More than 3,000 vessels remain stranded across the Middle East, according to the International Maritime Organisation — tankers loaded with crude, LNG carriers, container ships, and bulk carriers trapped on both sides of a strait that carried roughly 21 million barrels of oil per day before 28 February. The number has no peacetime precedent. When the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021, approximately 400 vessels were held up. The Hormuz closure has lasted 22 days, and the vessel count is nearly eight times that figure.
The stranded fleet is the physical mechanism behind the supply figures. The IEA's March 2026 Oil Market Report recorded an 8 million barrel-per-day drop in global supply — the largest disruption on record 1. Iraq's force majeure on all foreign-operated oilfields and QatarEnergy's Force majeure on LNG contracts to Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China have left tankers and gas carriers loaded with product and no discharge port accepting them. The 400 million barrels released from strategic petroleum reserves are, as the IEA itself stated, "a stop-gap measure" 2. Reserves replace volume on paper; they do not replace the movement of ships through a contested waterway.
The 22 nations that demanded Iran reopen the strait — tripling the seven-country group from days earlier — pledged no warships. Three successive joint declarations have used the phrase "readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts" without producing a single escort vessel. Every country Trump named for a coalition formally refused to send ships . For the crews aboard — many of them Filipino, Indian, and Bangladeshi seafarers on contracts written for commercial voyages, not indefinite war-zone anchorage — the declarations are immaterial. War-risk insurance policies are expiring, crew-change logistics in conflict zones have broken down before, and no flag state has announced repatriation. The vessels wait because nobody will move them and nobody will escort them.
