20JUL

Hormuz tankers hit pre-war daily range

2 min read

10:51UTC

Al Jazeera counted 35 tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday 2 July, the first pre-war-typical daily total of the conflict, though its seven-day moving average still trails last year.

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ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

Thirty-five tankers cleared Hormuz on 2 July, but the seven-day average still trails last year.

Al Jazeera counted 35 tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday 2 July, the first daily total back inside the pre-war-typical range since the conflict began ¹. The broadcaster paired the count with a "has the oil shortage turned into a glut?" framing that moved quickly across trading desks.

Al Jazeera's own seven-day moving average still sits below last year's level, one strong session rather than a durable recovery. The Washington-Tehran arrangement runs on a 60-day interim transit-negotiation window dated from the 17 June memorandum, fragile by both sides' account.

IMF PortWatch put Hormuz transits at roughly a third of pre-crisis levels on its 3 July reading , so the day-count optimism and the underlying seven-day trend pull in opposite directions ². That divergence, not the single session, is what a transit-exposed book prices.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Thirty-five oil tankers left the Strait of Hormuz on 2 July, a chokepoint between Iran and Oman that carries about a fifth of the world's oil. That single-day count looks almost normal. But averaged over the whole week, and according to the IMF's own ship-tracking service, traffic is still running at only about a third of pre-conflict levels. Think of it like a motorway that clears after roadworks: one fast-moving lorry does not mean the jam has gone. Insurers and oil traders watch the weekly average, not the best day, because a single busy day can just mean a backlog of ships was let through together.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The 60-day US-Iran incident-avoidance understanding, established in Geneva on 21 June, expires around 20 August. The 2 July count sits closer to the start of that window than its expiry, so a single strong day says little about whether transit holds once the informal arrangement lapses.

IMF PortWatch's own early-July baseline already put daily transits at 27 to 43 against an 84 pre-crisis norm, so the 2 July count of 35 sits inside a range PortWatch had already logged, not a new trend; a single Thursday count can just as easily reflect a bunched convoy release as a genuine change in the underlying escort-clearance rate.

What could happen next?

Meaning
A single strong transit day is not yet evidence of durable recovery, since IMF PortWatch's own rolling measure still shows roughly two-thirds of capacity missing.
Immediate · Assessed
Risk
The 60-day Geneva incident-avoidance window closes around 20 August; a transit recovery built on informal Iranian forbearance rather than a legal settlement could reverse abruptly once that window lapses.
Medium term · Reported
Precedent
Kpler and Windward's differing read on daily-versus-averaged transit data will likely recur at every future Hormuz recovery milestone, since neither tracker has adjusted its methodology to the current convoy-bunching pattern.
Short term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Qatar and United States

Qatar

United States

Primary parallel: After the 2019 Abqaiq-Khurais drone strikes, Saudi Aramco announced nameplate capacity restored within weeks, a headline figure that outran the slower recovery in actual export blending quality and shipped volumes tracked by data firms for months afterward.

Counter-parallel: The 2021 Ever Given grounding is the cleaner case: once Suez cleared on 29 March, the vessel backlog drained within roughly a week, because no adversarial actor could re-close the canal, unlike Hormuz, where the 21 June Geneva incident-avoidance line runs only 60 days and Iran's underlying legal claim over the strait remains unresolved.

Lloyd's-listed war-risk premiums for Hormuz transits reprice within 24 to 48 hours of a headline transit count, well before crude term contracts adjust. Freight and insurance markets move faster than term pricing because a single strong day changes underwriters' risk assumptions immediately, while term contracts wait for a trend to confirm.

A third of pre-crisis transit volume means the freight market is still pricing scarcity into VLCC day rates for the corridor. A genuine capacity recovery needs several consecutive weeks above the 7-day average before charterers relax war-risk surcharges, not one Thursday print.

Consensus view: Kpler's tanker-tracking desk treats the 3 July IMF PortWatch reading of roughly a third of pre-crisis transits as the harder number, because it averages AIS-derived vessel counts over a rolling window rather than trusting a single Thursday spike.

Counter-view: Windward's maritime-risk analysts argue the 2 July count of 35 matters precisely because it is a single day: convoy bunching after an escort delay can produce one big clearance day inside an otherwise thin week, so treating it as noise understates how fast the queue can drain once Iranian naval checks ease.

Key tension: Whether Hormuz transit data should be read through a smoothing average that hides a genuine step-change, or a daily print that can be inflated by a single convoy release.

Sources:Al Jazeera·IMF PortWatch·IMF PortWatch

Mentions:Strait of Hormuz →Al Jazeera →IMF PortWatch →Kpler →Iran →Abqaiq-Khurais →Saudi Aramco →Geneva →Tehran →Windward →Oman →Washington →

First Reported In

Update #24 · Hormuz tanker rebound is no LNG relief

Al Jazeera· 6 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Hormuz stand-down has not reopened the strait

The 2 July tanker rebound follows IMF PortWatch's 3 July reading of Hormuz transits still at roughly a third of pre-crisis levels.

Occurred 3 Jul 2026

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This Event

Hormuz tankers hit pre-war daily range

A transit-exposed desk prices the seven-day trend, and that trend still trails 2025 even as the single-day count returns to range.

Different Perspectives

China's foreign ministry

Spokesman Lin Jian rejected Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's 25 August warning that Iranian oil buyers face an "economic D-Day", saying sanctions do not help and that Beijing would safeguard its own rights and interests. China's Iranian crude imports had already halved for unrelated reasons.

Iraq's government and Erbil authorities

Erbil authorities said 10 explosive-laden drones were shot down over the city on 1-2 September with no casualties. Iraq's government condemned the attacks without naming Iran as their source, and neither Washington nor Baghdad confirmed the IRGC's claim to have hit US bases there.

Bahrain Defence Force

The General Command said air defences intercepted several Iranian missiles and drones on 1-2 September and called the use of such weapons against civilians and private property a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

Kuwait's Fire Force and foreign ministry

KUNA reported a hostile Iranian drone struck a residential complex in Kuwait City on 2 September; Fire Force spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Al-Gharib said losses were confined to property. Kuwait's foreign ministry called the attack a clear breach of its sovereignty.

Jordan's Armed Forces

Petra carried a statement that air defences intercepted eight missiles violating Jordanian airspace early on 31 August and 10 of 13 fired on 1 September. The statement named no target and did not address the IRGC's claim to have struck Camp Titin and killed US personnel.

CENTCOM

CENTCOM's 1 September target list named IRGC air defence, radar, maritime and mine-laying sites in Iran but no tanker, after Axios reported anonymous officials describing a Trump-approved "tanker for tanker" drone policy. A CENTCOM spokesman declined to confirm the policy and referred questions to policymakers.