S&P Global Commodity Insights counted one vessel crossing the Strait of Hormuz on 16 August, described the figure as a record low, and put the previous day at eight1. Our own record already carried a different number for that date. Kpler, which tracks commodity vessels, meaning tankers and bulk carriers rather than all shipping, counted five crossings in the same water on the same day.
Kpler's later readings continue the series. It put 18 August at six crossings, against nine on 17 August and a ten-day daily average of eleven2. That is 45 per cent below its own average, an arithmetic step we have taken on Kpler's two published figures rather than a percentage Kpler states.
One and five are not the same count of the same strait on the same day. The S&P Global page would not open on four separate fetch routes, so the vessel universe behind its figure cannot be laid against Kpler's. Of the names attached to Hormuz numbers this week, only Kpler has published what it counts. Windward is not a third tally at all: it measures how many ships have stopped transmitting, which is the mechanism rather than the count.
The divergence has a precedent two months old. US Central Command (CENTCOM, the American military command covering the Middle East) counted 55 merchant ships through the strait on 22 June against Kpler's 12, a 43-ship gap our energy desk traced to vessels hugging the Omani shoreline with their transponders switched off. June's version sat between a navy and a commercial tracker, an easy difference to explain away. This week's sits between two commercial providers selling to the same customers.
A war-risk underwriter prices a Hormuz voyage against the number of movements that actually occur. Hand that underwriter two incompatible denominators and the premium drifts towards the worst plausible reading rather than the measured one. The charterer pays that difference, and pays it whether the true figure is one ship or five.
