Brent at $100, Urals at $91: the Iran war handed Moscow its best oil week in years

Nine days after US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Brent crude has nearly doubled and Russian Urals crude more than doubled from where both traded two weeks ago. G7 finance ministers scrambled to respond.

Ukraine is watching its fuel costs reach their highest level since the first months of the full-scale invasion, with no strategic reserve to cushion the blow. And Washington has issued a 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to resume buying sanctioned Russian oil—reversing months of pressure on New Delhi just weeks after India had pledged to stop.

The easy read is that Moscow has won an unexpected windfall from a war it did not start. The reality is messier—and still unfolding. Russia is earning more, but buyers are treating its crude as a liability. The US waiver that reopened India’s purchases lasts 30 days.

The Hormuz crisis could deepen or ease. Euromaidan Press is tracking how each of these threads develops and what they mean for Ukraine’s war.

G7 in emergency session as oil crosses $100

BBC reported Monday that Brent crude touched $119.50 per barrel in Asian trading before settling around $109, while West Texas Intermediate traded at roughly $104—both at their highest levels since mid-2024. G7 finance ministers convened an emergency session on the economic fallout.

BBC said the meeting would discuss a coordinated release of petroleum from strategic reserves through the International Energy Agency. Stock markets fell sharply across the Asia-Pacific region: Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed down 5.2%, while South Korea’s Kospi sank 6% after a circuit breaker halted trading to curb panic selling.

Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, Ali Khamenei, as Supreme Leader on Sunday, signaling hardliners remain in control. US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that rising oil prices were “a very small price to pay for USA., and World, Safety and Peace.”

Adnan Mazarei of the Peterson Institute for International Economics told BBC that “people are realising that this won’t end quickly” and that US promises to secure energy flows are “becoming more unrealistic.”

From $40 to $91 in nine days: Russia’s price arc

Since 2022, buying Russian crude has meant risk—potential secondary sanctions, insurance refusals, shipping complications. Buyers have compensated by demanding steep discounts: the lower Russia’s price, the more acceptable the risk. That discount is the direct cost of sanctions on Russia’s income, barrel by barrel.

Before US and Israeli strikes on Iran, that cost was severe. Urals crude was trading at roughly $40 per barrel, Bloomberg reported—meaning buyers were insisting on a $31 discount below the global rate just to do business with Moscow. Russia’s own budget had been built on $59 per barrel.

The Kremlin was selling its oil at a $19 loss against its own projections. In the first days of the Iran crisis, that discount barely moved; S&P Global reported that the gap between Urals and the global benchmark price was $34.86 on 4 March, almost identical to the $34.23 recorded the week before. Buyers weren’t rushing to relax their terms for Russian oil just because a war had started elsewhere.

Then the broader oil market surged so fast that even discounted Russian crude went along. Trading Economics data showed Urals at $90.97 per barrel on 6 March—more than double its level two weeks prior, and more than 50% above Russia’s own budget target. For the first time in months, Moscow’s oil revenues are running ahead of plan.

The price rose, but the risk discount—what buyers charge for touching Russian crude—barely moved. Buyers are paying more in absolute terms, but they are still demanding the same discount for the same reasons: sanctions exposure, insurance problems, reputational risk.

Russia is earning more because the whole market rose, not because its standing among buyers improved. Whether that distinction matters depends on how long the crisis lasts and whether the discount eventually narrows. So far, it has not.

Russia needs buyers, not prices

Higher prices help Moscow, but they mean little without buyers. S&P Global reported that Russian seaborne crude exports had been falling for three consecutive months through February—and that India, one of Russia’s two main customers since Western buyers retreated after 2022, had cut its purchases of Russian crude by nearly half in February alone, under sustained US pressure. China was also buying less.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak moved quickly to signal a change of direction, saying on 4 March that Moscow stood ready to increase exports to both India and China: “We are always ready; our oil is in demand. If they will buy—we will sell,” according to Tass, as cited by S&P Global.

Whether the buyers follow is less certain. Tatiana Mitrova, a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, noted that while Russia could ship more by sea, its pipeline capacity to China—the other main route—is already running close to full.

Andrei Covatariu from the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center wrote in Business Insider that “Russia benefits without firing a shot in the Gulf” and that “Moscow does not need to regain market dominance to gain leverage; it only needs to remain a marginal supplier in a tight system.”

Washington’s double standard

The sharpest contradiction arrived on Thursday, when the US Treasury issued a waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian crude held on vessels in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea—reversing months of US pressure on New Delhi to curtail purchases of sanctioned Russian oil. The permit runs until 4 April.

Ship-tracking firm Kpler estimates 27 million barrels of Russian crude are positioned in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean region, with around 130 million barrels total remaining on the water across global shipping corridors. The waiver came just weeks after India had pledged to halt direct and indirect imports of Russian crude—a commitment made in exchange for Trump lifting a 25% penalty tariff on Indian goods, The Kyiv Independent reported.

