We checked a Hormuz call 8 months later with price data
By Karl, founder of OilPriceAPI · Published · prices pulled Nov 14, 2026; EIA weekly diesel released Nov 10, 2026; World Bank monthly prices updated Nov 3, 2026
On Mar 12, 2026, an account on X posted a short list of takeaways about the Strait of Hormuz and linked a longer essay. We took 8 of its claims that a price series can test and checked each one 8 months later. 5 held, 2 partly held and 1 did not hold. The main call, that gas was more exposed than oil, held: from Feb 27, 2026 to Nov 13, 2026 European gas (TTF) rose 175.2% and Asian LNG (JKM) rose 192.6%, against 33.6% for Brent crude. Diesel did not double, and fertilizer was not up sharply on a year earlier.
This page scores claims, not the person who made them. A price shows what happened between two dates. It does not prove why, and nothing here is a forecast or investment advice.
The call, in its own words
The post is by The Long View (@HayekAndKeynes) on X, posted Mar 12, 2026. Its first three takeaways read:
- “Gas supply is more precarious than oil”
- “It may be easier than some expect to meaningfully disrupt trade”
- “Europe and Asia are big losers”
A fourth takeaway begins “Supply chain” and is cut off in the public copy of the post that we could read, so we do not quote it. The post links the author's essay, The 20 Million Barrel Problem, which opens with a scene set in the future: “It’s the fall of 2026.” The essay then says of that scene: “The scenario above is not a forecast. It is a description of the plausible consequences if the flows through one narrow passage are meaningfully reduced for an extended period.”
That matters for a fair reading. The fall scene is a set of consequences the author called plausible, not a prediction with a date. We test its price statements against the fall that arrived, and we say where a statement was conditional.
How we scored it
A claim is scored only if it has a number, a direction or a date that a price series can check. Each gets one of three verdicts: held, partly held or did not hold. Claims that cannot be tested with price data are listed further down and left unscored. The rules below were fixed before the comparisons were run.
- Start point: Feb 27, 2026, the last trading day of February and the day before the date EIA counts from (EIA’s sentences are in the next table).
- The post: Mar 11, 2026 is the last full day before it went up at 05:25 UTC on Mar 12, 2026.
- Latest: the newest daily average when the data was pulled on Nov 14, 2026, which is Nov 13, 2026 for crude and gas.
- “Surged” holds at a rise of 25% or more, partly holds from 10%, and below that does not hold.
- “Roughly doubled” holds at a rise of 90% or more, partly holds from 50%, and below that does not hold.
- A comparison (“more than”, “faster”) holds if it is true on every measure listed for it, and partly holds if it is true on some.
Prices are daily averages from our API, Monday to Friday rows only. Some series also carry weekend rows; we drop them so a repeated weekend value cannot set a high or a low. Where a weekday has no row we leave it missing and say so beside the figure it affects. TTF is converted to US dollars per MMBtu with that day's euro rate; the conversion is explained here.
| Date | EIA's sentence | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 28, 2026 | “The strait has been effectively closed to shipping traffic since military action began on February 28.” | April 2026 STEO, released Apr 7, 2026, p. 5 |
| Mar 9, 2026 | “As of March 9, when we finalized our forecast, physical damage to oil infrastructure was limited, but the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed to most shipping traffic.” | March 2026 STEO, released Mar 10, 2026, p. 5 |
| Jun 18, 2026 | “On June 18, the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end the conflict and open the Strait of Hormuz, which had been effectively closed since February 28 when the conflict began.” | July 2026 STEO, released Jul 7, 2026, p. 4 |
| Early September 2026 | “As flows through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb strait remain constrained and variable, crude oil production shut-ins rose over the past month.” | September 2026 STEO, released Sep 9, 2026, p. 4 |
| Late October to Nov 4, 2026 | “Continued flows through the Strait of Hormuz using ship-to-ship transfers along Oman’s coast added to supply, which was reflected in prices during late October and early November, with the Brent spot price falling below $100/b on November 4.” | November 2026 STEO, released Nov 10, 2026, Global oil markets |
Source: US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), editions as linked, read Nov 14, 2026. Page numbers are the printed ones. These sentences are the only account of events on this page.
