Ian Moore: Brent Above $100 for at Least Six Months
The Oil Market Journal markets director puts the panic threshold at $120 a barrel, expects a third price spike in spring 2027, and rates the Balkans, bar Romania, below the European average.
Brent crude will stay above $100 a barrel for at least the next six months, and a third major price spike is coming in spring 2027. That is the assessment of Ian Moore, markets director at the British agency Oil Market Journal, in an interview with Biznis.rs published on October 10. He names $120 a barrel as the point where panic begins.
How far is Brent from the panic threshold?
According to an N1 info report on prices, Brent stood at $103.28 a barrel at the time of publication, after touching nearly $106 earlier that morning. The US benchmark WTI fell 0.9% to $90.23. N1 info says the drop followed a statement by US President Donald Trump that “productive talks” are under way with Iran and that the US military will not attack Iran before the November congressional elections. The report carries no date, only the word “today,” so this price is not tied to a specific day. Our earlier article on the oil price recorded a daily level of $104.18.
Moore considers a range of $100 to $110 tolerable for the global economy. He points to Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, when the price averaged that level for four years and the world carried on. From $120, he says, serious panic sets in among consumers, governments and stock markets. The market is $15 to $20 away from that line.
How did a glut turn into a shortage?
At the end of 2025, supply exceeded demand by 3.5 million barrels a day, Brent sold at an average of $63, and OECD commercial inventories stood at 2.6 billion barrels, in line with the ten-year average. The US-Iran conflict, which broke out on February 20, 2026, reversed that. Four months later the glut had become a shortfall of 4 million barrels a day, and OECD stocks had dropped by 200 million barrels in six months. Moore notes that oil company chiefs, Saudi Aramco among them, have publicly warned about alarmingly low reserves.
The world got through the first six months without a collapse because inventories built up the previous year were being drawn down like savings. Moore describes it this way:
“The savings account logic is relentless, because inventories run out at some point.”
The figures he cites show how little of that savings is left:
- Fujairah, the storage hub just outside the Strait of Hormuz: inventories are 49% below the seasonal average
- Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub: inventories are 24% below the five-year average
- Jet fuel at that European hub: 50% below normal
- Diesel on the US East Coast: 30% below average
The US government projects that OECD inventory coverage of demand will be 57 days in the last quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027. Moore stresses that over the past 15 to 20 years, Brent has been above $100 every time coverage fell to that level.
Why are diesel and jet fuel getting more expensive?
Prices do not rise evenly but in waves, moving from one fuel product to the next. The first spike, in March, was led by kerosene and jet fuel in Asia, the second by diesel in America. Diesel has gained $625 a ton, or 150%, since the conflict began, while Brent crude is up 75%, about $28 a barrel. Moore expects the third spike in spring, when attention shifts to gasoline and the new driving season.
On the supply side, Ukraine has hit 28 Russian refineries with a combined capacity of 5.9 million barrels a day. Russian exports of refined products fell from 2.5 million barrels a day in early 2025 to 1 million in August 2026. Middle East exports of refined products dropped from 8 million to 3 million barrels a day. Europe has lost 37% of its jet fuel imports and 10% of its diesel imports.
What does Moore say about the Balkans?
Moore compares how much of its own oil and gas Europe has. For every 100 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent consumed in Europe, only 22 million are produced locally. For the Balkans, the source gives no separate percentage, only a judgment: every country except Romania is worse off than that European average. He does not name any individual country apart from Romania.
On Europe as a whole, he said:
“I don’t think the average European fully understands the weakness of our supply situation in Europe.”
As an illustration, he cites the United Kingdom, where the ratio of domestic oil production to consumption fell from 84% in 2010 to 50% in 2024.
Moore sees the electrification of transport as the only long-term source of relief. Electric vehicle sales in the European Union rose 45% in the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same period last year.
