Washington says Hormuz is recovering — but shipping numbers say no yet

Washington says oil is moving through Hormuz again. Crude, cargo, and LNG through the strait hit a six-month high over the past two weeks, US Centcom Commander Admiral Brad Cooper said (watch, runtime: 1:53) with GCC countries moving more than 1 bn barrels over the past two months. He credited US naval escorts and mine clearance, and said Iran “has exported zero barrels” under a US blockade — a claim Tehran disputes, maintaining the strait is closed. Washington is working with GCC states, shippers, and insurers to push volumes higher, Cooper added.

But even a partial reopening leaves the world heavily dependent on the strait. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week that global markets will still need roughly 10 mn bbl / d of crude and petroleum products moving through the strait, even as Washington tries to rebuild traffic, Bloomberg reports.

Saudi Arabia is feeling that dependence more directly: The Kingdom is currently rerouting its oil exports back through the Gulf to cover the gap left by the strike on the East-West pipeline. Aramco has sold roughly 60 mn barrels from Ras Tanura for ship-to-ship transfer off Sohar, Oman, this month and the next, lifting the company’s Gulf exports back to 1-1.5 mn bbl / d, in line with or slightly above August levels.

Losing the bypass changes the resilience equation. “If Hormuz and its main bypasses are constrained together, the system loses the ability to shift cargo away from trouble. Two routes offer limited protection when the same conflict can disrupt both. The binding constraint becomes how much oil can leave, rather than how much is available to load,” Wolfgang Lehmacher, former head of supply chain and transport industries at the World Economic Forum, tells EnterpriseAM.

Yet vessel traffic tells a more disrupted story: Visible commercial traffic through Hormuz remains only a fraction of pre-war levels, with just 17 commodity vessels crossing the strait over the weekend, down from 37 the previous weekend, Reuters reports. Before the war, Hormuz handled roughly 125 large commercial vessels every day — meaning an entire weekend of current traffic still amounts to only a fraction of what the strait used to handle in a single day. Some vessels are also crossing with AIS switched off, so visible traffic understates the true count, but the gap remains huge.

At the cargo level, the picture is less straightforward: Pakistan negotiated with Iran to secure passage for another tanker carrying Qatari LNG over the weekend, Bloomberg reports. The cargo had been sitting aboard the vessel since loading at Ras Laffan in late June and would mark the second Qatari shipment to reach Pakistan through a negotiated passage this month. The bilateral workaround shows that rising aggregate flows don’t necessarily mean Hormuz has normalized — but some cargoes are still relying on individually arranged access, while over vessel traffic remains far below pre-war levels.

The real test of normalization is what happens after the cargo clears. Clearing stranded barrels or getting individual ships through says less about recovery than whether operators return, reload, and complete repeated voyages on predictable schedules, Lehmacher says. More barrels may show that cargo is moving again, but physical normalization means operators can plan the next voyage with confidence over access, timing, and cost, he adds.

What’s next? Ins’rers need to be comfortable underwriting the trip, ports need to function reliably, and rescue and salvage capacity needs to be available without every cargo depending on a specially negotiated passage, Lehmacher notes.