US oil prices rise as US-Iran peace talks remain uncertain

The market is pricing a brittle equilibrium, not peace. The key second-order effect is that even a narrow de-escalation may not restore throughput if insurers, terminal operators, and ship captains still view the Strait as a hard risk cap; that means the supply shock can persist longer than headline diplomacy suggests. In that setup, prompt crude and refined products stay bid, but the bigger beneficiaries over the next 1-3 weeks are shipping bottleneck assets and U.S. midstream/logistics names with inland exposure rather than pure upstream beta.

The risk is that the current move is still under-discounting a fast reversal if a verifiable corridor reopens. If traffic normalizes, the market will likely gap lower in crude by 5-10% quickly because positioning has already shifted toward geopolitical premium, and volatility sellers will re-enter once the blockade narrative fades. Conversely, if even one significant incident occurs in the waterway, the market could reprice toward a prolonged disruption regime where prompt barrels, not deferred contracts, carry the steepest premium.

The most important contrarian point is that the ceasefire headline may be less important than the continued blockade; diplomacy can reduce tail risk while simultaneously leaving the physical bottleneck intact. That means energy equities with strong downstream/marketing exposure may outperform pure E&P if crude stays elevated but not explosive, because crack spreads can remain firm even if the front-end oil spike stalls. Defense and maritime-security spending also gets a structural bid if the market starts to treat this as a recurring maritime security problem rather than a one-off war risk event.