The gradual recovery of crude oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to translate into immediate relief for transportation fuel prices or inflation, as depleted oil inventories, damaged refining capacity and persistent disruption to refined-product shipments continue to constrain global markets.

A survey of market reports by Oracle Intelligence indicates that the United States Central Command’s military operations in the Arabian Gulf have significantly weakened Iran’s ability to restrict shipping through the strategic waterway, opening a wider corridor for relatively safer passage of cargo vessels.

Reports on Wednesday indicated that crude oil movements through the Strait of Hormuz had recovered to a pace approaching pre-war levels, representing a significant rebound at the world’s most important oil chokepoint.

The recovery has been attributed largely to Iran’s diminished military capability and a U.S. Navy operation securing portions of the waterway for relatively protected passage.

However, analysts warn that the improvement in crude flows does not mean the factors behind elevated fuel prices have disappeared. They argue that restoring crude shipments is only one part of a supply chain that has suffered extensive disruption since the war began.

“Most of the refined gasoline and diesel that was moving through the strait before the war is still not getting shipped,” the reports noted, identifying the disruption as a major factor sustaining high fuel prices.

“The rebound of crude shipments ‘is good news, but we are far from out of the woods,’” said Bob McNally, founder of Rapidan Energy Group. “The market realizes that. We have dug ourselves into a deep deficit over the last several months, and this only reduces it. It does not get us back to where we were.”

Crude prices declined on Tuesday, partly following the resumption of limited operations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline. But Brent crude, the global benchmark, remained above $100 a barrel on Wednesday morning, about 40 per cent higher than its level when the Iran war began in February.

The outlook was further clouded on Wednesday after the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported that three vessels carrying fuel through a corridor of the Strait of Hormuz that the U.S. military has been attempting to protect were attacked the previous day.

In the United States, the pressure on consumers remained pronounced, with the average price of regular gasoline at $4.43 a gallon and diesel at $6.41, according to AAA.

Analysts said that even if crude shipments through Hormuz remain at pre-war levels for an extended period, the development would not be sufficient to bring global oil and fuel prices down significantly in the coming weeks.

Oil inventories have been severely depleted and need to be rebuilt, while refining infrastructure across the Middle East has suffered substantial damage and will require time to restore. The facilities also remain exposed to the risk of further attacks.

The resulting refining constraints mean shipments of gasoline and diesel through the strait — products critical to easing consumer fuel prices — remain only a fraction of their pre-war levels.

“Nobody consumes crude oil directly,” said Mark Finley, an oil markets scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “It has to be made into something useful, like diesel or jet fuel or gasoline. The world’s refining system that turns crude oil into useful products is severely strained.”

The continuing supply emergency was underscored on Tuesday when the U.S. Energy Department announced plans to release another 40 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, whose holdings are already at their lowest level since 1983.

“We have dug ourselves into a big hole,” Finley said.

Within the oil industry, there is broad agreement that much of the crude still being prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz is Iranian oil, reflecting the U.S. strategy of applying economic pressure on Tehran and restricting revenue available to finance its military activities.

Estimates of how much non-Iranian crude is currently moving through the waterway vary among ship-tracking companies.

Kpler estimated that shipments averaged nearly 12.5 million barrels per day in the week ending September 27, about one million barrels below the pre-war baseline. Windward, another maritime intelligence platform, put the figure closer to 10 million barrels per day.

“This is not trivial,” said Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward.

The divergence in estimates notwithstanding, the broader market signal is that the restoration of crude traffic represents only an initial step towards normalisation. With inventories depleted and refining capacity constrained, the recovery in tanker movements through Hormuz is unlikely, by itself, to provide rapid relief for motorists, airlines and other fuel consumers.

For economies heavily dependent on imported petroleum products, the implication is that any easing of the geopolitical supply shock may take considerably longer to filter through to pump prices and inflation.