Brent crude slipped to about $102.90 a barrel in early Monday trade after paring overnight gains, but the benchmark remains more than 40% higher this month. That leaves prices well above the levels many refiners, airlines and oil-importing economies were planning for only weeks ago.
Why oil prices are staying high despite the IEA release
The IEA called the March 11 collective action its largest ever oil stock release, and said Sunday that member countries had already filed implementation plans, with barrels from Asia Oceania available immediately and supplies from Europe and the Americas due from the end of March. The size of the intervention is historic, but markets are treating it as a bridge, not a cure.
That is because the physical disruption still sits at the center of the story. In its March 2026 Oil Market Report, the IEA said the conflict was expected to cut global oil supply by 8 million barrels per day in March, while Gulf producers had already reduced output by at least 10 million barrels per day as traffic through Hormuz stalled and storage filled up.
The IEA’s Strait of Hormuz factsheet underscores why traders are reluctant to fade the move in crude. The agency said the waterway carried about 20 million barrels per day of oil in 2025, roughly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade, while alternative export routes offer only an estimated 3.5 million to 5.5 million barrels per day of spare capacity. Reserve barrels can soften that blow, but they cannot fully replace a prolonged outage in normal Gulf shipping flows.
Oil prices still face a physical supply problem
That mismatch between policy support and physical availability is why Brent is still trading in triple digits. Traders can see a policy response, but they also know stock releases are temporary, while shipping disruptions can linger, insurance costs can jump and refiners may keep bidding up prompt cargoes if they fear another escalation.
The market has seen versions of this before. In a Reuters analysis from June 2025, the prospect of retaliation through Hormuz was already enough to put $100 oil back on the radar after Israeli strikes on Iran. And in April 2022, Reuters detailed the IEA’s 120 million-barrel coordinated release after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a reminder that emergency stocks can calm panic but do not erase the underlying cause of the shock.
What could move oil prices next
The next move in crude will likely depend less on the headline size of the reserve release than on whether shipping security improves, whether Gulf export infrastructure avoids more damage and whether refiners believe they can secure enough prompt barrels without paying up. A credible reopening of Hormuz would likely cool the risk premium quickly. A longer disruption, by contrast, would keep the floor under Brent elevated and leave consumers facing more pressure at the pump.
For now, the message from the market is simple: the IEA has bought time, not certainty. Until traders see steadier movement through Hormuz and clearer signs of de-escalation, oil prices look likely to remain underwritten by fear as much as by fundamentals.
