Just One Commodity Vessel Left the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday

Shipping trackers compiled by Reuters and cited in a report by OilPrice.com show that only ten commodity vessels moved through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, with nine ships inbound and a single outbound vessel — a Supramax loaded with fertilizer. That daily tally sits well under the recent 10-day moving average of 17 transits, despite a modest increase in daily traffic earlier in the week. The tracking excludes ships that have turned off their positioning systems, a tactic used to avoid detection or targeting.

Owners, charterers and exporters are taking extra precautions when navigating the waterway as regional hostilities have re-escalated this month. Incidents that have raised alarm include attacks on tankers, threats from Iran-aligned Houthi forces in the Red Sea, and a temporary shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s East-West onshore pipeline, which had provided an alternative route to bypass the Strait.

Saudi authorities restored partial service on the East-West pipeline on Tuesday, allowing some crude to be exported from the Red Sea port of Yanbu rather than transiting the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions remain fragmented: indirect contacts between Iran and the United States around the U.N. General Assembly did not produce an agreement, and Iranian officials signaled continuing differences in positions.

Market reaction has been sensitive to those developments. Earlier hopes that diplomacy might ease supply risks helped push Brent crude briefly below $100 per barrel, but the price had risen above $103 per barrel in Asian trading early on Thursday, according to the OilPrice.com piece by Tsvetana Paraskova. The pattern of lower vessel transits through the Strait underscores ongoing operational and geopolitical pressures on regional energy flows.