20JUL

Hormuz trickle: five then seven vessels

3 min read

10:00UTC

Kpler logged five vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz on 9 April and seven on 10 April, against a pre-war baseline of 120 to 140 a day. ADNOC's chief executive told reporters the strait is not open.

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Key takeaway

Hormuz is delivering fewer transits under ceasefire than under Iran's own toll regime.

Kpler recorded 5 vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz on 9 April and 7 on 10 April, against a pre-war baseline of 120 to 140 daily ¹. The ceasefire is delivering fewer movements than the 20 transits per day Iran's own toll regime was carrying on 5 April . More than 600 vessels remain stranded inside the Gulf, including 325 oil tankers.

Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company), told reporters on Friday that "the strait of Hormuz is not open. Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled" ². Ana Subasic, a Kpler analyst, projects a ceiling of 10 to 15 transits per day even if the ceasefire fully holds.

That ceiling is roughly one-tenth of the pre-war baseline and half of Iran's own toll volume last week. It implies structurally tight oil throughput regardless of Brent's headline price , and no single-day breakthrough is likely to restore pre-war flow. The Gulf is moving at a trickle because the physical problem in the water is larger than the political problem in the hotel in Islamabad.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Before the war, 120 to 140 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz every day carrying oil from Gulf states to the rest of the world. In the three days since the ceasefire, that number has fallen to five or seven — not much more than zero. The ceasefire stopped the bombing, but it did not clear the sea mines, lift the shipping insurance bans, or dissolve the Iranian inspection system. A political peace agreement does not automatically move oil.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The trickle is not a ceasefire failure in the usual sense. It reflects three compounding physical constraints that the diplomatic process cannot resolve: uncharted Iranian mines making navigation hazardous, the IRGC corridor system restricting passage to specific channels near Larak Island, and the withdrawal of war-risk insurance coverage from standard commercial operators.

The UN Security Council's 11-2 vote for a Hormuz reopening resolution was vetoed by Russia and China — both of whom benefit from the toll architecture their own tankers already use. The multilateral route to maritime normalisation is therefore closed, leaving only bilateral US-Iran negotiation or unilateral force, neither of which resolves the physical mine problem.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Brent crude will remain structurally elevated at 40-60% above pre-war levels until mine clearance and insurance normalisation occur, regardless of which diplomatic outcome Islamabad produces.
Risk
GL-U expiry on 19 April would simultaneously criminalise the 325 stranded tankers' cargo under US sanctions while they remain physically unable to move, creating a compound maritime-legal crisis.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from Qatar

Qatar

Primary parallel: During the 1984 Tanker War phase of the Iran-Iraq War, Iranian mining and attacks on Gulf shipping reduced commercial transit by roughly 25% before the US Navy began Operation Earnest Will escort missions in 1987. Full insurance-market normalisation took 18 months after the 1988 ceasefire. The structural dynamic — physical threat persisting after political agreement — is directly analogous.

Counter-parallel: After the 1990-91 Gulf War, Kuwait's offshore oil export infrastructure recovered within six months of hostilities ending because US and UK mine-clearance teams were pre-deployed and the field was shallower, more confined, and better-charted. The Hormuz strait presents a harder clearance problem at greater depth and with no admitted mine charts from the laying force.

The 325 oil tankers stranded inside the Gulf represent approximately 650 to 700 million barrels of combined capacity at typical VLCC loads — roughly seven days of global oil demand sitting immobile. Each additional day of immobility adds demurrage costs that insurers ultimately price into war-risk premiums, compounding the blockage.

The structural mismatch is stark: pre-war Hormuz carried 20 million barrels per day. At 7 transits per day with standard VLCC cargo, throughput is under 14 million barrels per day less than pre-war baseline — roughly equivalent to removing Saudi Arabia's entire daily export volume from global supply. GL-U expiry on 19 April would add a sanctions layer on top of the physical constraint, making the stranded tankers legally as well as operationally immobile.

