Saudi Aramco CEO says oil market pressure will persist until the Strait of Hormuz reopens, Fars reports; rebuilding oil inventories could take up to two years

Comments tying the crude balance to the Strait of Hormuz place this in the supply-disruption family, where the operative channel is freight, insurance and physical throughput rather than any change in underlying production capacity; past Gulf chokepoint episodes have shown that even the risk of interruption widens prompt spreads and steepens backwardation before any barrels are actually lost. The two-year inventory-rebuild framing is the more durable element: restoring stocks after a genuine drawdown has historically been a multi-season process constrained by OPEC spare capacity, shipping availability and refinery runs, and such estimates from national oil company executives have tended to set the floor for how quickly the market expects balances to normalise. The sourcing deserves note: the remarks reach the tape via an Iranian state-affiliated outlet rather than Aramco directly, a channel that has on previous occasions carried paraphrase or selective emphasis, so confirmation against the original remarks is the first follow-on. The tells to track are whether shipping traffic and war-risk premia through the strait actually change, since CEO commentary on the chokepoint has historically traded only when physical flows corroborate it, and whether Saudi output and export loadings shift in the interim.