The scorecard
| The claim, as written | From | Verdict | What the verdict covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Gas supply is more precarious than oil” | The post | Held | The claim as written. |
| “If flows from the Gulf were disrupted for an extended period, the pressure on global gas markets would likely appear faster — and more violently — than in oil.” | The essay | Partly held | The claim as written. |
| “LNG prices in Asia and Europe have surged” | The essay | Held | The claim as written. |
| “oil markets stressed but partially buffered, gas markets tightening faster with no equivalent cushion” | The essay | Held | The price path only. Prices do not show why. |
| “Europe and Asia are big losers” | The post | Held | Import gas prices against US gas. Output, jobs and growth are not price data. |
| “Diesel prices have roughly doubled compared with a year earlier.” | The essay | Partly held | US retail diesel. The essay does not say which diesel price. |
| “Fertilizer prices have surged alongside them” | The essay | Did not hold | Urea, World Bank monthly price. No ammonia series was tested. |
| “Shipping costs have risen as vessels avoid parts of the Middle East and insurance premiums spike.” | The essay | Held | Ship fuel. Freight rates, routes and insurance premiums were not tested. |
Verdicts are OilPriceAPI calculations from the dated figures in the sections below, by the rules above. Data pulled Nov 14, 2026.
Gas against oil
Four of the claims compare gas with oil, and they share one table. TTF is the main European gas price, JKM is the benchmark for LNG delivered to north-east Asia, and Brent is the crude benchmark. Brent appears twice: our series follows front-month futures quotes, and EIA publishes the spot price. We test against both.
| Series | Before | Day before the post | High since | Low since | Latest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
TTF (Europe), $/MMBtuDUTCH_TTF_EUR × EUR_USD | $10.93 Feb 27, 2026 | $16.66 Mar 11, 2026 +52.4% | $33.31 Oct 30, 2026 +204.8% | $13.45 Mar 2, 2026 +23.1% | $30.08 Nov 13, 2026 +175.2% |
JKM (Asia LNG), $/MMBtuJKM_LNG_USD | $10.72 Feb 27, 2026 | $15.98 Mar 11, 2026 +49.1% | $32.35 Oct 29, 2026 +201.8% | $13.36 Mar 2, 2026 +24.6% | $31.37 Nov 13, 2026 +192.6% |
Brent, front-month, $/bblBRENT_CRUDE_USD | $71.82 Feb 27, 2026 | $90.64 Mar 11, 2026 +26.2% | $117.38 Apr 30, 2026 +63.4% | $70.90 Jul 2, 2026 −1.3% | $95.97 Nov 13, 2026 +33.6% |
Brent, EIA spot, $/bblEIA RBRTE | $71.32 Feb 27, 2026 | $90.98 Mar 11, 2026 +27.6% | $138.21 Apr 7, 2026 +93.8% | $68.53 Jul 2, 2026 −3.9% | $92.14 Nov 11, 2026 +29.2% |
Sources: OilPriceAPI, /v1/prices/past_year with interval=1d, pulled Nov 14, 2026; EIA Europe Brent Spot Price FOB, daily, release of Nov 12, 2026. Percentages are OPA calculations against the Before column. Highs and lows are the highest and lowest weekday readings from Feb 28, 2026 to the latest date. The TTF series has no row for 2 weekdays and the JKM series for 15 weekdays between Feb 23, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026; none of the dates in this table is one of them.
“Gas supply is more precarious than oil”
From the post. The test, set before looking at the data: Held if TTF and JKM both rose by a larger percentage than Brent from Feb 27, 2026, to the high and to the latest reading, on our Brent series and on EIA's spot price.
From Feb 27, 2026 to its high, TTF rose 204.8% and JKM 201.8%. Brent rose 63.4% on our front-month series and 93.8% on EIA's spot price. To the latest reading the rises were 175.2% for TTF, 192.6% for JKM, 33.6% for front-month Brent and 29.2% for spot Brent. Gas rose more on all eight comparisons. “Precarious” is about supply, and a price cannot measure supply directly. What the prices show is that the market charged far more for gas than for oil.
Verdict: held.
