On September 23, global oil markets exhaled as two forces aligned to ease the anxiety that had gripped energy traders for weeks: Saudi Arabia restored a critical pipeline severed by drone strikes, and American and Iranian envoys sat down in New York to explore the possibility of peace. Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate both slipped modestly, reflecting not a resolution but a hope — the market's quiet acknowledgment that the worst, for now, may not come to pass. In the long human story of oil and conflict, this was a moment of held breath rather than relief, a pause between disruption and