NEW YORK (AP) — The announcement of an agreement to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz sent oil prices lower early Monday, but energy experts warned that high gasoline prices and supply disruptions will persist for months. The deal, reached Sunday, opens the waterway through which about one-fifth of the world's oil and gasoline supplies once traveled, but the effects will not be immediate.
Ships loaded with crude oil have been stranded in the Persian Gulf for over three months, unable to safely transit the strait. Restarting the flow of oil involves a slow process of shipping, refining, and delivering fuel to distant markets.
"It's going to take time for people to feel comfortable and for insurance to be in place, particularly to get people on the ground to restart some of these assets," said Daniel Evans, global head of fuels and refining research at S&P Global Energy.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell by $3 a barrel on Monday, and U.S. benchmark crude dropped $4.
However, prices remain well above the roughly $70 per barrel seen before the conflict began. A customer checks gas prices before filling up at a station in Lincolnshire, Illinois, on Monday, June 8, 2026.
(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Evans explained that stranded tankers must first exit the strait, then new tankers must enter to load crude. "To bring a ship in, you need to be confident that you've got a big enough window of safety to bring it in, load it and move it out," he added.
Oil tankers move slowly, and it can take months for a shipment to travel from the strait to a refinery and then to its final destination.
Some Middle Eastern producers halted extraction, known as a shut-in, when storage capacity was exhausted. Restarting those operations is a gradual process.
Alan Gelder, senior vice president of refining, chemicals and oil markets at Wood Mackenzie, said countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have alternative pipelines or routes, may resume production quickly. "But places like Iraq could be much more challenged because they've had a much bigger shut-in, their fields are more difficult.
It may well take about a year before they get back," Gelder said.
Investment in the energy system, which can take years to yield results, stopped after the strait's closure. Daniel Sternoff, senior fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, noted that countries that shut in production will not restart until they are confident the strait is stable and that a ceasefire will last more than 30 or 60 days.
"We don't know what open means or what the speed of evacuation of trapped material is going to be," he said.