Hormuz, thirteen transits in a day: the strait remains virtually closed to trade

The figure that measures the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is not the number of ships hit, but the number of ships that no longer pass through. On August 14, 2026, maritime monitoring by Windward counted thirteen transits through the strait — four inbound and nine outbound — against an average of about seventy-three per day in the period before the outbreak of hostilities. That is a volume reduced to just over a sixth on a corridor through which a large share of the crude oil exported by Persian Gulf producers passes.

On the same day, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defense announced that two tankers linked to the state company Adnoc had been hit while leaving the strait, according to Associated Press dispatches gathered in the conflict timeline published by Encyclopaedia Britannica. Attribution of responsibility has not been established by the sources available at the time of publication: the Emirati statement reports the incident but does not identify the perpetrator.

Sailing invisible. The second useful indicator concerns crew behavior. Four of the ships that left the strait on August 14 sailed with their automatic identification system switched off: in one case for eleven hours, in another for about a month. Among these, one tanker reappeared on radar carrying a cargo of about two million barrels of Saudi crude. Turning off the signal is a choice that reduces the ship’s traceability and, with it, the ability to determine who is transporting what and on whose behalf. The practical consequence for insurance markets and buyers is that a growing share of the remaining traffic becomes opaque.

The cost of the long way round. Those who forgo the strait pay in distance and in days. Twelve ships linked to the Saudi state have chosen to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, according to the same monitoring also cited by the Straits.live aggregation: between four thousand and six thousand additional nautical miles per voyage, with an estimated lengthening of delivery times of ten to fourteen days. On routes connecting the Gulf to Europe and the Atlantic, two additional weeks per voyage amount to a structural reduction in the fleet’s available capacity, because each ship completes fewer voyages over the course of the year.

The American position. On August 14, United States President Donald Trump commented on the duration of the naval deployment supporting operations against Iran, calling it, according to Associated Press dispatches cited by Britannica, “not nearly long enough.” The wording indicates an intention to maintain or extend the military presence, not a timetable: none of the sources consulted reports a stated deadline or a defined operational objective.

What we don’t know. The three independent sources underpinning this analysis — agency dispatches, commercial maritime monitoring, and the aggregation derived from them — agree on transit volumes and alternative routes, but none provides a verified estimate of the barrels actually removed from the market each day, nor of the damage sustained by the two ships that were hit. Regarding the size of the cargoes traveling with their signal off, there is by definition a margin of error: these are figures reconstructed after the fact, when and if the ship reappears.

What remains on the table is the account of a corridor that under ordinary conditions absorbs about seventy-three transits a day and today absorbs thirteen. Every additional day at this pace adds ships to the queue on the African route and removes transport capacity from the market for the following two weeks, regardless of when the strait becomes passable again.