Brent Crosses $100 Again -- Your Fuel and Freight Line Items Just Got Rewritten

Brent crude has pushed back above $100 a barrel, with OilPrice attributing the rally to escalating Houthi attacks in shipping lanes near the Red Sea. The move puts oil at levels that flow through almost every cost line a business carries, from diesel to plastics to anything that touches a container ship.

This is the same playbook that's run since late 2023: a non-state actor with a fraction of a nation's military budget disrupts a chokepoint that carries a double-digit share of global trade, and the price signal moves faster than any diplomatic response can. The pattern that matters isn't the barrel price itself -- it's that markets have stopped pricing Red Sea risk as temporary. Insurers, shippers, and traders are now treating attacks on this route as a standing tax on global logistics, not a one-off shock. That's how a regional militia ends up setting a floor under global energy costs, and how a $100 handle stops being news and starts being baseline.

The SAL read: if your cost model still assumes Red Sea transit risk is a temporary spike rather than a permanent line item, you're underpricing your own supply chain and your customers will find out before you do.