Crude tops $100 after Trump rejects Iran deal to reopen Strait of Hormuz
Crude pushed past $100 a barrel after President Trump rejected Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That is your wholesale cost, and it just went up. Anyone buying diesel or gasoline loads this week is buying into a spike that started with a diplomatic rejection, not a supply outage, which means it can reverse as fast as it came.
The Iran offer
Iran put a deal on the table. Reopen the strait, resume nuclear talks, in exchange for the U.S. lifting its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waiving sanctions on Iranian oil sales, and observing a ceasefire that would include Lebanon. On Sept. 26 Trump turned it down, saying Iran wanted a deal because it was "losing so badly."
The strait matters because a large share of seaborne crude moves through it. When traders think that chokepoint could close, they bid up every barrel, not just the ones on Iranian tankers. So a rejection in Washington shows up as a higher rack price in Ohio.
What it does to your cost
A move through $100 flows straight into wholesale gasoline and diesel over the next several days. Retail follows with a lag, so street prices could keep climbing even if crude flattens tomorrow. For jobbers carrying inventory, a fast run-up helps the barrels already in the tank and hurts the next replacement load.
The equity market read it as a risk. S&P 500 and Dow futures both fell 0.5% on Sept. 28, and Nasdaq futures dropped 1%. That is money pricing in higher energy costs and a tenser standoff, not a supply number anyone can point to yet.
Russia's refinery blackout
Putin classified information about how Russian refineries operate and banned spreading it online. Russia is a major crude and product exporter, so what happens to its refining capacity moves global balances. Cutting off public reporting on refinery status makes it harder for the market to know how much Russian product is actually reaching export, which tends to add a risk premium on top of whatever the real numbers are.
For a U.S. operator this is a fog problem. Less visibility into a big exporter means traders guess, and guesses on the high-risk side keep benchmark crude firmer than the fundamentals alone would.
What to watch
Whether the strait stays open. Nothing physical has closed, so crude could ease back below $100 if talks reopen or the rhetoric cools. Watch the crack spread over the next few sessions to see how much of the crude move refiners are passing through to product. And watch for any hard data leaking past Russia's new information ban, because the blackout itself is now part of the price.