The last time the president named the oil price, it was $75

He wrote that prices were tumbling on 23 June. Brent has risen 73 percent since, and in twenty-two Hormuz posts he has not named a price again.

Published 2026-09-17 · analysis

The president's Hormuz posts used to keep score in dollars. On 23 June he wrote that 19 million barrels had come out of the strait the day before, an all-time record, and that “Oil prices are tumbling down.” Brent closed at $75.69 that day. That is the last time the oil price appears anywhere in this collection. It closed at $130.80 on 15 September, up 72.8 percent, the highest official close since 7 April — and across the twenty-two Hormuz posts he has written since 23 June, not one names a price, a barrel or a pump. The only inflation figure in any of them is Iran's.

The silence has widened past the number. Since 3 September he has posted about the strait once in fourteen days. His fourteen-day Hormuz post count has been that low on 13 of the crisis's 201 days, and not since 13 July. In the trading week to 11 September Brent gained 13.0 percent, its fifth-biggest week of the war, and he did not mention the strait at all. There are five weeks in this record with no Hormuz post in them; the largest move in any of the other four is 7.4 percent.

That is not a break in the pattern, it is the pattern at full stretch. Across the crisis's 28 complete trading weeks, his Hormuz post count runs against the price rather than with it (Spearman −0.39; permutation p 0.040). The two heaviest posting weeks of the entire war are the two worst weeks oil has had: 15 posts in the week Brent fell 20.0 percent to 17 April, 13 in the week it fell 13.8 percent to 10 April. The eight sessions to 10 September are the strongest run Brent has had since the closure began, plus 34.8 percent, and they drew a single post.

That post, on 14 September, says “Oil is flowing through the Hormuz Strait.” The next official close was $130.80, up 7.88 percent. The last time he wrote that the oil was moving — “like never before”, 14 July — Brent closed at $83.69, forty-seven dollars lower. The waterway being described carried a seven-day average of 5.3 transits a day through 13 September. It carried 58.5 a day in January.

The score-keeping has changed hands. On 24 August Iran's foreign ministry called reports of oil transiting the strait a media and psychological campaign; on 16 September its parliament speaker tied American inflation expectations to Hormuz, and Tehran's wire now files a ship count most mornings. Washington's loudest Hormuz account stopped quoting the tape at almost exactly the point Tehran started. So stop reading a quiet week on that account as a quiet week in the strait. On these 201 days it has been the opposite.

† Weekly test: Hormuz-tagged posts per ISO week against Brent's change over that week's official closes, 28 complete weeks from 2 March to 11 September; Spearman −0.39, two-sided permutation p 0.040 on 50,000 shuffles. One test on one series — it describes this record, it does not forecast the next post.

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