Both charts end with the week of Nov 9, 2026, the last complete week when the data was pulled. The table above gives the same series as dated daily readings.
“If flows from the Gulf were disrupted for an extended period, the pressure on global gas markets would likely appear faster — and more violently — than in oil.”
From the essay. The test, set before looking at the data: Two halves. Faster: TTF and JKM rose more than Brent between Feb 27 and Mar 11, 2026. More violently: their weekly volatility since the week of Mar 9 is at least 1.1 times Brent's. Held if both, partly held if one.
Faster: by Mar 11, 2026, eight trading days after the start point, TTF was up 52.4% and JKM 49.1%, against 26.2% for front-month Brent and 27.6% for spot Brent. That half held.
More violently: we measured how much each weekly average moved from one week to the next, from the week of Mar 9, 2026 to the week of Nov 9, 2026, as an annualised volatility. Brent came out at 49.0%, TTF at 50.5% and JKM at 53.6%. Gas was a little more volatile, but neither benchmark reached the 1.1-times margin the test asked for. Gas rose much further than oil; week to week it was about as jumpy. The essay's sentence was conditional on a long disruption, and it said “likely”.
Verdict: partly held.
“LNG prices in Asia and Europe have surged”
From the essay. The test, set before looking at the data: A statement about the day it was written. Held if JKM and TTF were both at least 25% above Feb 27 on Mar 11, 2026; partly held from 10%.
This one describes the market on the day of writing. JKM was $10.72 on Feb 27, 2026 and $15.98 on Mar 11, 2026, a rise of 49.1%. TTF went from $10.93 on Feb 27, 2026 to $16.66 on Mar 11, 2026, a rise of 52.4%. Both are well past the 25% mark.
Verdict: held.
“oil markets stressed but partially buffered, gas markets tightening faster with no equivalent cushion”
From the essay. The test, set before looking at the data: Held if Brent came back to its Feb 27 level at least once and neither TTF nor JKM did. Partly held if only one half is true.
Brent came back to where it started. Our front-month series was $70.90 on Jul 2, 2026, below its $71.82 on Feb 27, 2026, and EIA's spot price was $68.53 on Jul 2, 2026, below its $71.32 on Feb 27, 2026. Gas never did: the lowest TTF reading since the start point was $13.45 on Mar 2, 2026, still 23.1% above it, and the lowest JKM reading was $13.36 on Mar 2, 2026, 24.6% above. Brent's low came two weeks after Jun 18, 2026, the date of the memorandum EIA describes in the table above. The prices fit the essay's description. They do not show whether pipelines, stocks or something else was the reason.
Verdict: held. Covers: The price path only. Prices do not show why.
Europe and Asia against US gas
“Europe and Asia are big losers”
From the post. The test, set before looking at the data: Tested on gas prices only. Held if TTF and JKM are both a larger multiple of Henry Hub on the latest reading than on Feb 27, 2026.
The part of this a price can test is what gas importers paid compared with buyers of US gas. We divide each import benchmark by the Henry Hub front-month quote (NATURAL_GAS_USD). On Feb 27, 2026 TTF was 3.84× Henry Hub ($10.93 ÷ $2.85) and JKM was 3.76× ($10.72 ÷ $2.85). On Nov 13, 2026 TTF was 9.14× ($30.08 ÷ $3.29) and JKM was 9.53× ($31.37 ÷ $3.29). In dollars, the gap between TTF and Henry Hub went from $8.08 to $26.79 per MMBtu.
Henry Hub itself was $2.85 on Feb 27, 2026 and $3.29 on Nov 13, 2026. Henry Hub's quote on Feb 27, 2026 and on Nov 13, 2026 equals the previous day's, so we repeated the test with the nearest earlier quote that differs ($2.94 on Feb 25, 2026 and $3.24 on Nov 10, 2026); the result is the same. The spread and what it means for factories are covered in TTF versus Henry Hub and in the guide to gas benchmarks.
Verdict: held. Covers: Import gas prices against US gas. Output, jobs and growth are not price data.
Live quotes: Dutch TTF, JKM LNG and Henry Hub natural gas.
Downstream: diesel, fertilizer and ship fuel
These three come from the essay's fall scene, the part it called plausible consequences and not a forecast.
