Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since February 2026

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 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. The ships stranded in the Gulf raise a separate risk, covered in Idle ships in the Gulf and invasive species.