SINGAPORE: Commodity vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz fell to a single digit per day at the weekend, preliminary shiptracking data showed on Monday, well below a 10-day average of 14.
Over the weekend, four vessels exited the Gulf through the strait, including a Handysize vessel sailing in ballast, a Handy vessel carrying LPG, a Supramax carrying fertilizer and a Suezmax laden with crude or condensate.
Ten vessels entered the Gulf, including a mini-bulker carrying minor bulk commodities, a Handymax carrying grain, a Panamax carrying metals and a Supramax carrying dry bulk cargo, the data showed.
The figures exclude any vessels that might have crossed the strait with their Automatic Identification System transponders turned off to avoid detection.
A vessel was struck by an unknown projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said early on Sunday.
It said the crew’s status, damage assessment and environmental impact were unknown.
Meanwhile, the vital East-West oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia, which has helped relieve the logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, was temporarily shut down by a drone attack coming from Iraq, Saudi officials said.
Before the Iran war started on February 28, the strait typically handled about 125 large, commercial vessels per day, including tankers, gas carriers, bulkers and container vessels, accounting for some 20% of the world’s daily crude oil and liquefied natural gas supply.
A US blockade of Iran-related shipping has halted Iranian crude oil exports since it was reimposed in mid-July. In the Bab el-Mandeb strait, 24 and 27 commodity vessels travelled through respectively on Saturday and Sunday, tracking data showed, compared with an average of around 27 ships over the last 10 days.
CAIRO: A vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said early on Sunday.
It said the crew’s status, damage assessment and environmental impact were unknown.
Gulf foreign ministers plan to meet their Iranian counterpart in a push by Oman and Iran to secure buy-in for a temporary deal to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times reported on Friday. The gathering is scheduled to be held on Monday in the Omani coastal city of Salalah, the report said, citing two people briefed on the matter.
TEHRAN: Iran’s Guards said on Wednesday that a new “prohibited zone” outside the Strait of Hormuz would cover parts of the Gulf of Oman and beyond, adding that they would announce the exact coordinates later.
“It approximately starts from the direction of Chabahar, covering part of the Sea of Oman and another part of the Arabian Sea, along the route that can lead to the Strait of Hormuz,” Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi told state television.
“If a vessel enters that area without coordination, it will be subject to our sanctions… It means, for example, that if it later wants to come and use the Strait of Hormuz, if it wants to receive services somewhere, such as insurance or other related services, we will refrain from providing those services,” he added.
The announcement comes after Iran reported “significant progress” with Oman, both coastal states on Hormuz, in discussions of a temporary shipping route through the strait.
Iranian forces have restricted traffic through Hormuz, a vital energy conduit, since the start of the war with the United States on February 28. The US has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.
Tehran has required vessels to seek permission to transit, insisting there will be no return to the pre-war system of unrestricted navigation.
On Tuesday, Iranian forces said they have struck 10 vessels which attempted to cross Hormuz without coordination.
US President Donald Trump said in recent days that American forces have helped facilitate the passage of vessels through the strait, “averaging 30 ships a night.”
Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei said Sunday that the US tries each night to help five or six ships through, “and usually these ships get hit.”
During his interview on Wednesday, Mohebi said the US should also “release $24 billion in Iran’s frozen assets, and refrain from any interference in the country’s nuclear and missile capabilities.”
The Strait of Hormuz has become the central pressure point in the escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran. Before the conflict, roughly 20 million barrels of oil moved through the narrow waterway each day, equivalent to about one fifth of global oil consumption. For years, traders could therefore rely on relatively consistent estimates of the volumes passing through one of the world’s most important energy corridors.
That certainty has now disappeared.
The use of “dark crossings,” in which tankers switch off their identification and navigation systems, has made vessel movements increasingly difficult to monitor. Satellite imagery, port records, tanker drafts, loading schedules and shipping data are being used to reconstruct movements, but the information remains incomplete. Recent estimates of Hormuz flows have differed dramatically, leaving traders and governments uncertain about the true scale of oil moving through the waterway.
