went wild as oil prices crashed 15%. WTI fell from $113/bbl to below $95/bbl; Brent dropped from $109/bbl to $95/bbl. 

But hey, I’m sure more than a few of you were willing to overlook the glaring hypocrisies from each side’s demands if it meant stock futures would rip higher. 

The S&P jumped 2% after hours, and everyone thought the worst was over.

Well, if you went to sleep with a smile and hoped that peace would rule the day when you woke up, I have some bad news for you…

The ceasefire lasted four hours. By Wednesday morning, the whole thing had fallen apart.

Israel hit Lebanon with the biggest airstrike wave since the war started as 50 of their fighter jets targeted over a hundred targets and Beirut’s southern suburbs went up in flames. 

The Lebanese Red Cross counted 254 dead within hours.

So what about the ceasefire, you ask? Netanyahu insisted that Israel’s attacks in Lebanon were separate… despite clearly being one of Iran’s demands in their 10-point plan. 

So much for that.

Then Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz — again. 

The two tankers that squeezed through Wednesday morning were the last ones to trickle out, and yesterday traffic was at its lowest since the initial closure. 

Then the Saudis took a hit.

Right around 1:00 p.m. local time, an Iranian drone slammed into a pumping station on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline — the 1,200-kilometer artery that moves crude from the Gulf to the Red Sea, the only route that bypasses Hormuz. That pipeline has been Saudi Arabia’s lifeline since the Strait was closed. 

Of course, we couldn’t restrain ourselves after all of that and launched our own strikes targeting Iranian positions after attacks hit Gulf allies.

We’re talking LESS THAN 24 hours after the ceasefire was being praised as the end to this bloody conflict before everyone violated it. 

This isn’t just a failure at peace negotiations. 

We’re actively moving backwards in this war. 

What Comes Next Is the Real Oil Shock

Oil markets believed the ceasefire story Tuesday night — hook, line, and sinker. 

Yesterday, reality showed back up.

Here’s the problem… 

Nearly 11 million barrels per day of production is still shut in. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain — they collectively idled 7.5 million bpd in March.

That number went higher in April, and none of it’s coming back anytime soon.

The Strait of Hormuz normally handles 20 million barrels per day. 

That’s roughly 20% of all seaborne oil globally, right? 

Only about a dozen or so tankers got through during the ceasefire window before Iran shut it down again after Israel hit Lebanon. 

Stop for a moment, sit back, and think about whether or not the Saudis will EVER be exploited with a toll to get its exports past the Strait.  

Spoiler: They won’t. 

And now the East-West Pipeline — Saudi Arabia’s backup plan to route oil around Hormuz — just ate a drone strike. Even if the damage is minor and it keeps pumping, the message landed: Iran can reach it whenever they want.

WTI and Brent crude are up around 40% since hostilities broke out. 

The war premium compressed from around $14 per barrel down to maybe $4–$6 — now watch how fast that gap closes when these negotiations blow up.

The worst part is that the longer this goes, the uglier the supply situation gets. 

You don’t just restart 11 million barrels per day overnight. Wells need to come back online. Infrastructure needs checks and crews need deployment. 

Best case, you’re looking at weeks, but it’s more likely months. 

And that’s after a deal gets done.

Forget the fact that the tankers that are already filled up and trapped there will take a few weeks to get to their destinations and start the journey back for a refill — that’s almost another month or two before shipments are back to reload. 

Always keep in mind that production can’t ramp up again until those storage tanks are offloaded onto tankers. 

Of course, we’re also assuming that Iran lets traffic flow at full speed — which it already has flat-out refused to do. 

Even those SPR releases won’t come close to covering the gap. I know a 400-million-barrel release sounds like it’ll solve any supply issues, but that crude will flow onto the market at a rate of less than 2 million barrels per day.

At this point, only one thing stops oil’s run in 2026: Demand destruction. 

Remember, the cure for high oil prices IS high prices. If prices remain in triple-digit territory long enough, people stop buying and economies slow down. More airlines cancel flights, fewer drivers take to the road as pump prices surge, and petrochemical plants shut down. 

We’ll see WTI above $110/bbl again… easily. 

Brent’s already climbing as reality sinks in.

The ceasefire wasn’t a breakthrough, dear reader. It was a four-hour fantasy durng which everyone pretended things might get better.

They’re getting worse.

Are you prepared for oil’s next run higher?