Tehran blacklists 78 ships for skipping tolls as Hormuz traffic doubles off a catastrophic base

Windward’s Daily Intelligence brief of 17 September records twelve vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz on 16 September, double the previous day’s six, with satellite imagery identifying three VLCCs of 310 metres or more crossing dark and inbound, all riding high enough to indicate ballast condition. Empty hulls going in is a loading-queue signal rather than an export recovery. The comparison points are no better: Al Jazeera, citing Kpler, counted six crossings on Wednesday 2 September, eleven the Tuesday and five the Monday, for a ten-day average of thirteen a day against President Trump’s claim that the United States was helping roughly thirty ships through daily, and said other tracking services showed a similar pattern. The International Maritime Organization had confirmed 64 incidents and 17 deaths in the region since the war began, with at least 6,000 seafarers stranded in and around the strait, according to Al Jazeera on 6 August — a six-week-old count.

The sharper number is enforcement. Windward’s analysis of 78 vessels blacklisted by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority across lists released on 24 August, 2 September and 14 September found that all of them had used either the unauthorised southern corridor through Omani waters or Iran’s northern corridor without paying tolls, and describes the blacklist as tanker-heavy and UAE-heavy. No official tariff has been published. Windward cites reporting of a one-dollar-per-barrel structure for tanker cargoes, notes that some vessels have reportedly paid up to $2 million per transit, and records Iran’s First Vice President stating that “enemy” military equipment will not be permitted through at all. The Jerusalem Post, a partisan outlet on this file, reported that J.P. Morgan’s annual Eye on the Market energy paper warned Iran could earn $70–90 billion a year from a Hormuz toll — a modelled conditional ceiling, not a receipt.

Prices moved the other way. CNBC reported Brent futures settling down $1.01 at $104.82 a barrel on Thursday and US West Texas Intermediate off 52 cents at $101.91, with US crude still up nearly 2 percent on the week and more than 18 percent on the month. CNBC attributed the second straight session of losses to Riyadh shifting some crude exports through Hormuz to compensate for the closure of the damaged East–West pipeline, with extra cargoes offered to Asian refiners via ship-to-ship transfers just outside the strait near Oman’s Sohar port — that last detail sourced only to unnamed “sources familiar.” Trading Economics, tracking a CFD rather than the futures contract and therefore not directly comparable, reported Saudi plans to restore roughly half of East–West capacity within days and full operation within six weeks. Brent closed at $101.21 on 9 September, then its highest since 22 May.

Assessment: The market is pricing a repair schedule; the transit data is describing an administration. Those are different things and only one of them is reversible by welding. The blacklist is the day’s real disclosure: a state that wanted to close the strait would not need three published lists, an unauthorised-corridor designation and a differentiated fee regime. Tehran is building a toll booth with a customer file, and the tanker- and UAE-heavy composition of that file is a political sort as much as a commercial one. Distrust two numbers in particular: the Sohar ship-to-ship route rests on anonymous sourcing, and the J.P. Morgan revenue range is a model of a world in which the tolls are conceded.