West Texas Intermediate crude fell nearly 4% to settle around $69.23 a barrel on Friday, hitting its lowest level since late February, as shipping activity through the Strait of Hormuz accelerated even as Iran's drone strike on a cargo vessel stoked fresh ceasefire concerns.

Key Highlights

• WTI crude settled near $69.23 a barrel on Friday, its lowest since late February, with Brent approaching $72 a barrel on the session.

• Iran's IRGC struck the Singapore-flagged container ship Ever Lovely with a one-way attack drone on June 25, prompting US military strikes against Iranian missile storage sites and coastal radar installations the following day.

• Persian Gulf oil exports have partially recovered, with Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura terminal resuming tanker loading and regional output estimated at roughly 75% of pre-conflict levels.

• Oil prices have declined more than 10% over the week and are on track for their sixth consecutive weekly loss as geopolitical risk premiums continue to unwind.

Crude oil prices fell sharply on Friday as the volume of vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz continued to increase, reinforcing the view that the worst of the supply disruption caused by the US-Iran conflict may be behind the market. The waterway, which handled roughly 20% of global seaborne oil trade before the conflict began in late February, had seen tanker traffic fall to near zero in the early weeks of the war. The partial restoration of flows has triggered a sustained price reversal across both major crude benchmarks.

The session's sharp decline came despite an incident on June 25 in which the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged container vessel owned by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, was struck by a drone while exiting the strait off the Omani coast. No crew members were injured and the ship continued on its voyage. The US military responded on June 26, striking Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites in retaliation. US Central Command described the IRGC attack as a clear violation of the ceasefire framework signed in the June 17 memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran.

Despite the incident, oil markets focused on the broader trajectory of Hormuz traffic rather than the one-off strike. Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura terminal has resumed tanker loading for the first time since March, and producers in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq are ramping output, though tanker availability remains a constraint. Oil prices are on track for a sixth consecutive weekly decline, with Brent recording its largest weekly drop in a month, as the geopolitical risk premium that drove crude to more than $120 a barrel at peak now unwinds.

The average retail fuel prices in the US have fallen approximately 20% over the past 30 days, a development that prompted the US administration to call for a government probe into fuel pricing amid concerns about consumer costs. Cushing hub inventories, however, remain tight at around 19 million barrels, below operational minimums, which may limit the pace of the broader crude oil price decline.