A fifth of the world's oil goes through one narrow channel. This is the daily count of ships crossing it, measured against what a normal day used to look like, so you can see how much is actually moving.
That is 27 Sep 2026, the newest day anyone has measured, 5 days ago. Before the war a normal day was about 85. The last week has averaged 3.1 a day, roughly 96% below normal.
The count due has not been published; the last one was . is still the newest day anyone has measured, and every figure on this page is worked out from it. This is a delay at the source, not a gap in our collection.
There are reports of GPS jamming, AIS spoofing and vessels going dark because of the conflict in the region, which makes the measurement harder to take at exactly the moment it matters most.
Hover any day to see the exact figures. The pale dashed line marked 85/Normal Flow is a normal day before the closure, drawn to the same scale so the drop is its real size.
Every ship counted that day, split by what it was carrying.
The parts add up to 1, which is the whole day. Every ship counted is in exactly one of them.
Everything above this point is the weekly transit count. What follows is a live regional reading, refreshed every half hour, and it measures a different thing. The two must never be added together.
Anchored or stopped, not under way. The busiest is Jebel Ali with 46. The side matters more than the total: ships stacked up outside the strait are waiting to get in, ships stacked up inside it cannot get out. A single congestion figure would hide which way the squeeze runs.
You do not need any of this to read the chart. It is here so you can check the numbers instead of taking our word for them.
A crossing is one commercial ship passing the narrowest part of the strait, seen from satellites tracking the position each ship broadcasts. Every voyage in or out of the Gulf has to cross the same line, so the measuring stick never moves. Sitting near the strait, queueing at anchor, or turning back before crossing all count for nothing.
Once a ship crosses it cannot count again for two days, however many times it goes back and forth. A slow passage or a ship loitering on the line is one crossing, not five. The whole record is built on that single rule, which is what makes today comparable with any day before it.
Every number here comes from ships that were broadcasting their position. Through 2026 a large share of tankers have crossed with the transponder switched off, and they are invisible to this kind of measurement. So the honest reading is "at least this many got through". Watch which way the line moves rather than the level itself.
The measurement publishes once a week, on a Tuesday, covering up to the previous Sunday. Between publications the newest measured day stays where it is, normally two to nine days back. A repeated number means no new measurement has been published, not that nothing moved at sea. Every figure here is stamped with the day it measures and how old that day is.
It is the typical day across the twelve months before the closure was declared, and it is fixed. If we recalculated it on a rolling basis it would sink towards the disruption the longer the disruption lasted, and a strait running at one percent of normal would slowly appear to recover while nothing changed at sea.
If the listening equipment heard less than half a day of signal, that day is recorded as missing. Silence is a measurement problem, and calling it "no ships crossed" would be the easiest way to publish something false. On the chart the line breaks and a faint dashed one carries the shape across.
Roughly a fifth of the world's oil goes through this strait. Fewer tankers means less crude reaching buyers, which pushes the oil price up, keeps inflation stickier for longer, and makes it harder for central banks to cut interest rates. That chain is why a count of ships ends up on a trading desk.
Each ship is classed from the type it broadcasts. Tankers carry the oil and are the reason this page exists. Cargo ships carry everything else, and their count says more about ordinary trade than about energy. "Everything else" is tugs, service boats and anything that fits neither.
| DAY | ALL SHIPS | TANKERS | CARGO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 4 | 1 | 3 | |
| 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| 5 | 3 | 2 | |
| 4 | 1 | 3 | |
| 3 | 1 | 2 | |
| 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 6 | 1 | 5 | |
| 7 | 2 | 5 | |
| 3 | 0 | 3 | |
| 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 8 | 1 | 7 | |
| 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 8 | 3 | 5 | |
| 5 | 1 | 4 | |
| 3 | 0 | 3 | |
| 6 | 2 | 4 | |
| 5 | 2 | 3 | |
| 6 | 2 | 4 | |
| 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 3 | 1 | 2 | |
| 4 | 1 | 3 | |
| 3 | 1 | 2 | |
| 6 | 2 | 4 | |
| 3 | 1 | 2 |
This page draws 400 days, and the record goes back to 24 Aug 2025. The full daily history, the live Gulf readings and the independent comparison all come through the Helious API, and through MCP at api.helious.io/mcp if you want your own tools to read it directly.
What it means for prices: the inflation tracker. What it means for rates: the Treasury curve and the FOMC. The reading posts to the terminal feed twice a day, 8:30am and 3:30pm ET, beside the economic calendar.
