Washington Counts 40 Ships Through Hormuz. Commercial Trackers Count a Dozen.

Two Sets of Numbers

Since the war with Iran began in February, the Strait of Hormuz — which carried roughly 100 ships and 20 million barrels of oil a day before the conflict — has become the most closely watched stretch of water in the world. It is also one of the most contested in a quieter sense: nobody agrees on how much is getting through.

The official American account is expansive. The President has said the US Navy is helping some 30 ships pass every night, and that the waterway is “under USA control.” Two US officials told CNN that 40 commercial ships carrying about 18 million barrels crossed under military escort on a single day in early September. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put flows at at least 10 million barrels a day, and between 15 and 17 million on one day. CENTCOM’s commander, Brad Cooper, said the transit lanes had been cleared of mines.

The commercial tracking data says something very different.

What the Trackers Record

Kpler counted six vessels crossing on one day that same week, eleven the day before and five the day before that, against a ten-day average of 13. Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded around 12 transits a day across late August and early September. The Joint Maritime Information Center described commercial traffic as “far below baseline.” The IMF’s PortWatch recorded 8 transits on 13 September, against a pre-crisis baseline it puts at 85 a day.

And the counting is getting harder, not easier. On 16 September, 11 of the 12 vessels recorded crossing had their AIS transponders switched off — dark transits, invisible to the standard tracking feeds. On one day that week, two datasets recorded four transits and twelve respectively. When most of the traffic is running dark, even the commercial figures become estimates.

The downstream effect is not in doubt. Gulf crude exports have fallen by nearly half, from around 17 million barrels a day in 2025 to roughly 9 million in August.

Most of the Gap Is Definitional

The tempting reading is that one side is lying. The more useful reading is that the two sides are counting different things.

Drewry’s Eirik Hooper has offered the plausible explanation: an official count may include naval auxiliaries, offshore support vessels, tugs, coastal and small craft — vessels that commercial tracking databases deliberately exclude because they are not what traders mean by traffic. A warship escorting a tanker, and the tugs working a port, are real movements through the strait. They carry no cargo.

So “40 ships” and “a dozen ships” can both be accurate statements about different populations. The official figure answers “how many hulls moved?” The commercial figure answers “how much trade moved?” Only one of those questions prices a barrel of oil.

The barrel claims are harder to reconcile. Eighteen million barrels in a day would be close to the pre-war norm. Commercial tanker counts in the low teens cannot carry that, and a 47% fall in Gulf crude exports is not consistent with it either. Some Gulf crude bypasses the strait by pipeline, which complicates any single figure — but it does not close a gap that large.

The Market Has Already Decided

If you want to know which number the people with money at stake believe, look at what they charge.

War-risk insurance for a Hormuz transit has climbed to between 7.5% and 10% of a vessel’s hull value, against about 0.25% before the war. On a $100 million tanker, that is $7.5 to $10 million for a single voyage. A strait genuinely under control with cleared lanes does not command a premium forty times its pre-war level.

The reasons are not abstract. On 14 July, Iranian cruise missiles struck two ADNOC-operated supertankers, the Mombasa and the Al Bahyah, killing an Indian crew member and injuring eight. After a 60-day ceasefire expired, Iran began enforcing new transit rules — followed by a fatal attack on the bulk carrier Minoan Dignity and the seizure of the tanker Amara. Underwriters price incidents like those, regardless of what anyone says at a podium.

What to Watch

• War-risk premiums, not transit claims. Premiums are set by underwriters with capital on the line. When they start falling toward 1–3% of hull value, the strait is genuinely reopening.
• The Oman plan. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in Beijing that Iran had agreed a plan with Oman to reopen the strait. No Omani official has confirmed it. An announced reopening and a priced-in one are different events.
• LNG carriers and AIS. LNG vessels are high-value and risk-averse, and their return is a stronger signal than crude. So is traffic that runs with its transponders on — ships go dark when they expect to be targeted.

If you trade, hedge or ship anything priced off Gulf crude, the practical rule is to treat official transit figures as political statements and commercial tracking as the operating data — while remembering that with most ships running dark, even the trackers are now estimating. The one number nobody can talk up is the insurance premium. That is the figure your costs are actually going to follow.