Last Updated: 28 April 2026

The single most important number in global energy this morning is not the Brent print or the OPEC+ headline — it is the Strait of Hormuz tanker count. Six weeks ago, the strait was carrying roughly 19.7 million barrels per day of crude and condensate, plus a steady third of the seaborne LNG market. As of the first half of April 2026, that throughput has collapsed to about 2.1 million barrels per day. An 89 percent drop. Eight days ago, ship-tracking firms recorded only two laden Very Large Crude Carriers clearing the eastbound shipping lane in a 24-hour window. The pre-war norm was seventeen.

This is the largest sustained chokepoint disruption in the modern history of the oil market. It dwarfs the 2019 Mina al-Ahmadi attacks, the 2024 Houthi escalation in the Red Sea, and the brief tanker scares of 1987-88 during the Iran-Iraq tanker war. It is happening because the Iran war that began earlier this quarter has, in three discrete phases, made the strait operationally hostile to commercial shipping; because the London marine insurance market has effectively withdrawn from quoting routine war-risk cover for the route; and because the largest tanker operators in the world have unilaterally suspended transit until the security picture clears. The collapse has now begun to propagate through every layer of the global crude complex — refining margins in Asia, freight rates from Yanbu to Singapore, the WTI-Brent spread, central bank gold purchases in the Gulf, and the price of jet fuel from Heathrow to Hong Kong.

This is the reporter’s notebook on what has actually happened, what is going to happen next, and where the trades and the policy levers sit. We have cross-checked the ship-tracking data against satellite imagery, talked to two London-based marine underwriters, read the Reuters commodities desk dispatches against the Bloomberg energy feed, pulled the latest from the EIA’s Today in Energy bulletin, and benchmarked the geopolitics against the Financial Times oil and gas coverage and Al Jazeera’s Middle East desk. For the broader framework — what the Iran war means for sanctions and what OPEC has and has not done — see our running coverage of the Iran oil export sanctions, OPEC spare capacity, and our Q2 Brent forecast. The closely related Bab-el-Mandeb story is in our Red Sea shipping disruption piece.

The Geography of the Disruption

The Strait of Hormuz is, in operational terms, the most consequential 39 kilometres of water on earth. At its narrowest the strait separates Iran’s southern coastline from the Musandam peninsula of Oman by less than 21 nautical miles. The two designated shipping lanes — one inbound, one outbound — are each only about 3 kilometres wide and pass within a missile’s flight time of Iranian territory along the entire transit. There is no realistic geographic alternative to the strait for crude leaving Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil ports, the entirety of Kuwait’s, all of Bahrain’s, and a meaningful share of Iraq’s, plus Qatar’s LNG fleet and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company exports that are not piped to Fujairah.

What has happened since early March is, in three phases, the systematic conversion of that geography from busy commercial corridor to disputed military waterway. Phase one was a series of Iranian fast-attack-craft incidents in the eastbound lane and two separate drone strikes on tankers transiting near the Strait. Phase two was the announcement by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy of a “warning zone” extending into the strait and the deployment of additional shore-based anti-ship missile batteries along the Iranian coast. Phase three, beginning around 1 April, was a series of confirmed mine-laying incidents in the approaches to the strait that the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Manama, has been actively countering with mine-clearance operations.

By the second week of April, Reuters and Bloomberg ship-tracking data showed laden VLCC traffic eastbound through the strait running at roughly 13 to 18 percent of pre-war volumes. The remaining flow has been split between cargoes already insured under pre-war policies that operators were unwilling to default on, and a handful of state-owned tankers — Iranian, Russian, and Chinese-flagged — that operate outside the Western insurance market entirely. The blue-water commercial fleet has effectively withdrawn.

The Insurance Story Is the Real Story

If you want to understand why the throughput collapsed faster than the war itself escalated, you have to look at the war-risk insurance market. Marine cargo and hull policies routinely exclude losses arising from war, hostile acts, mines, and similar perils — the standard “war risks” clauses. Shippers buy back the cover from a separate war-risk pool, traditionally underwritten by Lloyd’s syndicates and a handful of mutual associations. The market is small, it is highly relationship-driven, and it is exquisitely sensitive to specific risk events.

