President Donald Trump paused U.S. strikes on Iranian energy facilities for a second time Thursday, pushing the deadline to April 6 and highlighting that negotiations are “going very well.”

Oil markets immediately called his bluff: Brent crude — as tracked by the United States Brent Oil Fund, LP ETV (NYSE:BNO) — surged $110 a barrel on Friday, and a new Goldman Sachs analysis shows the Strait of Hormuz is still 94% shut.

The words and the data are not speaking the same language.

The Hormuz Reality Meets Trump’s Optimism

The gap between Washington’s language and the physical oil market has rarely been wider.

In an exclusive interview with Benzinga, Johannes Rauball, Ph.D., senior crude oil analyst at Kpler, offered a sobering read on why the verbal optimism has not translated into physical flows.

“Iran has put forward multiple proposals to allow vessels from friendly countries to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, but there has been no meaningful increase in transit activity so far,” Rauball said.

“It remains in Iran’s interest to keep flows through the Strait constrained in order to support elevated crude prices, thereby increasing pressure on the U.S. administration to engage in negotiations,” he added.

Rauball highlighted that reports suggest Iran may be charging vessels for passage, with several ships departing through a controlled corridor near Larak Island.

But that workaround faces its own ceiling: charging for the Strait of Hormuz transit would violate international maritime law and antagonize the very regional partners Iran needs on its side.

Neither U.S. nor Iranian proposals, Rauball indicated, contain terms the other side is likely to accept.

The Kpler analyst’s assessment reframes the diplomatic stalemate as a structural one: Iran derives tangible economic and negotiating leverage from the supply disruption itself.

Every day the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, crude prices provide Tehran with both revenue — to the extent exports continue via “friendly” corridors — and pressure on Washington to move off its opening position.

Pipelines Can’t Cover The Gap

Four weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the world’s most critical oil chokepoint remains essentially closed. 

On Friday, Goldman Sachs estimated average daily flows through the Strait of Hormuz at just 1.1 million barrels per day (mb/d) on a four-day moving average, against a pre-war normal of 20 mb/d.

That is not a disruption. That is a blockade.

The one structural buffer working in the market’s favor is pipeline redirection.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have ramped flows through Yanbu (Red Sea) and Fujairah (Gulf of Oman) ports to 8.3mb/d on a four-day moving average — 5.2mb/d above the 2025 average of 3.1mb/d.

Still, the net hit to global commercial oil stocks — before any response from supply or demand — now stands at 13.1 mb/d, according to Goldman Sachs analysts Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby and Daan Struyven. 

Since Feb. 27, global visible oil inventories have fallen by 121 million barrels, depleting more than a quarter of the builds accumulated throughout 2025.

The Stagflation Bomb Is Ticking

On Friday, veteran economist Ed Yardeni offered a cautious interpretation of Trump's decision to pause strikes for 10 days.

“That will prolong uncertainty and volatility in the financial markets,” Yardeni wrote. “It also means oil prices will remain elevated for at least another 10 days, unless there is a deal, exacerbating stagflationary pressures worldwide.”

Prediction markets on Polymarket now price a 40% probability that the Iran-U.S. conflict ends by the conclusion of April, down from around 55% on Monday.


photo: Saku_rata160520 via Shutterstock