Twelve commodity vessels. That is how many crossed the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend of 19 and 20 September, according to Kpler shipping data as relayed by SeaNews and Hellenic Shipping News. Reuters reports carried by Offshore Engineer, MarineLink and Baird Maritime counted 17. Before the war, about 125 large commercial vessels passed through every day.
Hostilities began on February 28, and the standoff between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other has not let up. The strait normally teems with tankers, LNG carriers, bulkers and container ships. It handles a fifth of the world’s oil supply.
What the weekend counts show
Reuters put the weekend total at 17, against 37 the week before. The outlets reporting 12 measured it against 35 the previous weekend. Kpler’s provisional data as of 07:06 GMT showed that on Sunday five vessels left the strait and two small oil tankers went in. Among those leaving were the very large crude carrier Pinios, two tankers hauling refined products and two empty carriers for bulk goods and gas.
The Pinios was moving 2 million barrels of Iraqi Basrah crude off Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to another VLCC, the New Constant, which is expected to sail for China. Saturday was busier. Eight vessels left the Gulf with crude, farm products, liquefied natural gas and fertilizers, while a large LNG carrier and a VLCC went in. The Shandong Redwood, an LNG tanker loaded at Qatar’s Ras Laffan port, cleared the strait on September 19 and is bound for Pakistan.
Baird Maritime, citing preliminary Kpler data, said crossings fell to two on Monday, 21 September, down from 10 the day before. One was a Panama-flagged supramax carrying minerals, the other a Liberia-flagged bulk carrier.
Oil still moves, and ships get hit
Producers in the Middle East keep exporting oil on tankers that sail with their transponders switched off. Houthi attacks on Saudi Aramco’s East-West pipeline, a key alternative route for Saudi crude, led Aramco to raise exports through Hormuz this month and next, Reuters reported. In the week of September 13, Kpler data show, 22 tankers, mostly VLCCs, carried 42 million barrels of crude out of the strait. Saudi Arabia and Iraq each supplied 43% of it.
Farther along the route, 51 vessels crossed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea over the weekend, 33 of them heading out. The count was 57 a week earlier.
Two ships were struck. Marisks Intelligence said the Isle of Man-flagged crude tanker LR Stephanie, managed by Universal Tanker Corporation, was hit by an unidentified projectile while entering the strait on Monday, 21 September. Two crew members suffered minor injuries. The day before, the Liberia-flagged LPG carrier Al Maryah was struck on its way out. Both vessels carried on without a tow. Nobody has confirmed who was responsible, and neither ship appears on publicly reported lists of vessels deemed non-compliant by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority.
The tracking figures leave out any ship that crosses with its AIS transponder turned off, so real movements are higher. The weekend counts of 12 or 17 vessels are best read as a minimum.