Pre-war, a typical war-risk additional premium for a VLCC transiting the Persian Gulf was around $50,000 per voyage. By the second week of March, that number had reached $200,000. By the end of March, $400,000. As of last week, the floor for any quote available at all is $400,000 to $600,000, and several London syndicates have stopped writing the route entirely — a state of affairs the trade calls “off-cover.” The Joint War Committee at Lloyd’s added the Persian Gulf to its listed areas of enhanced risk on 22 March, which mechanically tightened the underwriting and added compliance friction even for shippers willing to pay the higher premium. The war-risk additional premium now exceeds the entire freight rate on many voyages — turning the economics of a Hormuz transit into a narrow margin even when oil sells at $117.

The downstream consequence: shipping operators that pride themselves on operational discipline and crew safety are not going to make it work at any price they can pass through. Maersk Tankers, Frontline and Euronav have publicly suspended Hormuz transits. DHT Holdings has flagged its transits as “case by case.” Multiple Asian operators have followed quietly. The result is a self-reinforcing feedback loop: less traffic means each remaining ship is a higher-value target, which raises premiums further, which thins the fleet further. The market has moved from pricing risk to refusing to price it.

The 17-to-2 Tanker Count, In Detail

The pre-war daily census was approximately 17 laden Very Large Crude Carriers — VLCCs, at roughly 2 million barrels each — clearing the eastbound (export) lane on an average day, plus a fluctuating count of Suezmaxes and product tankers. Total daily eastbound transits across all classes typically ran around 30 to 35 vessels. Inbound traffic — empty tankers returning to load — was a similar count.

The April 2026 readings, drawn from AIS-based ship-tracking and cross-checked against satellite radar imagery on the days when AIS transponders have been spoofed or disabled, are roughly:

• Eastbound laden VLCC count: 2 to 3 per day, versus a 17-per-day baseline.
• Total eastbound transits across all classes: 5 to 7 per day, versus a 30-to-35 baseline.
• Westbound (inbound, empty) traffic: 4 to 6 per day, versus 25 to 30.
• LNG carrier transits: down roughly 70 percent, with Qatar moving carefully calibrated cargoes under enhanced naval escort.

The remaining traffic is concentrated heavily in three categories. First, Iranian, Russian and Chinese-flagged or operated tonnage that does not depend on the Western marine insurance market. Second, tankers under bilateral US Navy escort, available to a limited set of US-flagged or US-allied vessels. Third, late-arriving cargoes already insured under contracts written before the Joint War Committee re-listing — vessels working through a backlog of pre-existing commitments that the underwriters could not unilaterally cancel. None of these sources are scalable. Real flow recovery requires the war-risk insurance market to come back, and that requires a credible ceasefire, not just a quiet week.

The Pipelines That Were Built For This Day

The Gulf has been preparing for a Hormuz contingency since the 1980s. Three bypass pipelines exist. Their combined nameplate capacity is enough to recover roughly a third of pre-war Hormuz volume — a meaningful cushion, but well short of full replacement.

Saudi East-West (Petroline). A 1,200-kilometre 56-inch line from the Eastern Province to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Nameplate capacity is 5 million barrels per day. Pre-war flow was approximately 3 mb/d; current flow is at the full 5 mb/d nameplate — and Saudi Aramco has begun engineering studies to lift effective throughput by another 0.5 mb/d through pump optimisation. Yanbu has become a globally watched port: VLCC arrivals have roughly doubled since mid-March, with several Chinese state buyers loading their first-ever cargoes from the Red Sea side rather than the Gulf side.

UAE Habshan-Fujairah. A 1.5-mb/d line from the Habshan field complex in Abu Dhabi to the Gulf of Oman port of Fujairah. Currently running at full nameplate. Fujairah has emerged as the second-most-important loading port in the region after Yanbu, with several traditionally Hormuz-sourced cargoes now lifted there instead. ADNOC has begun studies on a Phase 2 expansion that could add another 0.5 mb/d within 18 to 24 months — a project that was on the slow track and has now jumped to the front of Abu Dhabi’s energy priorities.

