Brent at $140 makes June moot
On Polymarket: Will Crude Oil (CL) hit__ by end of June? ↗The Hormuz chokepoint, a downed US pilot, and tankers sitting idle have structurally broken the pre-war oil pricing regime through at least June.
Current view — April 14
The physical oil market has already rendered its verdict. Spot Brent is trading above $140 a barrel, and Oman's official crude price for June delivery settled at $105.83 per barrel — a rise of $5.64 in a single week. These are not speculative prints on a screen; they are prices at which real barrels change hands, embedded in real contracts. When the forward curve for June delivery is already sitting above $105, the question of whether crude will "hit" a given level by end of June has effectively ceased to be a question at all.
The most telling detail may be JP Morgan's posture. The bank expects the Hormuz disruption to resolve — and even under that relatively constructive scenario, it still forecasts oil remaining above $100 per barrel through all of Q2 2026. We find that framing instructive. When the house view from one of the world's largest commodity desks is that the bullish case and the bearish case both land above $100, the debate has moved somewhere else entirely.
Meanwhile, the risk register keeps lengthening. A US pilot is reportedly down over Iran, with ground operations being discussed as a possible next step — a development that, if it materialises, would represent a qualitative escalation in a conflict that has already pushed prices up by more than 11% in a single session. No tankers are currently clearing the Strait. Each of these data points individually would be enough to keep a bid under crude; together, they constitute a structural floor that has nothing to do with demand forecasts or OPEC schedules.
There is one bearish number in circulation, and we think it deserves to be addressed directly rather than quietly ignored. A ChatGPT-generated WTI futures curve circulating on social media projects June 2026 crude at roughly $79 a barrel. We do not dismiss this because it came from an AI; we dismiss it because it is contradicted by live settlement data. A senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities has stated plainly that a return to pre-war levels near $75 is not something she expects to see for at least a year — and that assessment was made against a backdrop of prices already well above that level.
WTI Crude Oil Futures Curve (Next 9 Months)
Delivery Month Futures Price (approx.)
May 2026~$80
June 2026~$79
July 2026~$78
August 2026~$77
September 2026~$76
October 2026~$75
November 2026~$74
December 2026~$73
January 2027~$72
“I don’t think we’re going to see anything, at least for the next year, at the very least,” June Goh, senior oil market analyst for Sparta Commodities, says, when asked when the price of crude oil could go back to pre-war levels around $75 a barrel.
Goh…
The picture that emerges is one where the range of plausible outcomes has narrowed considerably. Even participants who are skeptical of the geopolitical premium — who think the ceasefire holds, who think tankers eventually move — are not making a credible case for sub-$100 crude by June. The floor has shifted, and the settlement data confirms it.