$OXY, $MRO, $PSX: Brent Just Crossed $100 and the Hormuz Play Is Very Much Alive
Week two of the US-Iran war, Brent crude above $100, and social sentiment is screaming energy — here's what the chatter actually means
If you had 'second week of a US-Iran war with Brent at $100' on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations — and also, are you okay? The IEA is calling this the biggest disruption to the oil market in history, and Bloomberg Economics is flagging serious macro drag from sustained triple-digit crude. Oil surged from ~$65 to nearly $120/barrel at peak shock, pulling US average gas prices from $2.95 to over $3.50/gallon. The rule of thumb: every $10/barrel = ~20 cents at the pump. Your road trip math is ruined.
The Strait of Hormuz — which handles 20% of global oil flow — is now mined, with the US Navy scrambling to escort tankers. China's 'teapot refineries' in Shandong are quietly sweating: they absorb roughly 1.4 million barrels per day of Iranian crude, all of it now at risk. Russia is reportedly feeding Iran satellite imagery and drone tactics, which means this isn't de-escalating over a weekend. Upstream energy names are the obvious beneficiaries, and sentiment volume on energy tickers on YouTube and Reddit has been deafening all week.
Meanwhile, in a completely different flavor of chaos, Blue Owl Capital ($OWL) caught heat after quietly changing redemption terms on a direct lending fund — a reminder that private credit's 'stability' sometimes comes with an asterisk the size of a tanker ship.