Iran Goreh-Jask. Built by Tehran specifically to give Iranian crude an outlet bypassing Hormuz from the Iranian side. Nameplate of 1 mb/d. In practice it has rarely cleared 0.3 mb/d due to chronic technical and commercial issues, and current flow is essentially negligible because Iran’s own export problem is not getting cargoes out of Jask — it is finding buyers willing to take cargoes anywhere given sanctions enforcement. The pipeline is a strategic asset on paper that has not delivered much strategic value.

Total bypass capacity at full utilisation is therefore about 6.5 to 7 mb/d. Pre-war Hormuz was 19.7 mb/d. The arithmetic of the deficit — roughly 12 to 13 mb/d that simply cannot leave the Gulf — is what is driving Brent.

Yanbu, Fujairah, and the Port Congestion Picture

Re-routing crude is straightforward on a wall map and brutally complicated on a port pier. Yanbu, designed for a 3 mb/d throughput, is now handling 5 mb/d with roughly the same berth count and crew complement. Pilot waiting times have stretched from a typical 12 hours to 36 to 60 hours. Loading queues have lengthened. Bunker fuel availability has tightened. Every operational metric a port master worries about is in the wrong direction. Aramco is reportedly chartering additional pilot tugs and pre-positioning spare berthing equipment — but a port cannot be doubled in capacity in a quarter, and that is the binding constraint on how much of the Hormuz shortfall the East-West pipeline can plug in real time.

Fujairah is in a similar squeeze, with the additional complication that it serves as the regional bunkering and storage hub even in normal times. The port’s storage tank-farm utilisation has reached the highest level on record. Chartering activity in the Fujairah Outer Anchorage suggests that several traders are using the anchorage as floating storage while they wait for berth slots. The structural takeaway: the alternative-route system is operationally constrained well before it is volumetrically constrained, and that gap is where some of the more interesting trades sit.

The Asian Buyers Are Doing The Math

China is the largest single buyer of Persian Gulf crude, taking roughly 5.5 to 6 mb/d in normal times. Beijing’s response to the Hormuz collapse has been notably calm in public and frantic in operational terms. State refiners have lifted incremental volumes from the Saudi East-West pipeline at Yanbu, increased loadings of Russian Urals at Kozmino, taken new tonnage of US WTI Midland, and quietly drawn down strategic petroleum reserves. The drawdown is the most aggressive China has run since the 2020 demand collapse during Covid. Bloomberg has tracked the moves; the EIA has cross-referenced them with US export volumes that are running roughly 40 percent above the year-ago baseline.

India, the second-largest buyer, has done broadly the same: more from Yanbu, more from Russia, and a notable jump in West African grades that traditionally do not feature heavily in Indian refinery slates. Reliance Industries and Indian Oil Corporation have both publicly signalled they are pivoting flexibly. Japan and South Korea have leaned hardest on US and Atlantic Basin barrels and have begun coordinated SPR releases in cooperation with the IEA. The collective Asian response is buying time, and the time it is buying is real, but it is not infinite — strategic reserves run out, US export logistics have an upper bound, and West African production is not particularly elastic.

Brent at $117, JKM Up 80 Percent, and the Goldman $130 Call

Brent crude has moved from a pre-collapse range around $99 to spot of roughly $117, with intraday spikes above $120 on the days when the missile-launch and tanker-incident headlines have run hottest. The forward curve has shifted into deeper backwardation, signalling acute prompt physical tightness. The WTI-Brent spread has narrowed because the export response from the US Gulf has eased the Atlantic side of the equation. Goldman Sachs, which had a $90 base case in early March, raised its three-month Brent forecast to $130 with a $145 upside scenario. Citi, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have all moved their forecasts higher, though none yet match the Goldman number.

