Hormuz is open again. The oil market it shut has not reclosed cleanly.

The Strait of Hormuz reopened in the second half of June 2026 after the United States and Iran signed the Pakistan-mediated Memorandum of Understanding on June 17. That is the fact on which every market in Asia opened on the following Monday. It is also the least interesting fact about the episode.

The interesting fact is the inventory position. Analytics firm Kpler, cited by CNN, estimated that the world lost roughly 1.15 billion barrels of oil supply over the three-and-a-half-month US-Israeli war on Iran, describing the global market as in a precarious state and rapidly approaching a breaking point. World stockpiles have since fallen by 190 million barrels, and Cushing, the Oklahoma hub that feeds much of the United States, has hit its operational stress level. That volume is not stored. It is drawn from floating storage, from inventories held for commercial rather than strategic reasons, and from whatever pipeline capacity could be rerouted.

1. 1.Supply lost during the war: about 1.15 billion barrels, per Kpler via CNN.
2. 2.OECD strategic petroleum reserves, coordinated through the IEA: lowest since 1990.
3. 3.US Strategic Petroleum Reserve: a 43-year low.
4. 4.Brent: below $80 a barrel after the memorandum was signed.
5. 5.Goldman Sachs Q4 2026 Brent forecast: cut to $80 from $90.
6. 6.Morgan Stanley: 50% of Iranian production back by September, 80% by December.

What reopening cannot fix

A chokepoint closing and reopening changes the price of transit risk. It does not refill strategic reserves, and it does not restore the barrels that were never produced. Both had to come out of inventories that existed for precisely this reason, and those inventories are now at levels last seen before the Soviet collapse for the OECD and before the early 1980s for the United States. The buffer that made the closure survivable has been spent.

The market has moved faster than the barrels. Several analysts told CNN they believed prices had overshot to the low side, because the risk has been repriced before the tanks can be refilled.

The market has jumped 7 steps ahead of where we are now. Everyone's like: this is over. But there's a major logistical challenge to get back to where we were.

That question was answered, on time, in a way that India-specific reporting had been warning about for weeks. Reopening a waterway is a sequence of steps rather than a switch: the strait has to be cleared of mines, empty tankers have to return, production has to restart and the oil has to make the slow journey to its destination. Industry estimates cited in the same reporting put the return to something approaching normal at months, and the International Energy Agency's estimate is that replacing 1.15 billion barrels would take about a year even with an extra 5 million barrels a day of supply. The reopening was negotiated rather than accidental, which is the only reason it happened at all, and negotiation does not restock a reserve.