Will the WTI front-month settle oil price be >97.99 on Mar 13, 2026? — 98.0 or above

Despite the recent price drop, the fundamental supply shock remains unresolved. The Strait of Hormuz, which handles roughly 20 percent of global oil demand, remains effectively impassable due to electronic jamming and drone threats. This bottleneck has trapped approximately 6.7 million barrels per day of production from Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. If transit does not resume immediately, physical market tightness could force prices back up regardless of paper market interventions. Furthermore, the G7 announcement on March 10 was a statement of readiness, not an actual physical release of barrels. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure noted that the group was not there yet on a final decision to tap emergency petroleum reserves. If the market calls the G7 bluff and realizes the barrels are not flowing yet, the geopolitical risk premium could rapidly re-price WTI back toward the recent highs. Finally, the conflict remains highly volatile. Israel unprecedented March 8 strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots, including the Shahran oil depot in Tehran, mark a significant escalation. If Iran retaliates by successfully striking Saudi or UAE oil infrastructure before March 13, the resulting panic would easily erase the recent 11 dollar drop and send WTI soaring past the 98 dollar threshold.

The coordinated global response to the March 9 price spike has fundamentally altered the market dynamics. On March 10, G7 finance ministers and the IEA signaled their readiness to release 300 to 400 million barrels of strategic reserves. This massive figure, representing up to 30 percent of total IEA reserves, acts as a psychological and physical ceiling on crude prices. Following this announcement, April WTI crude oil plummeted by 11.32 dollars to close at 83.45 dollars on March 10. Diplomatic pressure is also heavily skewed toward de-escalation. The US government has publicly warned against further strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure, with Axios reporting on March 9 that the US was dismayed by the extent of the Israeli strikes. Coupled with President Trump asserting that the conflict will end very soon, the geopolitical risk premium is rapidly deflating as traders price in a diplomatic off-ramp. The mathematical hurdle is simply too high for a three-day window. WTI would need to rally more than 17 percent from its March 10 close of 83.45 dollars to breach 97.99 dollars by March 13. The EIA March 10 Short-Term Energy Outlook projects WTI to average 91 dollars in March, indicating that even official models factoring in the Strait of Hormuz closure do not foresee prices sustaining levels near 98 dollars in the near term.