The LNG side of the move is more dramatic. JKM, the Asian LNG benchmark, has risen roughly 80 percent on fears that Qatari cargoes — which all transit Hormuz — could be disrupted. To date, Qatar has continued shipments under enhanced US Navy escort and with bespoke insurance arrangements, but the market is pricing in a non-trivial probability of an interruption. European TTF gas has moved up in sympathy as buyers worry about the loss of the Asia-LNG pull on Atlantic supply. Jet fuel kerosene has tracked the crude move and sits at roughly $134 per barrel equivalent. The petrochemical complex — naphtha, ethylene, propylene — is following the same pattern.

Tanker Equities Are Living The Counter-Cycle

One of the cleanest macro trades of the past month has been long the listed tanker stocks. Frontline (FRO), DHT Holdings (DHT) and Euronav (CMBT after the spinoff and rebranding) are all up roughly 60 percent on the year. The mechanics are straightforward: even though several of them have suspended specific Hormuz transits, the broader tanker market is in a hard re-routing mode that has lengthened average voyage distances. A barrel that used to clear Hormuz to Singapore now goes from Yanbu around the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore — a much longer voyage that absorbs tonnage from the global pool and pushes spot rates higher. Time-charter rates for VLCCs have roughly doubled. The companies are running into a very strong cash-flow quarter, and the equity market is pricing it in.

Saudi Aramco shares have outperformed the broader Tadawul on the East-West pipeline narrative — paradoxically, the company is benefiting from the collapse of the chokepoint that lies between its eastern oil fields and most of its customers. ADNOC’s listed entities, including ADNOC Drilling and ADNOC Distribution, have similarly outperformed on the Habshan-Fujairah backup story. US shale-focused names — Pioneer, Diamondback, EOG, Permian Resources — have rallied as WTI has held a tight Brent spread and US export volumes have surged. The Russian energy complex is largely sidelined from this trade, both because of sanctions and because the displacement is happening in markets where Russia has limited optionality.

The US Navy, The IRGC, And The Escort Question

The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain, has been the most consequential security actor in the strait since the early 1980s. The current operational tempo is at its highest level since Operation Earnest Will during the 1987-88 tanker war. The fleet is conducting routine convoying for US-flagged vessels, conducting mine-clearance operations along the approaches to the strait, and providing intermittent escort for cargoes with US, UK, French, or allied flag arrangements. What it is not doing — by design — is offering a generalised escort regime for the global tanker market. That would require a coalition framework and a political authorisation that does not currently exist.

The escort question is therefore a critical structural feature of how this disruption persists. A unilateral US escort regime for all cargoes is politically and operationally implausible. A coalition escort regime — comparable in spirit to the Combined Maritime Forces operations against piracy in the early 2010s — has been quietly explored among the Five Eyes and key Gulf partners, but stitching it together inside a hot-war timeline is hard. The most likely outcome is incremental: more US escort capacity, supplemented by UK Royal Navy, French Marine Nationale, and selected Asian navies for their flag carriers, with insurance markets gradually re-quoting the route as the operational picture stabilises.

Iran’s calculus on the escort question is, by every credible read, that limited tanker harassment is a manageable form of escalation that imposes asymmetric cost on adversaries and signals the price of a wider conflict, while a direct attack on a US naval vessel would cross a different and more dangerous threshold. The IRGC’s posture has so far been consistent with that calculus.

The 1987-88 Comparison Is Imperfect — Here Is The Better One

The 1987-88 tanker war is the obvious historical analogue. During that conflict, Iran and Iraq attacked each other’s tankers and those of their respective sponsors, and the US ultimately reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and provided escort under Operation Earnest Will. The throughput hit, however, was much smaller than what we are seeing today. Total Hormuz transits dropped by perhaps 25 to 30 percent during the worst stretches of 1987-88, not 89 percent. The war-risk premium spike was meaningful but was measured in low six figures, not the half-million-plus we see now in real terms. The market repriced, but the chokepoint never approached closure.