The official US line is that none of this represents a policy shift. “We just made a pragmatic decision,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News on 8 March. “I don’t think there’s any change in the pressure there… Russia’s oil remains sanctioned. There’s no change in policy towards Russia.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on X that the measure “will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government,” arguing it applies only to oil already stranded at sea.

Whether those assurances hold is less certain than the officials suggest. Bessent said on 6 March that Washington is also weighing whether easing additional restrictions on Russian oil could release more supply into global markets.

“There are hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the water that are sanctioned, and, in essence, by lifting the sanctions, the Treasury Department can create supply,” he said. That goes well beyond a 30-day emergency measure—it is a trial balloon for something significantly larger.

The Washington Post reported on 6 March, citing three officials familiar with the matter, that Russia has been providing Iran with targeting intelligence on US military positions since the start of the conflict—including the locations of American warships and aircraft. The White House did not deny the report; press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it “doesn’t matter” because the US is “completely decimating” Iran regardless.

Putin’s gas gambit

On 4 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Kremlin correspondent Pavel Zarubin on state television that the Iran crisis was opening more profitable gas markets for Russia. He suggested Moscow might halt European supply to pursue them.

“Now other markets are opening up. And perhaps it would be more profitable for us to stop supplying the European market right now. To move into those markets that are opening up and establish ourselves there,” Putin said. He called it “not a decision—thinking out loud” and instructed the government to examine the idea with Russian energy companies.

European benchmark natural gas futures have risen roughly 50% this week, NBC News reported, partly because Qatar declared force majeure and halted production at the world’s largest LNG export plant after Iranian strikes on its facilities.

The EU has spent three years reducing dependence on Russian gas—from around 45% of supply in 2021 to roughly 13% by early 2026—and is legally phasing out remaining imports by 2027. What Putin’s statement reflects more than leverage is an intention to use this crisis to establish footholds in Asian markets before the disruption ends.

Ukraine pays at the pump—and can’t stockpile

“We underestimate the extent to which higher energy prices feed through to basically everything,” Edmund Conway told Times Radio on 6 March. “And it trickles down in ways that are really hard to quantify and to predict.”

Conway, the Economics Editor of Sky News, was speaking about the global picture. For Ukraine, the trickle-down is more direct than most. Ukrainian finance portal Minfin reported on Monday that fuel prices at Ukrainian stations have hit their highest since 2022, with A-95 petrol and diesel at major networks reaching 70 UAH ($1.59) per liter as of 9 March, up roughly 6 UAH ($0.14) in a matter of days.

Ukraine cannot stockpile: fuel storage infrastructure is a constant target of Russian strikes, meaning every global price spike passes through immediately to Ukrainian consumers. A 2023 law mandating a three-month strategic reserve exists but remains only partially implemented, and up to 25% of planned reserves are to be kept at European hubs rather than on Ukrainian soil.

Energy expert Yuriy Korolchuk told Zaxid.net that if the conflict deepens and Brent reaches $100–$140 per barrel, Ukrainians could be paying above 100 UAH ($2.28) per liter at the pump—roughly 40% above current prices, with costs rippling through transport, logistics, and the military supply chain alike.

How far could this go?

Qatar’s energy minister told the Financial Times he expects all Gulf energy producers to shut down exports within weeks—a development he projected could push oil to $150 per barrel, Reuters reported. That is the most dramatic scenario currently in serious circulation, yet it is one projection, from a party with obvious interests, about an outcome that has not happened.

The Strait of Hormuz—which normally handles around 138 vessel transits per day—logged just two confirmed commercial transits in a 24-hour period on Friday, The Guardian reported, citing the Joint Maritime Information Center, whose security threat rating for the area remains “CRITICAL.”

There is a counter-reading. Tony Sycamore, head of research at IG, noted that “despite crude’s almost 20% surge this month, the price is currently just $3.40 above its average over the last four years.”

Brent has spiked, but it has spiked before. The question is whether the Hormuz disruption is temporary—a crisis that gets contained—or the beginning of a sustained reshaping of global energy flows.

That question is unanswered. So are several others. Will the buyer discount on Russian crude eventually narrow, turning a nominal windfall into a real one? Will the 4 April waiver become permanent by default—or expand into the broader sanctions relief Bessent floated? Will the G7 strategic reserve release be enough to put a ceiling on prices, or will it arrive too late and too small?

If Russia is feeding Iran intelligence on US military positions, how long can Washington justify simultaneously easing pressure on Moscow’s oil revenues? And if Brent settles durably above $100, what does that do to Ukraine’s ability to sustain its war effort over months, not days?

The situation is moving faster than any single article can track. We will be updating this coverage as it develops.