Goldman sends a fresh warning to the oil market

Most of the time it fades into background noise, a number scrolling across a screen that feels like somebody else's problem. Then a shipping lane on the other side of the planet hiccups, and the cost of moving anything, anywhere, starts creeping back into everything you buy.

For a few weeks this summer, that background noise had gone quiet. A deal between Washington and Tehran reopened the Persian Gulf, tankers that had been trapped for months finally moved, and the fear premium that once had crude flirting with $120 a barrel drained away.

The market exhaled. Banks that had spent the spring racing each other to raise price targets started quietly walking them back down.

That calm did not last. In a note out this week, Goldman Sachs told clients the recovery it had been counting on has gone into reverse, and the bank is once again flagging fresh upside risk to oil prices.

The setup matters. For most of the spring, the story was closure. A conflict that began in late February shut the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that carries close to a fifth of the world's crude, and prices ripped higher on the fear that barrels simply could not get out.

Then came the thaw. Gulf exports clawed back to more than 80% of pre-war levels in the first two weeks after the deal, and traders started betting the worst was behind them, according to Investing.com .

That bet is now unraveling. Renewed attacks on tankers in the strait have pulled flows back below 50% of pre-war levels, or roughly 11 million barrels a day, and the United States has reinstated a naval blockade of Iranian ports, according to Investing.com .

Gas-price questions remain even with end to Iran conflict in sight

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have the biggest tanker fleets and the highest-quality fields, did most of the heavy lifting on the rebound through early June, according to Investing.com . Even with their help, other production losses against February levels may still run near 9 million barrels a day.

None of this is a clean read, either. Some tankers slip through the strait with their transponders switched off, then signal again once they are clear, which means the official flow data probably understates how much is actually moving. Mid-June estimates were later revised up 1.1 million barrels a day, or 10%, once those ghost cargoes showed up, according to Investing.com .

When I lined up this week's note against the one Goldman put out a week earlier, the shift was hard to miss. On July 8, the bank was still calling the risk two-sided and expecting flows to normalize by month's end. Shippers "may hesitate to cross under the currently unclear ceasefire status," its analysts wrote at the time, according to OilPrice.com .

Here is where it gets uncomfortable for anyone hoping crude keeps drifting lower. Goldman estimates the market is now short 13.4 million barrels a day of Persian Gulf flows, a gap it says would likely force either sharper demand destruction or renewed inventory draws unless tensions cool soon, according to Investing.com .

The bank did not blow up its base case. It kept Brent at $80 a barrel for the fourth quarter of 2026 and $75 for 2027, the same numbers it landed on when it quietly walked its targets down in June, as TheStreet reported. What changed is the shape of the risk around those numbers.

Related: OPEC, Saudi Arabia share a signal on where oil is headed

That earlier caution was already building. "Hormuz disruptions could slow down the production recovery," Goldman's analysts wrote in that July 8 note, with Gulf output still about 10.5 million barrels a day below pre-war levels, Bloomberg reported.

Now the bank says the balance is "skewed to the upside in the near term," according to Investing.com . It sketched out just how wide the range has become:

Base case: Brent averaging $80 a barrel in the fourth quarter of 2026 and $75 in 2027.