Brent Rebounds 2.4% to $96.86 as Iran Reports Two More Tanker Fires and UKMTO Logs Projectile Strike Off Qatar

Brent crude futures traded at $96.86 per barrel in early Thursday trading as of 13:00 GMT, up $2.24 or 2.37%, per the futures ticker on Oilprice.com. Nymex WTI futures stood at $89.46 per barrel, up $1.34 or 1.52%. The moves reverse part of Wednesday's slide after Iran's Revolutionary Guard reported more tanker fires in the Strait of Hormuz.

Two Tankers and a Tugboat Ablaze, Plus a Projectile Strike Off Qatar

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said one tanker hit a naval mine while moving south of the strait. A second tanker caught fire while leaving the eastern part of the strait, and a tugboat that approached to help also caught fire, according to Oilprice.com's Thursday report. Oilprice.com's article carried a Thursday 5:15 AM CST timestamp.

UK Maritime Trade Operations, the Royal Navy-affiliated monitor, logged a separate incident 50 nautical miles north of Madinat ash Shamal, Qatar. Two unidentified projectiles struck a tanker, and crew status and damage remain unconfirmed. These reports arrived hours after the Guard claimed four tankers were destroyed by mines on Wednesday. Tanker trackers increasingly rely on satellite imagery because vessels often switch off transponders in the strait. That makes every incident count harder to verify than the underlying price move.

What the Price Reversal Undoes

Oilprice.com's futures ticker implies Wednesday's closing levels of $94.62 for Brent and $88.12 for WTI, derived by subtracting today's gains from today's quotes. That is a computation, not an exchange settlement, and the official ICE and CME settlements should be treated as the final record. Oilprice.com reported Brent had fallen about 8.6% on Wednesday to $94.66, its lowest since September 4.

Our earlier coverage of Wednesday's midterm-driven drop showed the market pricing a diplomatic exit. Two sessions before that, Brent at $101.72 on Iran's first mine claim showed a market that largely shrugged at the same headline. Thursday's gain is smaller than the fall it follows, which suggests traders still weight peace hopes more heavily than the tanker count. The Brent-WTI gap now stands at $7.40 per barrel, computed from the two live quotes above. That is wider than the $5.75 gap after Wednesday's late-session drop, reported by BusinessDay citing Reuters.

Gulf Exports: The Physical Number Behind the Headlines

Middle East exports of crude, condensate and fuels fell to 17.1 million barrels per day in October from 18.9 million in September, a post-war high, according to Vortexa data cited by Reuters. Tanker trackers say the October figure could be revised upward. The 1.8 million barrel per day shortfall is a 9.5% drop in a month. At Thursday's Brent quote of $96.86, that missing volume carries a crude value of $174 million per day, a figure Oil Authority computed by multiplying the two numbers.

US Data: A Draw the Market Did Not Expect

The EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report, released Wednesday for the week ended October 30, showed commercial crude stocks fell 865,000 barrels to 409.76 million barrels. Reuters' analyst poll had expected a build of 877,000 barrels, a miss of 1.742 million barrels. Distillate stocks dropped 3.565 million barrels to 99.259 million, while refinery utilization rose 1.7 points to 94.5% of operable capacity. US crude production edged up 11,000 barrels per day to 14.003 million. Crude exports fell 1.179 million barrels per day to 3.675 million, so the draw came even as outbound cargoes shrank.

Total crude and product exports fell 1.657 million barrels per day to 10.871 million. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve slipped 399,000 barrels to 282.184 million. Baker Hughes releases its weekly rig count on Friday, the next scheduled North American data point.