“Diesel prices have roughly doubled compared with a year earlier.”
From the essay. The test, set before looking at the data: Held if diesel is at least 90% above the same week a year earlier; partly held from 50%; below that it did not hold.
Diesel rose a lot, and it did not double. EIA's weekly US No 2 diesel retail price was $6.127 a gallon in the week of Nov 9, 2026. A year earlier, in the week of Nov 10, 2025, it was $3.837. That is 59.7% higher. Doubling would be 100%. Even at its peak of $6.529 in the week of Sep 21, 2026, diesel was 74.2% above the same week a year earlier ($3.749, week of Sep 22, 2025).
The essay does not say which diesel price it means, so we ran a second check on a European one. Rotterdam marine gasoil (MGO_05S_NLRTM_USD, dollars per metric ton) was $1,240.50 on Nov 12, 2026 against $721.50 on Nov 24, 2025, the earliest row we hold: a rise of 71.9% in just under a year. Same answer. The current US figure is on the live diesel price page, and diesel is set beside US steel prices in raw material costs as a reshoring factor.
Verdict: partly held. Covers: US retail diesel. The essay does not say which diesel price.
“Fertilizer prices have surged alongside them”
From the essay. The test, set before looking at the data: Held if urea is at least 25% above the same month a year earlier; partly held from 10%; below that it did not hold.
Fertilizer did surge, in the spring. By fall it had come back down. The World Bank's monthly urea price was $420.0 a metric ton in Oct 2026 against $394.4 in Oct 2025, a rise of 6.5%. Its DAP price, a phosphate fertilizer, was $803.1 against $754.0, up 6.5%. Neither reaches the 10% mark. In Apr 2026 the picture was different: urea averaged $856.9, which was 121.5% above Apr 2025 ($386.9).
Our own UREA_USD series starts on Mar 19, 2026, so it cannot answer a year-earlier question. It shows the same shape since then: a high of $720.25 on Apr 15, 2026 and $429.00 on Nov 13, 2026, which is 40.4% below the high. It is a different quote from the World Bank's and the levels differ.
Verdict: did not hold. Covers: Urea, World Bank monthly price. No ammonia series was tested.
| Month | Urea, $/t | DAP, $/t |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 2025 | 386.9 | 635.0 |
| Oct 2025 | 394.4 | 754.0 |
| Nov 2025 | 409.3 | 708.3 |
| Dec 2025 | 392.5 | 627.5 |
| Jan 2026 | 415.4 | 619.2 |
| Feb 2026 | 472.0 | 626.5 |
| Mar 2026 | 725.6 | 658.3 |
| Apr 2026 | 856.9 | 725.3 |
| May 2026 | 770.5 | 769.5 |
| Jun 2026 | 453.1 | 783.8 |
| Jul 2026 | 400.0 | 781.3 |
| Aug 2026 | 390.0 | 793.5 |
| Sep 2026 | 407.5 | 800.6 |
| Oct 2026 | 420.0 | 803.1 |
Source: World Bank Commodity Price Data, monthly file updated Nov 3, 2026. Urea is prill, spot, f.o.b. Middle East; DAP is spot, f.o.b. US Gulf. Monthly averages in nominal US dollars. Apr 2025 is shown for the year-earlier comparison; the months between it and Oct 2025 are left out.
“Shipping costs have risen as vessels avoid parts of the Middle East and insurance premiums spike.”
From the essay. The test, set before looking at the data: Tested on ship fuel only. Held if Singapore VLSFO and Rotterdam MGO are both above their Feb 27, 2026 readings.
We hold fuel prices, not freight rates or insurance premiums, so this tests one ship cost. VLSFO in Singapore (VLSFO_SGSIN_USD, dollars per metric ton) was $512.88 on Feb 27, 2026 and $822.00 on Nov 12, 2026, a rise of 60.3%. Rotterdam MGO was $718.04 on Feb 27, 2026 and $1,240.50 on Nov 12, 2026, a rise of 72.8%. The highest readings we hold are $1,067.90 on Mar 20, 2026 and $1,530.50 on Sep 16, 2026.