The uncertainty comes as Brent crude has moved above the $100 a barrel threshold for the first time since July, driven by renewed military escalation and concerns over Middle Eastern oil supplies.
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The Hormuz Information Gap
The most unusual feature of the current oil crisis is not simply that supplies may have fallen. It is that markets cannot confidently determine how much oil is actually moving.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said more than 17 million barrels crossed the strait on August 31 under U.S. Navy supervision. Shipping intelligence firm Kpler, however, estimated that only around 6 million barrels crossed that day. Kpler put average August flows at approximately 4.3 million barrels per day, with flows rising to nearly 5 million barrels per day during the first days of September.
The difference could partly reflect different methodologies, including whether shipments using alternative routes outside Hormuz are included. Tankers that remain invisible to tracking systems for days or even weeks make the picture even harder to reconstruct.
This means that traders are attempting to price global oil supplies without reliable visibility over one of the world’s most important supply arteries.
Why the Strait of Hormuz Matters
Hormuz is strategically important because of the enormous concentration of energy exports that normally pass through it. Any sustained disruption can affect crude supplies, tanker availability, insurance costs and shipping times, eventually feeding into fuel prices and broader inflation.
The current situation is different from a straightforward blockade. The strait has not necessarily become completely impassable. Instead, its reliability has been severely compromised.
That distinction matters because a tanker does not have to be physically prevented from crossing for markets to react. The possibility that vessels may be delayed, attacked or unable to cross safely is enough to increase the cost of transporting oil.
As a result, the market is responding not only to actual supply losses but also to the risk of future disruption.
Iran’s Strategic Leverage
Iran’s ability to disrupt maritime traffic remains an important source of leverage despite indications that its military capabilities around Hormuz have been weakened.
U.S. demining operations and a growing U.S.-protected shipping corridor along Oman’s coast have allowed more vessels to enter and leave the Gulf. At the same time, Iran-linked forces continue to threaten commercial shipping, meaning Tehran retains the ability to create uncertainty even if it cannot completely shut down the waterway.
This gives Iran a form of asymmetric leverage. Tehran does not necessarily need to close Hormuz completely to impose economic costs. Sporadic attacks, warnings or restrictions can increase insurance premiums, delay shipments and encourage traders to price in a greater possibility of supply disruption.
The renewed attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure have added another layer of risk by threatening alternative routes that have become increasingly important as traffic through Hormuz has declined.
Impact on Global Oil Markets
The immediate consequence is a higher geopolitical risk premium on crude.
Oil prices normally respond to measurable fundamentals such as production, consumption, inventories and transportation. But when the market cannot establish how much oil is moving through Hormuz, uncertainty itself becomes part of the fundamental picture.
This can keep prices elevated even if actual physical supply losses are smaller than feared.
Brent has already moved above $100 a barrel, while analysts and major financial institutions have raised their oil price forecasts as concerns about prolonged disruption increase.
For oil-importing countries, sustained high crude prices could translate into higher fuel and transportation costs, increased inflationary pressure and greater economic uncertainty. Airlines, manufacturers and businesses dependent on energy-intensive supply chains would also face higher operating costs.
Economic and Geopolitical Implications
The crisis demonstrates how vulnerable the global energy system remains to a single strategic chokepoint.
For the United States, maintaining freedom of navigation through Hormuz is not simply a military objective. It is also essential to preventing a regional conflict from becoming a wider global energy crisis.
For Gulf producers, the challenge is equally significant. Even countries with substantial production capacity cannot fully compensate for disrupted shipping if export routes remain vulnerable.
For major Asian importers, the risks are particularly serious because much of the energy normally passing through Hormuz is destined for Asian markets. A prolonged disruption could therefore create significant pressure on import bills, currencies and inflation across energy-dependent economies.
The crisis also highlights the limits of alternative routes. Pipelines and routes outside Hormuz can reduce some of the pressure, but they cannot immediately replace the enormous volumes that normally pass through the waterway.
What’s Next?
The key variable is whether the confrontation between Washington and Tehran moves toward negotiations or further escalation.