Consensus view: Ana Subasic at Kpler and Goldman Sachs (Q2 forecast at $90 with $100+ flagged if Hormuz stays at current throughput) both assess that even under a best-case ceasefire scenario, Hormuz cannot return to pre-war throughput until the mine threat is eliminated and war-risk insurance is lifted — two conditions that no current diplomatic process addresses .

Counter-view: The Carnegie Middle East Center notes that the shadow-fleet architecture built during the Iran-sanctions period before the war can absorb a fraction of stranded cargo: vessels that transited under IRGC toll conditions remain technically capable of transiting again, and Chinese and Russian tankers have shown willingness to operate at elevated insurance cost.

Key tension: Whether the 10 to 15 daily transit ceiling is a temporary operational trough or the new structural normal for Hormuz throughput, with insurance markets holding the deciding vote.

Sources:Al Jazeera

Mentions:Iraq →Iran →US Navy →Islamabad →Iran-Iraq War →Operation Earnest Will →Tanker War →Kuwait →Prima →Abu Dhabi →Russia →Goldman Sachs →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Kpler →Sultan Al Jaber →ADNOC →Ana Subasic →Strait of Hormuz →

First Reported In

Update #65 · Iran lost its own minefield

Al Jazeera· 11 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Hormuz toll system carried 20 transits per day before ceasefire

The 5 and 7 vessel transit counts on 9-10 April are far below the 20 transits per day the toll regime was producing on 5 April, showing the ceasefire has produced fewer transits than the blockade.

Occurred 5 Apr 2026

Read story →

This Event

Hormuz trickle: five then seven vessels

The ceasefire has so far produced fewer transits than the blockade it was supposed to end, implying insurance and oil markets will hold war-risk pricing indefinitely.

Led to

IRGC declares Hormuz will never reopen

Kpler's Hormuz transit data (ID:2205) underpins the IRGC's effective blockade and the IRGC's claim the strait 'will never return to previous status.'

Occurred 11 Apr 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Kuwait

Kuwait absorbed the Iranian strike that knocked generating units offline at a combined power-and-desalination plant on 17 July, the event that finally moved freight and insurance in lockstep with Brent. The strike hit essential civilian infrastructure, not a trading desk's benchmark.

Asian buyers (Singapore)

Singapore's middle distillates rose 12% month-to-date to 8.91m barrels and fuel oil passed 19m barrels on a 105% net-import surge, buyers retaining barrels as the East-West arbitrage window narrows. Cargoes are being stockpiled ahead of further Hormuz-driven freight repricing rather than released west.

Austria (Coreper holdout)

Vienna is blocking the same package over roughly EUR 2bn of frozen Russian assets earmarked for Raiffeisen, a domestic banking dispute with no connection to the oil cap racing toward its 23 July expiry. The linkage forces the whole package to wait on a bilateral compensation fight.

Greece (Coreper holdout)

Athens is holding the 21st sanctions package at the 22 July Coreper vote over Russian LNG re-export rights, a condition unrelated to the oil price cap itself, leaving the $44.10 freeze one day from expiry without a deal. Greece's own tanker registry gives it a direct stake in how any shadow-fleet measures are drafted.

Marine underwriters (Gulf war-risk)

Hull war-risk cover for Hormuz transits widened to a 3-10% band on 17 July with 5% the emerging norm, up from a 3-4% baseline set in late June, the first repricing in six weeks to track a flat-price move rather than lag it. Cover resets on actuarial evidence of loss, not on diplomatic or price signals.

Money managers (CFTC-tracked)

The CFTC's week-to-14-July snapshot, released 17 July, showed WTI managed-money net long collapsing 69% to 19,783 contracts and a standalone 60,141-contract net short on Brent Last Day (NYMEX). Both readings predate the Kuwait strike and the 20 July escalation, so any covering since is not yet visible in public data.