A caution on those highs. The Singapore series has no rows for 15 weekdays (Mar 11 to 18 and Apr 15 to 27, 2026) and the Rotterdam series for 9 (Apr 15 to 27, 2026), so a higher day may be missing. The verdict rests on Feb 27, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026, which both have rows. Prices by port are on the bunker fuel prices page. What the shipping disruption cost in Brent, bunker fuel and diesel is in our shipping fuel cost check.
Verdict: held. Covers: Ship fuel. Freight rates, routes and insurance premiums were not tested.
Claims we did not score
These cannot be tested with price data, or not yet. Listing them is not a verdict either way.
- “It may be easier than some expect to meaningfully disrupt trade”: It gives no number, date or threshold, and “some expect” cannot be measured. For what happened to traffic, see EIA’s sentences above.
- The fourth takeaway in the post, which the public embed cuts off after “Supply chain”: We could not read the full line, so we do not quote or score it. The essay’s fertilizer and shipping sentences are scored instead.
- “Inflation has quietly moved back above 5–6%.”: It names no country, and a consumer price index is not a commodity price.
- “In many importing countries food prices are now 30–40% higher than they were twelve months earlier”: It names no countries, and we hold no food price series.
- “Airlines have trimmed routes as jet fuel prices climb.”: Route cuts are not price data. Jet fuel was left out of this check.
- “Plant closures and production curtailments are the likely response”: Industrial output is not price data.
- “This is not a temporary trade; it is a multi-year reorientation of where gas comes from.”: A multi-year claim cannot be judged yet.
- The essay’s views on companies, share prices, currencies and uranium: We do not score investment views, and nothing on this page is one.
The essay's background figures, beside EIA's
The essay's title comes from the volume of oil that normally passes through the strait. These are briefing figures, not OilPriceAPI data, and they are not predictions, so they are not in the scorecard. We set four of them beside EIA's Strait of Hormuz analysis of Jun 16, 2025.
| The essay | EIA | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| “Roughly 20–21 million barrels per day of oil and refined products normally transit the Strait of Hormuz.” | “In 2024, oil flow through the strait averaged 20 million barrels per day (b/d), or the equivalent of about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption.” | Consistent with EIA, including the share of consumption. |
| “About one-third of seaborne crude trade” | “Flows through the Strait of Hormuz in 2024 and the first quarter of 2025 made up more than one-quarter of total global seaborne oil trade and about one-fifth of global oil and petroleum product consumption.” | Not the same measure: the essay counts crude, EIA counts all seaborne oil. Not confirmed here. |
| “The corridor also carries roughly 20% of global LNG exports, largely shipments from Qatar.” | “In addition, around one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade also transited the Strait of Hormuz in 2024, primarily from Qatar.” | Consistent with EIA. |
| “Saudi Arabia and the UAE also operate pipelines that bypass Hormuz with roughly 6–7 million barrels per day of export capacity.” | “The pipelines do not typically operate at full capacity, and we estimate that about 2.6 million b/d of capacity from the Saudi and UAE pipelines could be available to bypass the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a supply disruption.” | EIA's figure for capacity that could be available is lower than the essay's capacity figure. The two measure different things. |
Source: EIA, Today in Energy, “Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint”, Jun 16, 2025, read Nov 14, 2026. EIA's figures are for 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. Where those barrels went is the subject of our Strait of Hormuz inventory check.
What this check does not show
It does not show cause. Gas, oil and fuel prices moved for many reasons over these months, and a before-and-after comparison cannot separate them. It does not show volumes, freight rates, factory output or who ended up paying. It covers 8 months, so it says nothing about the essay's multi-year views.
Two limits in our own data: Brent here is a front-month futures series, not the Dated Brent assessment, which is why EIA's spot price sits beside it in every oil test. And the thresholds for “surged” and “roughly doubled” are ours. A reader who sets them elsewhere can re-score from the dated figures above. With the diesel rise at 59.7% and the urea rise at 6.5%, neither verdict sits near its line.
