OPEC Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais publicly broke with the International Energy Agency on Thursday, rejecting the Paris-based watchdog's forecast that a Hormuz reopening will tip oil markets into a major supply glut next year. His comments, delivered in an interview with CNBC, landed as Brent crude closed out a week in which the international benchmark lost roughly 8 percent and slipped below $80 a barrel.
The split sets up a fight over what the post-war crude market actually looks like. The IEA said Wednesday that supply will surge by 8 million barrels a day in 2027 while demand rises by only 2 million, an imbalance that would force OPEC and its allies to swallow deeper output cuts or watch prices fall further. Al-Ghais said the math is wrong.
The OPEC line
"What does the IEA see that OPEC and the rest don't see?" al-Ghais told CNBC's Dan Murphy. He said OPEC focuses "on fundamentals and not putting many ifs and buts in our forecasts, but rather focusing on actual numbers," and warned that the agency's projections "only create more volatility." The secretary general also said OPEC does not expect oil demand to peak in the foreseeable future, a direct challenge to the IEA's long-running thesis that electric vehicles and efficiency gains will cap consumption before the end of the decade.
The pushback comes as the cartel watches a roughly $40 round trip in crude over four months. Brent peaked at $118 in March when the Iran war shut Hormuz traffic, and has since fallen about 36 percent from that high, Axi analyst Tiago Lacerda said. Front-month August Brent was last quoted near $79.72 on Friday after the postponement of U.S.-Iran follow-up talks in Switzerland clipped a midweek rally. West Texas Intermediate traded 0.1 percent higher at $76.68, reflecting tighter domestic balances than the seaborne market that sets Brent.
What is actually flowing
The physical recovery is real but partial. JPMorgan estimated this week that June oil flows through Hormuz are running at 5.1 million barrels a day, up from 2.9 million in May and 2.2 million in March, still only about a quarter of pre-war levels. Vice President JD Vance said tankers carrying more than 12 million barrels crossed the strait overnight Wednesday, the second straight day Iran did not target shipping. Kuwait has lifted its force majeure declaration and the U.S. Navy has wound down its blockade.
PVM Oil Associates analyst Tamas Varga said those moves have convinced traders that the disruption which pushed prices above $120 "is well and truly over." Goldman Sachs cut its Brent forecast by $5 to $80 for late 2026 and $75 for 2027, citing firmer projected supply from the UAE, the United States, Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. Citigroup told clients the current price already prices in the memorandum of understanding signed Wednesday but not a durable agreement, and said any summer rallies should be sold.
The damage already done
The relief in the futures pit will not be matched in the consumer price index for months. Simon MacAdam, deputy chief global economist at Capital Economics, wrote that higher inflation has already been largely "baked in" across many economies. "It can take many months for higher energy and fertiliser prices to be passed along food supply chains to end-consumers," MacAdam said, noting that household natural-gas tariffs typically lag the upstream market by about three months.
The World Bank last week cut its 2026 global growth forecast to 2.5 percent, the slowest pace since the pandemic, and projected global inflation will rise to 4 percent this year from 3.3 percent in 2025. The European Central Bank raised rates last week for the first time in nearly three years, and the Fed under Chairman Kevin Warsh on Wednesday lifted its end-2026 PCE inflation forecast to 3.6 percent from 2.7 percent in March.
No OPEC member publicly contradicted al-Ghais by press time, and the IEA had not responded. A fuller producer reaction may emerge once Gulf ministers speak again, the first formal test of whether the cartel will defend $80 Brent or accept the IEA's glut path on its own terms.