Strait of Hormuz Closure Reaches Day 208 With Commercial Traffic Near Zero

The Strait of Hormuz has been shut to normal commercial shipping since February 28, when the US and Israel struck Iran and the IRGC started warning ships off on VHF. As of this week that's 208 days. Nothing in the maritime market this year makes sense without that number.

Before the war, somewhere between 85 and 140 ships a day went through, depending on who was counting and what they counted. About a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a fifth of its LNG came out of the Gulf this way. On September 20, satellite-based counts logged one transit. On better days independent trackers see five to thirteen. Washington keeps saying the strait is "fully open" and that dozens of ships cross daily. The satellite and AIS data don't back that up, and signal jamming in the area makes tracking harder still.

How a strait closes without a blockade line

Iran never had to physically stop every ship. It only had to make the passage uninsurable and dangerous enough that owners stopped trying.

The sequence was fast. Tankers were hit in the first days of March, including the Skylight off Khasab, where two Indian crew members died. Insurers pushed war-risk rates up four to six times within a week. By March 5 protection and indemnity cover for Gulf transits was being withdrawn, and six P&I clubs have since pulled out. Lloyd's Joint War Committee added Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar to its listed areas on March 4. A strait that was legally open was commercially closed.

War-risk pricing now runs at roughly 40 times pre-crisis levels. For a VLCC, the premium for a single transit has reached around $10 million. Pre-war, a ship paid about 0.125 percent of hull value per transit. That was already creeping up to 0.2 to 0.4 percent in the days before the strikes.

Mines made it worse. Iran reportedly began laying them around March 10. The US Navy started clearing operations in April, but even a handful of unaccounted mines is enough for an underwriter to walk away.

The ceasefire that didn't hold

There was a window. On June 17, Presidents Trump and Pezeshkian signed a memorandum of understanding meant to end the war and the blockades, with a 60-day ceasefire and a commitment to keep Hormuz open. Three days later Iran declared the strait closed again, citing Israeli operations in southern Lebanon. Some traffic moved between mid-June and mid-July. Then a Qatari LNG carrier was struck in early July, and the agreement formally expired on August 18.

September brought a tanker war. The US hit three Iranian tankers, near Kharg Island, near Jask and in the Gulf of Oman. Iran answered by targeting tankers in the strait and US-linked ships, and fired ballistic missiles at a US carrier group. Brent, which sat near $66 to $70 before the war, is back above $100.

What 208 days does to a market

The stranded fleet is the clearest sign of scale. At the April peak the IMO counted about 2,000 ships and 20,000 seafarers stuck inside the Gulf. Saudi Aramco's chief said in May that more than 600 tankers were trapped inside with 240 more waiting outside. Around 400 vessels are still holding position away from port.

Around them, the world has rerouted:

Saudi crude goes west through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea.
The UAE pushes oil through the Abu Dhabi pipeline to Fujairah, outside the strait.
Asian refiners buy more from the US Gulf, West Africa and Brazil, on voyages two to three times longer.
Container carriers route Gulf cargo and Asia-Europe services around the Cape, adding roughly two weeks.

Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar have no real bypass. They're the biggest losers. The countries that gained are the ones selling replacement barrels, with the US and Russia at the top.

Shipping has mostly stopped planning for a reopening date. Charterers price the long route as the base case. Owners order ships for a world with longer voyages. Insurers price the Gulf the way they priced the Tanker War of the 1980s. The strait will reopen at some point. The question for the industry now is how much of the new routing stays when it does.