Brent crude futures climbed more than 3 percent on Tuesday to settle at $99.58 a barrel, retracing most of last week’s losses after early-morning US strikes on Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boats and a Bandar Abbas missile site, and after Iran’s foreign ministry warned that navigation of the Strait of Hormuz “will have costs.”

West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark more exposed to domestic supply considerations, decoupled and fell nearly 3 percent to settle at $93.89, widening the Brent-WTI spread to its widest since mid-March. The divergence reflected both physical-market expectations and a wave of speculative repositioning by US-based hedge funds that had been short Brent into the weekend.

The Iranian foreign ministry’s suggestion that Tehran could insist on transit tolls through the Strait of Hormuz as part of a longer-term ceasefire deal moved the market more than the strikes themselves, several trading desks said. A toll regime — even one charging only $1 to $2 a barrel — would, on paper, capture several billion dollars annually from the roughly 20 million barrels of crude and condensate that pass through the strait every day.

Tanker insurance brokers in London said war-risk surcharges on Hormuz-routed cargoes were up another 40 basis points overnight, with average premiums now running at roughly 0.45 percent of hull value per voyage. Some specialist underwriters told brokers they would not quote at any rate before the Doha talks produced an outcome.

Brent contracts further out the curve sold off, with the December 2026 contract closing at $84.10, leaving the prompt-to-December backwardation at roughly $15. That structure implies the market views the current spike as event-driven and likely to be partially reversed if Doha produces a usable ceasefire framework.

Saudi Aramco and the UAE’s ADNOC have so far not commented publicly on the toll question. The Saudi energy ministry, in a Tuesday-evening statement, said the Kingdom “will continue to ensure secure and uninterrupted supply to its customers” but did not address the Hormuz transit terms directly. Riyadh’s exports through the East-West pipeline, which bypasses Hormuz, have been at near-capacity since February.

Henry Hub natural gas closed roughly flat at $3.42/mmBtu. European TTF spot prices ticked higher on the back of the Brent move and on continued nervousness over Russian supply pricing, with the front-month contract settling at €38.4/MWh.