Bleeding stops, but healing takes time: Getting oil moving again through Hormuz is one thing, but getting the Gulf energy system back on track is another. The recent ceasefire opens the door to transit in the strait, but the system behind it is still fragile, with strikes hitting refineries, storage, and fields across Gulf countries.

A sea-turned-storage could be a relief: There’s some 130 mn barrels of crude, 46 mn barrels of refined fuels, and 1.3 mn tons of LNG sitting idle on tankers across the Gulf. These volumes can move quickly once routes reopen.

But clearing the backlog of cargoes is only half the equation — and moving ships out is easier than convincing them to come back in. Hundreds of vessels and shipowners are preparing to move, but transit protocols and key terms are still unclear. Charters remain cautious, with Maersk noting that “the ceasefire may create transit [windows], but it does not yet provide full maritime certainty and we need to understand all potential conditions attached.”

Crucially, without confidence that tankers will be there to lift cargo, producers won’t rush to restart — they can’t afford to produce barrels they can’t move. National oil companies like Aramco may be hesitant before restoring output without clarity on the ceasefire conditions.

The GCC will now play a sequencing game: The first barrels back to market won’t come from fresh output but from crude and products already sitting in tanks in the Gulf. That buys time, but it’s finite, and it masks the deeper issue that upstream and midstream systems are still impaired.

It will likely take some time

Wells don’t like being turned off: Idled wells lose pressure balance, take on water, and facecorrosion risks — especially with hydrogen sulfide exposure. In Saudi and Iraq, where enhanced recovery techniques like gas and water injection are standard, restarting is recalibrating entire reservoir systems under stable conditions.

Refining will be the quiet bottleneck: The UAE halted its Ruwais plant after a drone strike early last month. That matters because refined products are where shortages hit harder.

Even in the best-case scenario, this is a staggered recovery: Some wells could return in days or weeks if damage is limited and security holds. But full system normalization — across production, processing, and export — is a months-long process at minimum, and it can take years where infrastructure has taken a real hit.

REMEMBER- The potential bill for repairing energy infrastructure across the Gulf could reach USD 25 bn, with engineering and construction taking the biggest share, followed by equipment and materials.

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