A diplomatic breakthrough could rapidly reduce the geopolitical risk premium by restoring confidence in shipping and improving visibility over oil flows. A further escalation, however, could produce additional attacks on tankers, restrictions around the Gulf or renewed pressure on alternative shipping routes.
The oil market will therefore be watching tanker movements as closely as military developments.
If shipping activity becomes more visible and flows recover, some of the current premium could disappear. If the information blackout continues, traders may continue pricing the possibility of a much larger supply disruption.
Analysis
The deeper significance of the Hormuz crisis is that information itself has become a strategic commodity.
Modern energy markets have traditionally depended on the ability to monitor ships, cargoes and supply chains with increasing precision. Satellite imagery, tracking systems and port data created an assumption that physical oil flows could be observed and measured with reasonable accuracy.
That assumption is now being challenged.
The result is a market where perception can influence prices almost as powerfully as physical shortages. If traders believe Hormuz is becoming less reliable, they will pay more for crude today even without definitive evidence of a catastrophic supply loss.
This gives Iran an important form of strategic leverage. The threat of disruption can generate economic consequences even when actual disruption remains limited.
At the same time, Washington faces a difficult calculation. Greater military protection may help keep shipping moving, but prolonged confrontation can also increase the geopolitical risk premium that the United States is trying to contain.
The central question, therefore, is no longer simply how much oil is passing through the Strait of Hormuz. It is how long the global market can function without knowing the answer.
If that uncertainty persists, the oil market could continue carrying a substantial security premium even if physical supplies prove higher than current estimates suggest. The longer the uncertainty lasts, the more deeply it can become embedded in prices, inflation expectations and global economic planning.
SINGAPORE: Six cargo ships transited the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, Tuesday, compared to nine ships the previous day and an average of about 12 ships over ten days, according to shipping data released today, Wednesday.
These numbers may change, as some ships typically choose not to operate their transponders during the voyage.
Preliminary data from Kpler at 0200 GMT showed that five of the six ships entered the strait while one exited, and the group included a Panamax-sized tanker and a medium-sized tanker.
The US-Israeli war on Iran escalated yesterday, Tuesday, as Houthi militia in Yemen, allied with Tehran, launched attacks on Saudi cities, further involving the kingdom in the conflict.
Simultaneously, US forces targeted several Iranian oil tankers, while Iran struck a US base in Jordan.
Meanwhile, 25 cargo ships transited the Bab El-Mandeb Strait yesterday, Tuesday, with 11 ships entering and 14 exiting the other vital Middle Eastern waterway.
This compares to an average of about 27 ships transiting the Bab El-Mandeb Strait over the past ten days.
Among the ships that transited the Bab El-Mandeb Strait were two Suezmax tankers, eight Aframax tankers, and a Very Large Crude Carrier.
Oil prices are rising to nearly a six-week high amid a wave of strikes between the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply travels during peacetime.
On Monday, Brent oil futures, the global benchmark, rose to hover around $97 a barrel — up 9 percent over the last five days and 19 percent over the last month. Monday’s market moves are approaching the highest point since July 24th, when prices topped $97.93.
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US West Texas Intermediate crude similarly rose to $92.27 a barrel, up 79 cents, also a near six-week high.
In recent days, strikes escalated in the Strait of Hormuz. The US hit three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, while Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had struck three tankers and three US-linked vessels in other areas.
“This is a reflection of continued conflict and exchange of fire. The supply deficits globally are persisting, and there is little end to these shortages,” Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told Al Jazeera.
On Monday, Saudi Aramco’s Jizan facilities were struck for the second time in the last month, according to reporting from the Financial Times that cited two people familiar with the matter.
“The fact that a Saudi refinery in Jizan was hit, possibly delaying its return to production, didn’t help,” Ziemba added.
Amid increased strikes, there’s less traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, with an average of 10 commodity ships crossing the vital chokepoint each day over the last 10 days, according to Kpler, a data analytics platform.
“Crude went back down to what the pre-war level was in early July. Then it increased again, and then it reduced again, and now it’s increasing again on this weekend’s exchange plus the Aramco attack,” Arif Gasilov, a partner at the Gasilov Group, an energy advisory firm, told Al Jazeera.