The better historical comparison is actually 1990 — the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Both Kuwaiti and Iraqi exports went to effectively zero overnight, removing roughly 4 mb/d. Brent doubled inside 90 days, then collapsed once Saudi spare capacity came online and the coalition operation liberated Kuwait. The pattern of “shock-rally-collapse” is the template the market is currently working with. The difference is that 1990’s outage was 4 mb/d. The Hormuz outage today is closer to 13 to 14 mb/d after subtracting the bypass-pipeline contribution. The shock is bigger; the rally has been smaller proportionally because the macro environment — strong non-OPEC supply growth, demand-side flexibility from EVs and gas-substitution, and SPR releases — is different. Whether the collapse phase plays out as in 1990 depends entirely on whether a credible ceasefire emerges in Q2.

The Gold And FX Crosswind

An oil chokepoint disruption of this scale is also a gold story, a dollar story, and an emerging-market FX story. Gulf central banks have continued accumulating gold at an accelerating pace; the latest filings suggest Saudi, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are collectively on track for a record 2026 gold-purchase year. Spot gold has traded firmly above $3,300 per ounce. The dollar has been mixed: stronger against high-beta emerging-market currencies, weaker against the yen and Swiss franc on safe-haven flows. The Egyptian pound, Turkish lira, and Pakistani rupee have all weakened, the EGP and PKR more visibly than the lira because the lira is operating under a different policy regime. Saudi riyal, UAE dirham and Kuwaiti dinar are unchanged because they are pegged to the dollar.

The Outlook: Two Scenarios

Scenario one is a ceasefire in Q2. The probability is hard to size but the diplomatic activity in Doha, Muscat, Riyadh and increasingly Islamabad is consistent with a serious effort. If a credible ceasefire is announced, ship-tracking analysts expect throughput to rebuild toward 12 mb/d within roughly eight weeks of an all-clear, as the Joint War Committee re-rates the area, the major underwriters return, and the fleet operators re-deploy. Brent likely retraces toward $90, the Goldman $130 forecast does not need to be tested, and tanker equities give back most of their counter-cycle rally. Saudi East-West stays elevated on a permanent basis, but the chokepoint reasserts itself as the dominant route.

Scenario two is a protracted conflict into the second half of 2026. In that case, the pattern that emerged in 1990 does not repeat — the bypass routes get debottlenecked, China deepens its reliance on the Saudi East-West pipeline as a structural feature rather than a contingency, the UAE accelerates Habshan-Fujairah Phase 2, US shale exports stay above the year-ago baseline, and Hormuz becomes a de-risked, lower-volume corridor rather than the dominant chokepoint it has been since the 1970s. Brent settles into a structurally higher range, perhaps $105 to $115, but volatility eases. Tanker rates stay elevated. The geopolitics of the Gulf permanently shift around the new map.

Either way, the chokepoint is no longer a chokepoint that operates on autopilot. It is a contested space whose throughput depends on a fragile combination of insurance, navy presence, and tanker-operator risk appetite. That fact, more than the day’s Brent print, is the lasting story.

What To Watch This Week

• Joint War Committee designation: any change in the listed-areas notice would move premiums materially.
• Saudi East-West throughput: any signal that Aramco is approaching real capacity ceilings would cap how much of the deficit can be plugged.
• Qatari LNG dispatch counts: a single missed cargo would move JKM another leg.
• US Navy escort scope: any expansion to allied flags would be the cleanest forward signal of de-escalation logistics.
• Goldman, Citi, JPM forecast updates: the bank desk views are functioning as the consensus check for traders.
• Asian SPR release pace: too aggressive too fast would suggest governments are bracing for a longer disruption.

We will update this filing as the data moves. For the wider Iran sanctions backdrop, see our Iran oil sanctions coverage. For OPEC’s response, see OPEC spare capacity. For the broader price model, our Q2 Brent forecast remains the working framework, and the Red Sea piece traces the second-order shipping picture. Cross-references to Reuters, Bloomberg, the FT, the EIA at eia.gov/petroleum, the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report at opec.org, CNBC’s energy desk at cnbc.com, and Al Jazeera’s running war coverage at aljazeera.com are all open in our newsroom and being checked hourly.

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