Strait of Hormuz Crisis: How to Track Energy Prices Programmatically

The ongoing situation in the Strait of Hormuz represents the most significant disruption to global energy supply chains in decades. Here is what the data shows and how businesses can stay ahead of it.

What Happened

On February 28, 2026, a series of US-Israel air strikes on Iran escalated into a broader confrontation that has effectively disrupted transit through the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which approximately 20 million barrels of oil pass daily, roughly 20% of global supply.

As of late March, Iran has denied direct negotiations with the United States, and the timeline for any de-escalation remains uncertain.

Price Impact Across Energy Markets

The disruption has driven sharp moves across every major energy benchmark:

Crude oil — Brent crude surged from approximately $73/bbl in late February to over $126/bbl at peak, before settling around $108/bbl as of late March. WTI has followed a similar trajectory. This represents the largest supply-side price shock since the 1970s oil embargo.

Natural gas — European TTF natural gas prices approximately doubled within the first week of the crisis, as markets priced in the risk of broader supply chain disruptions and LNG rerouting.

Refined products — Gasoline and diesel margins have widened significantly as refinery feedstock availability tightened across Asia and Europe.

What This Means for Businesses

For companies with exposure to energy costs — whether in logistics, manufacturing, utilities, or financial services — this level of volatility creates both risk and operational complexity:

• Procurement teams need current pricing to make informed purchasing decisions and manage budgets against rapidly shifting input costs.
• Risk managers need granular historical data to model scenarios, calibrate hedges, and stress-test portfolios.
• Trading desks need reliable, low-latency data feeds to execute strategies in fast-moving markets.
• Financial applications need accurate commodity pricing for mark-to-market valuations, reporting, and compliance.

Manual price checks and spreadsheet-based workflows are not built for this kind of environment. When prices move 5-10% in a single session, the difference between stale data and current data is material.

Tracking Energy Prices Programmatically

EnergyPriceAPI provides real-time and historical pricing for crude oil, natural gas, gasoline, and other energy commodities via a REST API.

Get the latest Brent crude price

GET https://api.energypriceapi.com/v1/latest
    ?api_key=YOUR_KEY
    &base=USD
    &currencies=BRT

{
    "success": true,
    "base": "USD",
    "rates": {
        "BRT": 107.81
    }
}

Track price movements over time

Use the /timeframe endpoint to pull daily prices across any date range:

GET https://api.energypriceapi.com/v1/timeframe
    ?api_key=YOUR_KEY
    &base=USD
    &currencies=BRT
    &start_date=2026-02-28
    &end_date=2026-03-27

This returns daily closing prices across the full crisis period — useful for charting, reporting, or feeding into internal models.

Monitor multiple commodities in a single call

Track oil, natural gas, and gasoline simultaneously:

GET https://api.energypriceapi.com/v1/latest
    ?api_key=YOUR_KEY
    &base=USD
    &currencies=BRT,WTI,NG,GASOLINE

All endpoints return JSON, support 30+ energy commodities and currency bases, and are available on our free tier.

Looking Ahead

The situation remains fluid. Energy markets are likely to stay volatile for as long as Strait of Hormuz transit is disrupted — and potentially well beyond, as supply chains adjust and inventories are drawn down.

For businesses and developers building applications that depend on energy pricing, having reliable, programmatic access to this data is not a nice-to-have. It is infrastructure.

Start tracking energy prices programmatically — create a free API key.