“I would say that you might eventually see an inflection point, depending on how long this keeps going on, where a ceasefire doesn’t move the market at all, maybe by just a dollar or two.”
US consumers pinched
US consumers are feeling the impact of heightened oil prices at the petrol pump. The average price for a gallon (3.78 litres) of petrol has jumped 7 cents over the course of a week, reaching $4.15 nationally on Monday, up from $4.08 this time a week ago, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices.
That’s up from $4.04 this time a month ago and $2.98 from February 28th, when the US and Israel first struck Iran, marking a 39 percent increase since the war began.
“US diesel prices have never been this high, and now the countdown starts for the trickle-down to everything consumers buy… record diesel will start funnelling down into the economy,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a post on the social media platform X.
Prices have continued to climb since, with average prices on Monday topping $5.90 per gallon.
“Markets are pricing in longer disruptions. It continues to be in product markets where the biggest disruptions lie, though, including diesel,” Ziemba added.
Those price gains are weighing on Americans, who have spent an average of $764.59 per household on fuel since the war began. That’s $418.82 more than usual, according to Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs.
Ahead of the US’s September 5-7 Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer and a popular time for US travel, AAA forecasts showed a 20 percent increase in flight costs compared to the same weekend last year.
Ahead of the midterm elections, the economy is emerging as a key issue for US voters — and a potential warning sign for Republicans. Polls show voters souring on President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, with his economic approval rating falling to a new low in a recent Financial Times poll. Just 17 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy.
An Economist/YouGov poll similarly found that 39 percent of Americans believe Democrats are doing a better job handling the economy, compared with 32 percent who said Republicans are.
China pressures
Southeast and East Asian markets rely more heavily on imports travelling through the Strait of Hormuz directly than the US, but Beijing has moved to insulate itself from the disruption by turning to domestic sources, including its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR).
“China has been managing this situation successfully since the beginning of the war. We know that China has many domestic resources, despite rising oil prices,” John Gong, an economics professor at the University of International Business and Economics, told Al Jazeera.
“China has been conserving its oil and gas consumption for quite some time now. China was prepared for these challenges,” Gong said.
He also stressed that China’s close relations with Russia give Beijing another source of supply, with Moscow able to provide nearly half of China’s daily oil needs.
China has also begun tapping into its SPR while reducing its reliance on imports, as Beijing accelerates a broader shift towards alternative energy sources and vehicles that require little or no oil to operate.
“We have national strategies focused on transitioning to clean energies like solar and green power,” Gong said. “When we look at the vehicles purchased in China, more than 50 percent of cars sold on the Chinese market are electric.”
Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei says Tehran will announce a restricted zone around the Strait of Hormuz and parts of the Gulf, with ships entering the zone to be placed on a sanctions list.
WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance rejected the use of the word “war” to describe the U.S. fighting with Iran as he steered clear of predicting that the six-month-old conflict would be over by November’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in Congress.
“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said Thursday after being asked during a White House press briefing about whether the fighting could end before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 congressional elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
Vance’s assertion came even as Iran fired at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday as it continued to retaliate for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week.
The vice president said the U.S. had a “responsibility” to carry out this week’s strikes because Iran continued to target commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Vance’s attempt to minimize the intensity of the fighting illuminates the difficult task at hand for Trump and his administration as he tries to persuade American voters to keep Republicans in control of Congress, even as the unpopular conflict — one the White House said at its outset would last a matter of weeks — has driven up gas prices and left consumers grappling with higher inflation.
Vance said he didn’t want to set “artificial timelines.”
“But when you ask, ‘When will this end?’ You’re asking me a question like, ‘When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?’” Vance said. “I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians.”
The administration in July faced scrutiny after it reclassified four fallen soldiers as well as dozens of wounded troops in its Defense Casualty Analysis System, which Pentagon officials have repeatedly pointed to as the definitive source on the numbers of dead and wounded from the conflict. Those killed or wounded in fighting after a brief ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran fell apart were classified in a new category called “Overseas Operations” after initially being tallied in the totals from the war.
