Crude oil research is sharply divided right now, and the split comes down to one question: does the Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire actually hold?
The bearish camp — a minority of recently published analysis — argues Brent and WTI head lower from here, pointing to the announced ceasefire, a reported US-Russia diesel arrangement, and Russian barrels re-entering the market. The call is explicitly conditional on those flows actually materialising.
The bullish consensus in this week's research pushes back hard. Analysts in that camp highlight ongoing Strait of Hormuz disruptions, punitive war-risk insurance costs, OPEC producing well under quota (removing roughly 2 billion barrels from the market, by one estimate), and continued strikes on Saudi and Ukrainian energy infrastructure — evidence, they argue, that the supply relief hasn't actually arrived. One longer-horizon view frames elevated oil as a persistent inflation driver into 2026-2027.
On diesel, researchers broadly agree prices stay stubbornly high near-term, with refining capacity shortages compounded by strikes on Russian and Middle Eastern refineries. No meaningful relief is expected in the coming weeks.