Nobody can agree how closed Hormuz is, and the counting has become part of the war

The public transit counts for Hormuz diverge by an order of magnitude. IMF PortWatch data recorded eight transits on 13 September against a pre-crisis baseline of 85 a day. Windward’s maritime intelligence unit counted twelve on 16 September — double the previous day’s six — including three VLCCs crossing dark, inbound and riding high enough to indicate ballast. Reuters, via gCaptain the same day, said crossings remain in single digits. Kpler figures published by Al Jazeera gave six vessels on a Wednesday, eleven the Tuesday and five the Monday, against a ten-day average of thirteen. S&P Global’s Commodities at Sea recorded four ships on 8 March against 91 on 28 February, with 75 tankers ballasting in the Gulf of Oman. Trump has said the US is helping around 30 ships cross daily; Al Jazeera reported on 3 September that tracking data suggests far fewer. CENTCOM’s spokesman told Al Jazeera the blockade is “highly effective”; RFE/RL reported on 16 September that CENTCOM says Hormuz “remains open.”

Windward’s analysis of the 78 vessels blacklisted by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority — lists released on 24 August, 2 September and 14 September — found all had used either the unauthorised southern corridor through Omani waters or Iran’s northern corridor without paying tolls, and that listing does not appear to have stopped any of them trading in the region. Tankers were 85 percent of the list; Liberia-flagged ships were 38 percent, or 30 vessels, with Panama and Barbados at 6 percent each. Southern-corridor transits remain at 16 percent of pre-war levels even as August crude volumes through Hormuz excluding Iran were assessed at 45 percent. Separately, Iranian state media said the IRGC struck the 7,119-dwt Togo-flagged product tanker Trend on Thursday over what Tehran called an illegal passage attempt. No independent damage report, crew status or owner statement has surfaced; the claim is single-sourced and should not be treated as a confirmed event.

The price screens are no cleaner. For Friday 18 September, Fortune printed Brent at $104.33 at 8:00 a.m. ET, up 35 cents on the previous morning and about $37 higher than a year earlier; Transport Topics had $104.07, down 0.3 percent; a Reuters-derived report had $103.17 at 1008 GMT, down $1.65 or 1.6 percent, with WTI at $101.30. Trading Economics logged Brent near $102 in a third consecutive session of decline. Brent was heading for a 1.4 percent weekly loss — its first in three weeks — as traders grew more confident Saudi production and exports could partly resume, with shipments rerouted through Oman and refined-product stocks climbing in the US, Singapore and Europe. Trading Economics' own weekly line says the opposite: a third straight weekly gain. Transport Topics noted Brent touched nearly $110 early in the week, against a little over $70 in July. Analyst Tom Kloza posted on Friday: “US gas rises to $4.47/gal with diesel at $6.45/gal” and “No new drone strikes on refining overnight.”

Assessment: Both belligerents profit from the fog. A blockade that is “highly effective” and a strait that “remains open” are the same sentence addressed to different audiences — deterrence for Tehran, reassurance for underwriters and for the Gulf. Tehran’s blacklist works the same way: Windward’s finding that listing changes nobody’s trading pattern means the lists are signalling, not enforcement. Practical guidance for readers: do not average the Brent prints, pick a publisher and a timestamp; ignore composite “indices” assembled from other people’s trackers; and note that the week’s price direction is being set by expectations of Saudi restart, not by the headlines out of Hormuz.