White House insists more oil is getting out of Gulf, but prices remain high
Brent crude prices hovered above $95 per barrel Thursday. The international benchmark was around $72 per barrel the day before the conflict began.
Still, Trump and his aides have sought to push that the U.S. Navy is in control of the Strait of Hormuz, where about 20% of the world’s traded oil passed before the war. They insist a near prewar level of Gulf oil is now making its way out of the critical waterway.
Vance at Thursday’s press briefing said the U.S. escorted about 15 million barrels of oil on Wednesday. This was after Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Wednesday that 17 million barrels were carried through the strait on Monday with assistance from the U.S. Navy. About 20 million barrels of Gulf oil flowed through the strait prior to the start of the war.
But ship traffic through the strait remains well below prewar levels, according to independent firms that track marine traffic.
There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war.
Over the past 28 days, 5 million barrels a day have exited the strait on average, according to TankerTrackers.com. Other recent estimates have varied from 2 million barrels per day to 6 million barrels per day.
Trump has tried to soothe volatile markets
Over the course of the war, Trump has repeatedly reported progress in negotiations or called off threats of military action at the last moment when global markets have become jittery. And markets have reacted swiftly to his public signals of peace or hints of progress.
“The administration is still jawboning oil markets,” said Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East director at Defense Priorities, of the administration’s claims of dramatically increased flows of oil. “And they appear to be doing it again to keep prices from going too high, so that they can extend the timeline before there’s a worse price spike.”
With Iran’s refusal to back down in the face of the U.S. military campaign, Trump has settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with threats of an escalation in force, if necessary.
Trump has consistently emphasized that the campaign launched by the U.S. and Israel has been devastating for Iran’s navy and air force. Iranian officials have said the country has suffered $270 billion in direct and indirect damage. Israeli military strikes in the first weeks of the war wiped out much of the theocratic government’s leadership structure, including its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Still, Iran has found leverage through its own strikes on the strait and Gulf allies of the United States. But the administration has sought to make the case that the waterway will become less important by the day, even as it asserts that more oil is getting through.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox Business interview this week that the Strait of Hormuz will become a “worthless piece of water” within two years as new land pipelines planned for the region bypass the energy chokepoint. Trump himself took to social media on Thursday to highlight a news report about Syria’s effort to transform the port of Baniyas on the Mediterranean coast into a westward route to international markets for Gulf exporters.
Meanwhile, Iran and Oman have recently discussed a phased approach to jointly managing ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump settles into holding pattern before midterms, analysts say
The administration maintains it’s making progress economically choking off Iranian hard-liners, including the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At the moment, it would be a leap for Trump to agree to any plan that puts Iran in position to claim control of the strait, analysts say.
“I find it hard to believe the president would agree to anything that hands back any modicum of IRGC control over the strait that has been wrested away,” said Richard Goldberg, who served as a senior adviser on Iran policy in Trump’s first administration.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Iran does not appear ready to “let Trump out of the box” despite the massive pain being inflicted on its economy.
At the same time, Miller said, Trump seems to have settled into a holding pattern ahead of the midterms — one in which he avoids both a return to the full-throttle bombardment of Iran and making any accommodations to Tehran on the Strait of Hormuz.
“The White House doesn’t want a massive war, and they don’t want to be seen as offering massive concessions,” Miller said. “The tack they are taking avoids both of those things.”
Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Josh Boak in Washington and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.
The United States and Iran continue to make competing claims about who has greater control of the critical Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.
Washington claims the strait is open and that dozens of ships, carrying millions of barrels of oil, are passing through each day. US President Donald Trump claimed last month that the US was in “total control” of the waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas is shipped during peacetime, but which has been closed since the US-Israel war on Iran began six months ago.
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Iran, however, says the strait remains under its control and is closed except to pre-approved vessels using its designated channels. It has warned that other ships attempting to transit risk being targeted.
So what is really going on in the strait – and what explains the divergent accounts?
(Al Jazeera)
What are the latest US claims about the Strait of Hormuz?
