1. What happened this week
On 1 October an unidentified projectile hit the Aramco terminal Yanbu North on the Red Sea. A fire burned in the tank farm, loading came to a brief standstill and then continued. There is no claim of responsibility; comparable attacks were previously attributed to the Houthis (The Maritime Executive, 1 October 2026; Marine Insight, 3 October 2026). On the same day the EU Oil Bulletin reported a record of EUR 2.24 per litre for diesel.
On 2 October the G7 agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of crude oil and diesel from emergency reserves through the International Energy Agency, starting at once and spread over four months (The National and Al Jazeera, 2 October 2026). That same day President Trump stated that there would be no export ban on diesel: they would not do it, and they had never intended to (Transport Topics, 2 October 2026). During the night Ukrainian drones hit the Volgograd refinery and a tank farm near Samara (Kyiv Post, 2 October 2026).
On 3 October Iraq reported that it had brought 2 million barrels of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz, and a day later it arranged a tanker of its own for that route for the first time in decades (Reuters via BOE Report, 3 October 2026; The National, 4 October 2026).
On 4 October Iran's parliamentary speaker Ghalibaf said the Strait of Hormuz would not be opened until seven Iranian conditions were met; Foreign Minister Araghchi called an opening within seven days possible if Washington accepts the Iranian proposal (Arab News and Al Jazeera, 4 October 2026). The same day OPEC plus left its November output targets unchanged (OPEC, 4 October 2026), and in Yemen a ground offensive began at Bab al-Mandab.
On 5 October Saudi Aramco cut the price for Arab Light into Asia by three dollars to five dollars below the average of Oman and Dubai, the widest discount since June 2020 (Reuters via EnergyNow, 5 October 2026). Iran's oil minister Paknejad resigned. The US Department of Energy tendered a swap of up to 40 million barrels from the strategic reserve (Rigzone, 5 October 2026).
On 6 October the Saudi energy minister said in Manama that the East-West pipeline was pumping 5.8 million barrels a day (Al Jazeera and Reuters, 6 October 2026). On 7 October the Houthis reported attacks on Saudi airports; two ballistic missiles came down on Aden airport, one of them close to the runway, and no casualties were reported (The National, 7 October 2026).
2. Hormuz: the volumes are back, the safety is not
The figures on the Strait of Hormuz contradict one another even more strongly this week than usual, and there is a comprehensible reason for that: they measure different things.
For the seven-day average to 30 September, Kpler names 18.3 million barrels a day of crude oil exports from the Middle East as a whole, about as much as the average of the twelve months before the war. Around 40 percent of that now runs past the strait through pipelines (Al Jazeera, 6 October 2026). For the transits alone the same firm names 9,017 thousand barrels a day against a pre-war figure of 17,132 thousand, so around 47 percent below that (Kpler Insight via congress.net, 6 October 2026). Both are correct, and the two must not be set against each other.
For the week to 2 October the British UKMTO counted 247 transits, 123 inbound and 124 outbound, so around 35 ships a day. By its own account it puts that at around 75 percent below the level before the conflict (UKMTO, 2 October 2026).
That has not made the strait any safer. The intelligence service Marisks counted at least seven incidents involving tankers in one week, and since 2 October the UKMTO has reported at least one attack a day in the strait or in the Gulf of Aden (Al Jazeera, 6 October 2026).
Whether anything is being paid for the passage is disputed as well. The Kpler analyst Michelle Brohard told Al Jazeera on 5 October that she considered some kind of fee likely. The US government stated that no agreement would permit such a fee. The transport lawyer Abdul Khalique called the allegation plausible but unproven (Al Jazeera, 5 October 2026).
3. Iran: not a barrel in September, and a new oil minister
The most striking figure of the week is a zero. According to Kpler, not a single crude oil cargo left Iran in September 2026. That is the first month without a loading since the firm began its records in 2013; the last cargo was taken on by the Suezmax Sarak at Kharg Island on 25 August (Kpler Insight via congress.net, 6 October 2026). Vortexa and Bloomberg arrive at the same or almost the same result.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iran would have no crude oil at sea this week for the first time. He belongs to one party to the conflict, and no Iranian counter-figure is available.
