Kpler, the maritime data provider, recorded exactly three vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz on each of 22, 23 and 24 July, down from more than 20 a day before 15 July1. CENTCOM's formal position is that the strait remains "open for transit".
Both statements can be true at once, and the gap between them is the thing worth understanding. Hormuz is 33km wide at its narrowest and carries about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil; transit passage through it is a right in international law that no naval force has formally revoked. Whether a master exercises that right depends on his charterer, his crew and his underwriters, none of whom are bound by CENTCOM's characterisation. Kpler's count includes vessel-level detail, among them the very large crude carrier New Giant carrying about two million barrels of Basrah crude for China2.
Two other providers reach the same place by different routes. S&P Global counted 40 vessels across 17 to 19 July, about 13 a day, roughly half the previous week's rate. Lloyd's List put tanker and gas-carrier movements specifically at 30 in the week to 20 July against 90 in the week to 13 July, part of the 66% weekly fall we reported on 21 July. Saul Kavonic of MST Marquee, on the record, puts flows at about 15% of pre-war levels3. Three commercial datasets built for paying clients rather than for public argument agree on direction and on magnitude.
The insurance market reached this conclusion first and has not revisited it. War-risk rates on Hormuz transits were repriced in mid-July, when the broker Marcus Baker of Marsh quoted them against a count of eight vessels a day, and they have held at that level while physical traffic fell to three. Underwriters priced a closure the traffic has since caught up with. The exposure now sits in what has not been priced: a single mine strike or boarding in the Larak-Qeshm corridor, the route vessels use to stay outside CENTCOM's written blockade order, could push mainstream insurers to withdraw cover rather than reprice it, which would close the strait commercially without any government declaring it closed.