The US says shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has significantly increased in recent weeks.
Two US officials told CNN that 40 commercial ships carrying some 18 million barrels of oil passed through the strait under US military escort on Tuesday, in what would be a new wartime record.
Trump gave a similar figure on Monday, saying the US Navy was helping some 30 ships pass through Hormuz every night. He later said the waterway was “under USA control”.
In terms of oil, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “at least 10 million barrels” were getting through the strait each day, with between 15 million and 17 million on Tuesday.
The assessment comes after US CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper claimed last week that the US military had cleared Hormuz’s transit lanes of sea mines.
Before the war began, an average of around 100 ships and 20 million barrels of oil are estimated to have passed through the waterway each day.
According to figures from PortWatch, this has fallen to an overall average of seven vessels since March.
(Al Jazeera)
What does Iran claim about the strait?
Iran has acknowledged that some vessels are getting through the strait, but insists it remains in control of the waterway.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Tuesday said “the enemy managed to get some ships” through Hormuz, but stressed that Iranian forces remain “in complete control of the strait and will not allow it to be opened”.
Ghalibaf accused the US of giving ships “false guarantees” about their ability to cross a southern route in Hormuz, warning that ships that try to do so would be targeted.
The following day, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed two oil tankers had hit mines and were disabled while trying to cross an “illegal route” in the strait. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, claimed an Iranian attack hit a Saudi oil tanker, killing two Filipino sailors.
What does shipping data show?
The latest ship-tracking data paints a different picture than the US claims, with far fewer vessels recorded as transiting the strait.
According to marine analytics firm Kpler, just six vessels crossed the strait on Wednesday, 11 on Tuesday and five on Monday. It put the 10-day average at 13 vessels per day.
Other ship-trafficking services show a similar pattern. Maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded an average of around 12 transits per day from August 26 to September 1, though the latest data may be incomplete “due to a lag in identifying dark transits”, said the firm’s maritime intelligence and research director, Bridget Diakun. This means that some ships are switching off their tracking beacons.
From August 17-23, Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded “about 14 non-Iranian-linked ships each day”, Diakun told Al Jazeera.
All these figures are far lower than the US claim that 40 ships transited the strait on Tuesday.
The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), which monitors threats to shipping in the region, said in a September 1 advisory that commercial traffic through Hormuz was “far below baseline”, despite a “modest uptick from recent lows”.
The advisory put the risk level for Hormuz at “severe”, citing a “continued risk of drifting or uncharted mines”, despite US claims to have cleared the strait of mines.
What explains the discrepancy?
Diakun told Al Jazeera that it is difficult to explain the gap between US-claimed transit figures and those recorded by ship trackers without insight into how the US tallies its own figures.
She said it’s possible the US includes smaller or non-cargo-carrying ships in its total, unlike Lloyd’s, which only counts “cargo-carrying vessels over 10,000 dwt [deadweight tonnage]”.
Eirik Hooper, a senior associate covering the ports and terminals sector for maritime research consultancy Drewry, also pointed to possible differences in how the US counts vessel transits.
“A US operational count plausibly includes everything that moved under or near naval protection: naval auxiliaries, offshore support and tugs, coastal and small craft [and] dhows,” said Hooper, noting that ship-tracking firm Kpler filters out such vessels “on size or cargo grounds”.
Hooper also said the US has access to “satellite, airborne and other sensor coverage plus its own convoy manifests”, which enables it to see vessels not immediately picked up by the normal automatic identification system (AIS) tracking system.
“By late August, the majority of Hormuz crossings were classified ‘dark’ or unknown by route, and AIS data counts often need to be revised to include vessels that switch off their transponders, with confirmed movements backdated,” said Hooper.
More generally, both the US and Iran have an incentive to play up their influence in the strait, the status of which has become a major sticking point in their six-month conflict.
Former US Ambassador Henry Ensher recently told Al Jazeera that he believes the latest cycle of US-Iran confrontation was likely triggered by CENTCOM’s claims to have de-mined that strait, and said “both sides would be well served to stop talking quite so much”.
