Brent crude rises nearly 6 percent as soaring tensions in waterway push ceasefire to the brink. Published On 5 May 20265 May 2026Oil prices have risen sharply as violence in the Strait of Hormuz cast doubt over the fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran.Brent crude, the primary benchmark for oil prices worldwide, rose by nearly 6 percent on Monday to $114.44 a barrel.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBrent futures eased somewhat on Tuesday morning, trading at $113.54 as of 02:00 GMT.The latest surge in prices came after the US military said it had destroyed six of Iran’s small boats in response to Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the waterway, and the United Arab Emirates reported coming under attack from Iranian missiles and drones.An Iranian military source cited by the official IRNA news agency denied that US forces had sunk several Iranian boats, branding the US claim “false”.The market is pricing oil higher as it factors in the risk of “more oil infrastructure damage and the likelihood that the Strait of Hormuz will be shut beyond the timeline that the Trump administration has laid out,” said June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta in Singapore.Despite US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that the United States military would “guide” commercial vessels through the critical strait, shipping companies have been hesitant to transit the waterway amid persistent safety concerns.While the US military reported that two US-flagged merchant ships crossed the strait in the hours after Trump announced “Project Freedom”, there have yet to be any signs of a substantial resumption of maritime traffic in the region.On Monday, the head of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) said that ships should not be asked to cross the strait “without a full guarantee …
