Commercial vessel traffic through the strait of Hormuz on Thursday remained constrained despite assertions by US officials that the waterway was open to commercial traffic and free of mines.
A total of 12 vessels transited the strait of Hormuz on 27 August, the same number as a day before, according to data from maritime security firm Windward. The traffic was equally split between inbound and outbound movements, including four tankers inbound on the northern Iranian lane, three outbound tankers on the southern lane and one outbound on the northern lane.
This puts commercial vessel traffic through the waterway just under 10pc of the normal traffic levels prior to the 28 February US-Israel attack on Iran that prompted Iran to declare the strait closed.
Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US forces in the Mideast, said in a video post late on 27 August that internationally recognized transit lanes in the center of the strait are free of Iranian mines and that "today, international shipping lanes are open and momentum is building". No vessels were detected by Windward as transiting via the center lane on that day.
Traffic since the start of the US-Iran war has been largely bifurcated between the northern and southern lanes. Prior to the war, ships transited the strait through the centermost lane via an established Transit Separation Scheme (TSS) route. The TSS was proposed by Oman and Iran and adopted by the IMO in 1968, designating shipping lanes for maritime traffic to reduce collisions and improve safety. Following the outbreak of the US-Iran war, the middle TSS lanes were reportedly mined by Iranian forces, rendering traffic through them highly dangerous.
A combination of factors are likely to make vessels easier to target if they are transiting in the center of the strait compared with transits closer to the coastline, said Joshua Tallis, research program director at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA). This includes a more complicated sensor environment closer to the coast and proximity to missile defense systems.
US officials continue to double down on claims that the US had been supporting significant flows of oil through the waterway. Centcom's Cooper said US forces have assisted nearly 1,500 commercial vessels through the strait by providing coordinated protection, with a total of 750mn bl of crude oil destined for global markets "over the past several months". In the three months before the war started crude flows averaged 700mn bl a month, Vortexa data show.
In a late Thursday social media post US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent echoed claims by other US officials that in the last 14 days the US has guided 130mn bl out of the strait of Hormuz. That figure, which approximates to 9.3mn b/d, is in line with the 9mn-10mn b/d claimed by other US officials including US president Donald Trump, but far below the 3.5mn-3.7mn b/d average that can be corroborated by available satellite imagery and vessel tracking information.
