Brent Falls Below $100 as Crude Supply Concerns Ease

11:02 AM EDT, 09/22/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Crude prices continued to fall Tuesday, with Brent declining below $100 a barrel, amid renewed hopes for the Strait of Hormuz's reopening and reports that Saudi Arabia was set to resume oil exports via its key East-West pipeline. Brent was last down 1.1% at $99.19 a barrel in Tuesday trading, while West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 1.8% to $90.72. Both benchmarks were on track for their fifth consecutive day of declines, but still up for the month following back-to-back monthly gains. Iran has reportedly offered to restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key crude and energy chokepoint, within a week if the US eases military pressure and lifts its blockade on Iranian ports. Iran has conveyed the proposal to Washington through mediators, Reuters and Japan's Kyodo News reported, citing a senior Iranian government official. A senior Iranian official told MS Now, CNBC's Versant Media partner, that the Reuters and Kyodo reports were not true. The reports come as a President Masoud Pezeshkian-led Iranian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly is in New York. Pezeshkian is not expected to meet US President Donald Trump at the UN headquarters, Reuters reported. The selloff in the oil markets shows "how much geopolitical risk premium remains embedded in energy prices and how sensitive the market has become to any prospect of a breakthrough," Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said in a Tuesday report. "The question now is whether Washington sees Iran's proposal as an opportunity or concludes that time is increasingly on its side," Hansen said. Separately, Saudi Arabia has restarted operations at its key East-West crude oil pipeline that was shut down as a precautionary measure following drone attacks, Reuters reported. The kingdom could resume exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu later on Tuesday, according to Reuters, while Bloomberg News said that Saudi Arabia was looking to restore exports later this week. The 7-million-barrel-per-day East-West pipeline is considered a key route for Saudi oil exports during disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, according to an ING note earlier this month. "That creates an interesting negotiating dynamic," Hansen said. "Iran arguably needs a deal more urgently if its own exports remain blocked while competing Gulf producers progressively restore theirs."