Global oil prices could surpass $100 a barrel within days and hit $150 a barrel by the end of the month, without a solution to the severe disruption to crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Goldman Sachs has warned.

Oil exports through the vital trade route linking the world’s biggest oil producers with buyers in the global market have fallen more than the US investment bank had initially expected after the US-Israeli attack on Iran just over a week ago.

Goldman Sachs had predicted that crude flows through the strait would fall to 15% of normal levels, but Iran’s effective blockade of oil tankers passing through the narrow waterway means that only 10% of oil shipments that normally transit the trade route have been able to pass through.

The bank, an influential oil commentator, warned that its analysis of trade flows last week suggested the impact was 17 times greater than the April 2022 peak in Russian production after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent the price of oil to $110 a barrel.

“Based on this new data, developments and the size of the shock, we now think oil prices will likely exceed $100 next week if no signs of solutions emerge by then,” he said in a note late Friday.

“We now also think that oil prices, especially refined products, are likely to exceed the 2008 and 2022 highs, if Strait of Hormuz flows remained depressed throughout March.”

The international oil benchmark briefly rose above $120 a barrel in 2022 and hit highs of $145 a barrel in 2008, both of which had serious consequences for the global economy.

The price of oil surpassed $90 a barrel late last week, amid the biggest weekly gains since the Covid-19 pandemic six years ago, and included a $10 rise in US crude prices on Friday alone.

Oil has risen further in weekend markets on brokerage IG, where US crude traded above $94 a barrel on Sunday. That indicates that the price of oil will increase once financial markets reopen.

“The grace period granted by the market to the Trump administration expired at the end of last week,” according to Clayton Seigle, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“A deficit of 20 million barrels per day (mb/d) is affecting [oil market] balances without signs of relief. By contrast, President Trump is demanding unconditional surrender, a highly unlikely prospect. “While observers initially thought his disregard for painful oil prices was a hoax, it is now clear that it is not,” he said.

Overall, oil prices have soared more than 50% so far this year, having started 2026 at around $60 a barrel. Prices had already risen in January and February, before accelerating following the US-Israeli attack on Iran just over a week ago.

Fears of a global oil deficit were compounded last week by Qatar’s Energy Minister, who predicted that if the war continued unabated, all Gulf energy exporters would be forced to shut down production within weeks and oil would rise to $150 a barrel.

Oil storage facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are reaching their limits, meaning major oil fields may need to be shut if crude cannot be exported through the Strait of Hormuz to the global market.

Hundreds of oil tankers attempting to cross the strait were stopped after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened to “set fire” to any ships using the trade route, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

Seigle warned that Middle East oil and gas exports would not resume “until shipowners, operators and insurers feel sufficiently confident about the threat environment posed by Iranian warships and aircraft, missiles, drones, speedboats and naval mines.”

The White House has suggested countermeasures such as diverting Saudi crude through the Red Sea, tapping into U.S. emergency crude reserves or extending government-backed insurance to shipping companies. However, Seigle added that this would not be enough to offset the loss of 20 million barrels of oil a day “or anywhere in that range.”