Overview
- Oil prices jumped Monday after a drone strike set fire to a Fujairah energy site in the UAE and U.S. destroyers moved into the Strait of Hormuz.
- The U.S. began Project Freedom to help stranded merchant ships, with CENTCOM citing 15,000 personnel, more than 100 aircraft, guided-missile destroyers, and two successful U.S.-flagged transits.
- Iran’s Fars news agency said two missiles hit a U.S. Navy vessel near Jask, a claim U.S. Central Command denied as accounts of the incident remained in dispute.
- Commercial traffic through the strait remains sharply reduced, with the IMO reporting nearly 2,000 ships trapped or delayed and millions of barrels a day kept from global markets.
- OPEC+ approved a 188,000 bpd increase for June that analysts say will do little while transit stays constrained, and UBS forecasts real oil prices could stay 30–40% higher for around six months with supply normalizing only late in the year.