Traffic through Hormuz drops 90%

Oil shipping is the story here — and the stakes are simple. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow exit for Gulf crude, LNG, and petrochemicals. When traffic through that channel falls to a handful of ships a day, the problem is not just tankers getting delayed. It is energy prices, insurance costs, and supply chains all taking a hit at once. On May 1, the strait was still running at a tiny fraction of normal volume, with Reuters citing six ships in the past 24 hours. (msn.com) ### Why is Hormuz the chokepoint? Hormuz is the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. A huge share of Gulf exports has to pass through it — especially crude oil, LNG, an(msn.com) 28, after attacks on commercial ships pushed carriers to stop sailing through it. (portwatch.imf.org) ### What changed this week? The basic answer is that the hoped-for reopening never really turned into a normalization. Reuters said on April 29 that only six ships crossed in 24 hours, a fraction of usual traffic. Bloomberg described the waterway on April 25 as larg(portwatch.imf.org)g is not really a one-day shock anymore — it is the continuation of a severe, weeks-long squeeze. (msn.com) ### How bad is the drop, exactly? Pretty bad. One live monitoring dashboard showed six ships in the last 24 hours versus a normal daily average of about 60, or 10% of normal. Another tracker put traffic down roughly 93%(msn.com)ertilizer-related goods fell to almost a complete halt after the closure in early March. (hormuzstraitmonitor.com) ### Why are shipowners staying away? Because the route is not just tight — it is dangerous and expensive. Recent weeks brought gunboat attacks, tanker interceptions, and a U.S.-Iran standoff that made commercial passage look less like routine shipping and more like running a gauntlet. Once i(hormuzstraitmonitor.com)d, or trapped, they either demand huge premiums or refuse the voyage. That is why traffic can stay frozen even when the waterway is not physically blocked end to end. (bloomberg.com) ### What does that do to prices? It pushes up the cost of everything tied to the route. One tracker showed war-risk insurance at 3.5%, up from about 0.15% in normal times — more than 23 times higher. Tanker spot ra(bloomberg.com)hed past $120 during the latest panic. Basically, even cargo that still moves gets more expensive before it reaches a refinery or port. (hormuzstraitmonitor.com) ### Can exporters just route around it? Only partly. That is the catch. If cargo starts inside the Persian Gulf, Hormuz is still the exit. Some volumes can shift to pipelines or alternative land corridors, but those routes do not replace the full scale of Gulf seaborne exports. One disruptio(hormuzstraitmonitor.com) normal flow. So rerouting helps at the margin, but it does not solve the core bottleneck. (hormuztracker.com) ### Why does fertilizer matter too? Because this is not only an oil story. The WTO tracker shows fertilizer-related shipments breaking at the same time as crude and LNG. That matters because fertilizer costs feed into food prices with a delay — farmers pay more, then food systems absorb the shock la(hormuztracker.com)effects can spread much wider. (datalab.wto.org) ### What is the bottom line? The real news is persistence. Hormuz traffic is not bouncing back — it is stuck near emergency levels more than two months into the disruption. As long as only a few ships are willing to transit, the world is paying a chokepoint tax on oil, gas, and trade. (msn.com)