On 5 October oil minister Mohsen Paknejad resigned. His acting successor is Hamid Bovard, who announced that he would maximise production and continue exports as best he could; his ministry spoke of a comprehensive economic war (Rigzone and The National, 5 October 2026; IranWire, 5 October 2026). Before the blockade Iran exported around 2 million barrels a day; in August it was still 220,000 to 255,000, according to various surveys.
On the other side of the Gulf it looks the other way round. Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports stood at around 6.6 million barrels a day in September and thus at around 91 percent of the level before the conflict (Vortexa via Reuters, 6 October 2026); weekly loadings reached their highest level since April 2020, on Kpler's count. With this round the situation map therefore moves the East-West pipeline and the port of Yanbu back from severely restricted to disrupted.
4. The G7 open the emergency reserves, Washington drops the export ban
On 2 October the G7 agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of crude oil and diesel through the International Energy Agency. The release begins at once and runs over four months, a considerable part of it is to flow in the first twenty days, with the emphasis on diesel. The agency is to report within twenty days, after which the group will decide on further diesel volumes. In addition the G7 intend to coordinate their refinery maintenance and to impose no export restrictions on energy among themselves (The National and Al Jazeera, 2 October 2026; Business Today, 2 October 2026).
No official split between crude oil and diesel, or between the countries, has been published. According to an assessment by Discovery Alert these are not additional volumes but an acceleration of the commitment of March 2026 covering 400 million barrels; on 2 October IEA head Fatih Birol named around two thirds of that as already released.
Implementation is uneven. According to an analysis by EnergyConnects, Germany had released only around 23 percent of its committed stocks by the beginning of October, and Spain around a third. On 5 October the US Department of Energy tendered a swap of up to 40 million barrels from the strategic reserve, that is, a handover with an obligation to return and not a final release; Energy Secretary Chris Wright used the occasion to criticise the European contributions (Rigzone, 5 October 2026). The US reserve stood at 283.8 million barrels on 25 September, the lowest level since October 1982 (EIA, 30 September 2026).
The diesel export ban that Washington had been weighing for weeks is off the table. A milder route is being examined instead: releasing dyed diesel, exempt from the federal tax, for road traffic, which saves 24 cents per gallon (Transport Topics, 2 October 2026).
5. What this means for households
In the week to 30 September the EU diesel price reached a record of EUR 2.24 per litre, one cent above the previous week. Twelve member states were at an all-time high. Before the escalation in February it was EUR 1.59 (EU Oil Bulletin via Euronews, 1 October 2026).
For heating oil the EU Oil Bulletin shows EUR 1,697.40 per 1,000 litres in Germany for the week to 28 September, EUR 1,859.47 in Austria, EUR 1,937.28 in France and EUR 1,525.55 in Spain, taxes included in each case. For Switzerland, heizoel24.ch named CHF 162.95 per 100 litres on 6 October for an order quantity of 3,000 litres.
With gas it comes down to the storage sites. On 4 October the Federal Network Agency stated that reaching the fill level targets by 1 November was not strictly necessary for security of supply; the supplier SEFE was instructed to procure an additional 8 terawatt hours and to put them into storage by 15 December (netz-trends.de, 4 October 2026).
In the United States the EIA expects, in its short-term outlook of 6 October, that distillate stocks on the East Coast will stay around 20 percent below the average of the years 2021 to 2025 for the whole winter. For the roughly three percent of US households that heat mainly with heating oil, almost all of them in the Northeast, the agency reckons with expenditure 21 percent higher this winter; on its assumption a milder winter has a dampening effect.
What all of this has in common: freight has become a price factor in its own right. A supertanker on the route from Saudi Arabia to China costs USD 1.29 million a day; in the average of the years 2021 to 2025 it was less than 30,000 (Rigzone, 6 October 2026). These costs are in the price before a barrel arrives in Europe.