Four trackers count Hormuz traffic four different ways, and none of them match Trump

Kpler data cited by Al Jazeera on 3 September recorded just six vessels crossing the strait on the Wednesday, 11 on the Tuesday and five on the Monday, with a ten-day average of 13 vessels per day. Al Jazeera set that against the president’s claim that the US is helping around 30 ships cross daily, noting ship-tracking data suggests the number is far lower. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, via CBS News, counted 102 transits last week against 126 the week before — and 130 or more per day before the war, a collapse of roughly 99 percent if the units are read as published. The Joint Maritime Information Center, relayed by United Against Nuclear Iran — an advocacy organisation campaigning against the Iranian government — reported 877 vessels transiting since 18 June and 1,490 since the war began. The unattributed straits.live tracker, which has no named editor and should not be treated as a source of fact, calls the strait “effectively” closed and puts normal at about 85 transits a day.

The disagreement over the denominator matters as much as the disagreement over the count: 130 a day and 85 a day cannot both describe the pre-war baseline. What is not in dispute is that oil keeps moving. CBS reports significant volumes still flowing via a shuttle trade in which operators risk a southern route, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Washington would maintain its naval presence and blockade while supporting safe passage of commercial vessels, having previously said millions of barrels were still crossing. Prices reflect a squeeze, not a closure. Brent stood at $97.29 on 7 September, up 10.91 percent on the month and 47.36 percent year-on-year, against roughly $90.55 on 28 August — but Investing.com’s 52-week range tops out at $126.41. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen below 290 million barrels, its lowest since 1982.

Assessment: A market at $97 with a 52-week high of $126 is not pricing a closed strait. It is pricing a leaky blockade that both sides have an interest in describing as tighter than it is: Washington to demonstrate the campaign works, Tehran to demonstrate it can shut the waterway. Wright’s own admission that millions of barrels still move sits awkwardly beside CENTCOM’s shadow-fleet framing. Read the trackers for direction, not magnitude — the daily-versus-weekly unit slippage between Kpler and Lloyd’s List has already produced published figures that differ by an order of magnitude. The SPR at a 1982 low is the number to watch, because it is the one constraint Washington cannot re-announce its way out of.