---
id: scenarios/strait-of-hormuz-closure
about:
  label: Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since February 2026
  description: >-
    Since the war with Iran began on 28 February 2026, traffic through the
    strait that carries about a fifth of the world's oil has fallen to a
    fraction of normal. Who gets through, how much oil reaches market, and what
    happens when it reopens?
  tags:
    - Strait of Hormuz
    - shipping
    - oil
    - LNG
    - chokepoint
    - Iran
scenario:
  place: 'Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian/Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman'
  since: '2026'
  scale: world
domains:
  - energy
  - mobility
  - people
relations:
  - predicate: needs
    target: engines/portolan
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'Strait of Hormuz: status and shipping traffic | Portolan'
      url: 'https://portolan.cc/chokepoints/hormuz'
    - title: >-
        Yemen's Houthis attack Saudis, seize crucial Red Sea islands (DW, 14
        September 2026)
      url: >-
        https://www.dw.com/en/yemens-houthis-attack-saudis-seize-crucial-red-sea-islands/a-79263838
    - title: Hazardous Hitchhikers (UMCES)
      url: 'https://umces.edu/news/hazardous-hitchhikers/'
  created: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
The Strait of Hormuz is the only sea route out of the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Portolan, citing the US Energy Information Administration for the first half of 2025, puts its normal traffic at about 20.9 million barrels a day of crude and refined products.[^1] That is about a fifth of the world's oil, and about a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas passes the same way.[^1] Only two pipelines bypass it, Saudi Arabia's East-West line to the Red Sea and the UAE's line to Fujairah, and they carry a fraction of its volume. Nothing bypasses it for Qatar's gas.[^1] The United States and Israel began bombing Iran on 28 February 2026.[^1] Five of the insurance clubs that cover shipowners cancelled their war-risk cover in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman from 5 March, and by late that day the tracking firm Windward counted no tankers in transit.[^1] On 11 March the members of the International Energy Agency agreed to make 400 million barrels from emergency reserves available.[^1]

Since then the strait has opened and closed several times under ceasefires, blockades and a June memorandum that expired in August.[^1] Since the June memorandum it has split into a northern route approved by Iran and a southern route through Omani waters backed by the United States.[^1] IMF PortWatch's satellite ship-tracking counted 3.7 ships a day in the week to 18 October, against annual averages of about 85 to 92 a day in 2023 to 2025.[^1] The UK's maritime security office, as gCaptain reported, counted 254 transits in the week to 14 October, about 70% below pre-war traffic.[^1] Only 42 of them were seen on satellite tracking; the rest were crossings the US reported facilitating, including ships with transponders off, which the office could not verify.[^1] In mid-July the International Maritime Organization reported 300 to 400 ships and some 6,000 seafarers still stranded in the Gulf.[^3]

## Who needs an answer

- Governments and energy agencies holding emergency oil reserves, deciding how fast to release them and for how long.
- Gulf producers choosing between the strait, the bypass pipelines and night runs to the Gulf of Oman.
- Ship operators and insurers pricing each crossing, and seafarers' organisations tracking crews still stuck.
- Importing countries planning fuel and fertiliser supply around a route that may reopen and close again.

## The domains it chains

Oil and gas production in the Gulf; the ships, crews and insurance that move it; pipeline capacity around the strait; reserves and prices in importing countries; and, further out, the food and materials that depend on fuel and on cargoes that pass the same way.

## What a twin should let people try

- Capacity: if the strait stays restricted, how much can the bypass pipelines and the Omani route carry, and for how long can reserves cover the gap?
- Counting: how far do satellite counts understate traffic when many ships sail dark, and what other evidence fills the gap?
- Reopening: when ships leave together, how long until ports, crews and cargo flows return to normal, and in what order?

## Where to start

[Portolan](/engines/portolan/) shows ships a day through the strait from IMF PortWatch, as a seven-day average with monthly figures since 2019, with a dated log of events and their sources.[^1] The same war closed the Red Sea alternative for Saudi crude: see [Saudi oil and the Red Sea route](/scenarios/saudi-oil-red-sea-route/). The ships stranded in the Gulf raise a separate risk, covered in [Idle ships in the Gulf and invasive species](/scenarios/idle-ships-gulf-invasive-species/).