Brent recovers 1.2% to $84.79 as US-Iran Hormuz talks stay unresolved

Front-month Brent futures climbed $1.02, or 1.2%, to $84.79 a barrel by 0632 GMT, clawing back some of the previous session's fall to a three-week low. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 46 cents, or 0.6%, to $80.80 a barrel after dropping more than 5% a day earlier. The rebound follows a sharp selloff triggered when US President Trump announced on Sunday that he was postponing new attacks on Iran while talks continued.

The mechanism is the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway connecting Gulf oil producers to global markets that carried roughly 20% of worldwide crude and natural gas shipments before the conflict began. Reuters reported that Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei denied Trump's account on Monday, saying no negotiations were under way and no meetings were scheduled. Analysts at ING noted that the scale of the selloff looked 'fairly overdone' given the unresolved risks, a view echoed by The Guardian's coverage of the standoff ahead of the talks.

The chart below shows Brent over the last six months, against which this session's swing and partial recovery can be read.

What this means for UK buyers

Oil is not your direct cost, but Brent sits upstream of the gas and power curves you buy against. A firmer, more volatile crude complex tends to keep a geopolitical premium in forward gas, which matters for anyone timing a renewal or running a flexible contract. The signal here is instability rather than direction: prices swung more than 7% in a single session, then partially reversed.

Watch these load-bearing figures:

• Front-month Brent ($84.79 a barrel, up 1.2%)
• WTI crude ($80.80 a barrel, up 0.6%)
• Hormuz net exports of crude and products (4.2 million barrels per day, week ending 31 July)
• Prior-week Hormuz throughput (3.2 million barrels per day)

Barclays reported the throughput rose to 4.2 million barrels per day for the week ending 31 July, up from 3.2 million the week before, so physical flows have held despite the tension. Shipping data showed six Saudi-flagged supertankers rerouting towards southern Africa, and the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency logged an incident on Tuesday 20 nautical miles northeast of Oman's Al Khasab, where a cargo vessel reported being struck by an unidentified projectile.

With Tehran denying any talks and Washington warning of consequences, the setup points to renewed escalation risk rather than a clean resolution. For buyers, the near-term watch is whether Hormuz flows hold and whether the diplomatic channel reopens; either would take premium out of the curve, while a shipping disruption would put it back in. Flex customers may prefer to hold rather than chase a bounce that could reverse on the next headline.