Reproduce it with the API
The figures on this page are static, copied from the API on Nov 14, 2026. This script pulls the same daily history, converts TTF to dollars per MMBtu and prints the change since the last reading before Feb 28, 2026 for TTF, JKM and Brent.
import requests
URL = "https://api.oilpriceapi.com/v1/prices/past_year"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": "Token YOUR_API_KEY"}
MMBTU_PER_MWH = 3.412142
def weekdays(code):
r = requests.get(URL, headers=HEADERS, timeout=10,
params={"by_code": code, "interval": "1d"})
r.raise_for_status()
rows = r.json()["data"]["prices"]
return {row["as_of"][:10]: row["price"] for row in rows}
ttf_eur, fx = weekdays("DUTCH_TTF_EUR"), weekdays("EUR_USD")
series = {
"TTF $/MMBtu": {d: v * fx[d] / MMBTU_PER_MWH
for d, v in ttf_eur.items() if d in fx},
"JKM $/MMBtu": weekdays("JKM_LNG_USD"),
"Brent $/bbl": weekdays("BRENT_CRUDE_USD"),
}
for name, by_day in series.items():
before = max(d for d in by_day if d < "2026-02-28")
latest = max(by_day)
change = (by_day[latest] / by_day[before] - 1) * 100
print(name, before, round(by_day[before], 2),
latest, round(by_day[latest], 2), f"{change:+.1f}%")Dated TTF, JKM and Henry Hub history for deal models
For advisory and valuation work that needs a dated, sourced gas price history behind an energy-cost assumption, see the plans with historical data.
Questions
- Did natural gas prices rise more than oil prices in 2026?
- Yes, on every measure we checked. From Feb 27, 2026 to Nov 13, 2026, TTF rose 175.2% in US dollars per MMBtu and JKM rose 192.6%, while our front-month Brent series rose 33.6%. At their highs the rises were 204.8% for TTF, 201.8% for JKM and 63.4% for Brent.
- Did diesel prices double?
- No. EIA's weekly US retail diesel price was $6.127 a gallon in the week of Nov 9, 2026, against $3.837 in the week of Nov 10, 2025. That is 59.7% higher, not 100%. At the Sep 21, 2026 peak it was 74.2% above the same week a year earlier.
- Why is TTF converted to US dollars per MMBtu?
- TTF is quoted in euros per megawatt-hour, while JKM and Henry Hub are quoted in US dollars per MMBtu. To compare them we multiply the TTF quote by that day's EUR_USD rate and divide by 3.412142, the number of MMBtu in one MWh. For Nov 13, 2026: €92.91 × 1.1048 ÷ 3.412142 = $30.08.
- Why does the diesel test use EIA's price?
- The claim compares diesel with a year earlier, and EIA's weekly US retail diesel series (EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG) has both weeks. Our DIESEL_RETAIL_USD series carries the same weekly EIA prints for 2026. The essay does not say which diesel price it means, so we also checked Rotterdam marine gasoil: $1,240.50 on Nov 12, 2026 against $721.50 on Nov 24, 2025, the earliest row we hold, a rise of 71.9%.
- Why is there no ammonia price on this page?
- We do not serve an ammonia price series, so there is nothing to test the claim against. The fertilizer test uses the World Bank's monthly urea price, and it also reports the World Bank's DAP price.
Sources
- The Long View (@HayekAndKeynes), post on X of Mar 12, 2026, read Nov 14, 2026 through X's public embed, which shows the first three takeaways in full.
- The Long View, The 20 Million Barrel Problem, published Mar 12, 2026, read in full Nov 14, 2026.
- EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, March to November 2026 editions, as linked in the table, read Nov 14, 2026.
- EIA, Weekly US No 2 Diesel Retail Prices (EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG), release of Nov 10, 2026.
- EIA, Europe Brent Spot Price FOB (RBRTE), daily, release of Nov 12, 2026.
- EIA, Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint, Jun 16, 2025.
- World Bank, Commodity Price Data, monthly prices, updated Nov 3, 2026.
- OilPriceAPI, /v1/prices/past_year, daily, codes BRENT_CRUDE_USD, DUTCH_TTF_EUR, EUR_USD, JKM_LNG_USD, NATURAL_GAS_USD, VLSFO_SGSIN_USD, MGO_05S_NLRTM_USD and UREA_USD, pulled Nov 14, 2026.