Iran and Oman have agreed on control and revenues tied to the Strait of Hormuz, but the key shipping lane will remain closed unless the United States accepts their conditions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday. The duo have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strait, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the war began in February. Most shipping has since been shut down, driving global energy prices higher, as Tehran and Washington have tried to assert control over the channel, imposing separate blockades. "The Strait of Hormuz belongs to Iran and the country of Oman ... We have been in negotiations with Oman for about a month, and we have reached results that are acceptable to both sides," Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said in comments published by Iranian state media. "In these negotiations, agreements have been reached regarding the share of each country in the waters of the Strait and the share of Iran and Oman in its revenues," Mohebbi added. The IRGC accused the United States of seeking to obstruct the negotiations between Iran and Oman and said this had caused the agreement to be delayed. "If the United States stops obstructing and returns to the agreement, we can open the Strait of Hormuz within the framework of the agreement reached ... If the United States does not accept our conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened under any circumstances," Mohebbi said. Though active hostilities between the U.S. and Iran have largely subsided in recent weeks, diplomatic efforts to reach a peace deal have stalled and continuing attacks on ships mean passage through the Strait of Hormuz remains perilous. Iran announced a blacklist on Sunday of 45 ships in an apparent effort to stop ship-to-ship transfers used by Gulf energy producers to evade the Iranian blockade. Some companies plan to stop using vessels added to the blacklist, sources said. In an effort to tighten pressure on Iran's economy, the United States earlier this week threatened to punish countries that continue to do business with Iran, but said it would not impose penalties immediately. The sanctions did not feature Chinese financial institutions suspected of facilitating oil exports from Iran that the U.S. blockade has cut. Iran denounced the U.S. effort to isolate its economy as an act of "gross lawlessness", expressing confidence that many countries would not join the pressure campaign. Oil prices fell for a third day, dropping more than $2 a barrel to a two-week low, following signs of renewed efforts to seek a mediated end to the war that began on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Iran and Oman have agreed on control and revenues tied to the Strait of Hormuz, but the key shipping lane will remain closed unless the United States accepts their conditions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday. The duo have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controllin…
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State media reported that U.S. strikes near Tehran and in Semnan province, where ballistic missile and space programs are located, were carried out early Thursday. These incidents followed daylight attacks on Wednesday, indicating a reported increase in the frequency of strikes.
Bahrain and Kuwait say they have engaged with Iranian air strikes, while Iran says it hit a U.S. air base in Jordan.
WTI Rises After Big Product Draws, Tiny Crude Build, SPR Nears 'Tank Bottoms'
Oil prices extended their declines for a third straight day after the US plan to ramp up economic pressure on Iran spared the country’s trading partners from harsher measures for now, while mediators said they were continuing efforts to end the conflict.
“There was a lot of buildup around the announcement but what we got was more a warning about where policy is heading than an immediate shock to physical supply,” said Haris Khurshid, chief investment officer at Chicago-based Karobaar Capital LP. “Until secondary sanctions start changing who can buy, ship or even finance Iranian crude, I don’t think traders have much reason to add another geopolitical premium.”
Oman and Iran said the countries' foreign ministers discussed an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz under a temporary framework.
Negotiations between the two countries will continue "with a view to agreeing on a permanent navigational corridor and future administration of the strait," the joint statement said.
While positive, an agreement between Oman and Iran wouldn't result in oil flows through the strait returning to prewar levels, ING analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said.
"We would likely need to see the U.S. lift its blockade on Iranian ports and ease sanctions on Iran before we see any move towards normalization."
All eyes on domestic supply (and demand) for the next tactical leg...
API
Crude +4.2mm
Cushing +1.0mm
Gasoline -3.2mm
Distillates -459k
DOE
Crude +95k (+500k exp)
Cushing +1.18mm
Gasoline -2.54mm
Distillates -2.23mm
Crude stocks rose for the 4th straight week (but it was a tiny 95k increase) while Cushing saw a modest build off tank bottoms. Product inventories saw large drawdowns..
The Trump admin drained another 3.6mm barrels from the SPR to 289.7 million barrels (1983 lows), approaching the minimum operational level for storage facilities, which ranges between 250 and 300 million barrels.
The combination of a tiny commercial crude build and sizable SPR drain created the biggest net crude drawdown in over a month...
Cushing stocks remain very near 'tank bottoms'
Distillates stocks fell back near 25 year lows and the lowest seasonally on record...
US crude imports from Saudi Arabia picked up recently (but remain well below peak war levels). Crude exports fell below 4 million barrels a day, a threshold closely watched by the market to gauge demand.
US Crude production remains near record highs and while the rig count dipped last week, it is still trending higher overall...
Refining utilization rates are at the highest seasonal level since 1998. That is, in part, due to a shrinking US refining fleet in recent years. But it’s also evidence of how hard fuel-makers are running their plants right now to capture wide margins. They plan to keep that up into the fall, with some companies even deferring maintenance.
WTI was hovering around $81.50 (off the overnight lows) ahead of the official data (down from almost $88 last week)...
Crude is still up about 50% this year as the war - now in its sixth month - continues to disrupt the shipping of crude and refined fuels out of the Middle East.
The impact has been particularly acute in fuel markets, which have also faced a hit from Ukrainian attacks on Russian refiners. That’s helped push premiums over crude to stratospheric levels (but the crack spread is starting to decline)...
At the same time, large volumes of crude supplies continue to transit Hormuz with their satellite signals turned off.
Those volumes are in millions of barrels a day and have helped generally keep a lid on prices that had been expected to soar at the outset of the conflict.
Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 10:40
U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA said it has observed cyberattacks targeting over 100 internet-exposed systems across the U.S. water and wastewater sector, amid a wave of hacks targeting American critical infrastructure. The number of affected systems provides new context to the scale of the ongoing cyberattacks targeting water providers in Michigan, Minnesota, and at least five other states.
The federal agency, which oversees cybersecurity defense and critical infrastructure protections, said in an advisory that the attacks have largely targeted programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which are used to control physical systems and machinery across water providers, energy systems, and other parts of critical infrastructure.
In recent weeks, hackers have targeted PLCs made by several manufacturers, including Rockwell, Schneider Electric, and more recently, Siemens. CISA previously said that the cyberattacks are relying in part on AI tools that rely on public information to develop scripts capable of targeting vulnerable Siemens PLCs.
The intrusions have had little effect on water or waste water supplies to local communities, but have resulted in outages and disruption as incident responders investigate the breaches. CISA previously reported that some of the intrusions allowed hackers to modify affected PLCs to disable shutdown processes and alarms, potentially creating “unsafe conditions” without notifying the affected operators.
Many of the affected communities are in rural or isolated areas, where disruption to critical infrastructure systems can affect a large area of people. Reports citing senior American officials say that U.S. intelligence believes Iran is likely behind the largely opportunistic attacks on water providers, likely in response to the U.
S. and Israel-led war against Iran, but officials have fallen short of a concrete attribution. The intrusions have sparked broader concerns about the cybersecurity and resiliency of critical infrastructure across the United States. U.S. officials have warned in recent years that hackers working for China have been planting destructive malware on critical infrastructure ready to activate as a distraction in the event of an anticipated Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Russia has also been linked to several cyberattacks on water providers, and power and energy grids, across Europe as part of a growing campaign seen as aimed at testing the NATO alliance.