19 May 2026.

Situation

The Strait of Hormuz recorded zero commercial transits against a pre-crisis baseline of 95 vessels per day, confirming a complete operational shutdown of the world's most critical oil chokepoint. The US has separately reported that 88 commercial vessels have been redirected away from the strait, underscoring the breadth of disruption to global supply chains. Brent crude climbed to $111.37, a gain of +4.96% over 24 hours, as markets price in sustained closure risk; WTI followed at $105.78. The policy response is intensifying on multiple fronts: NATO is actively discussing a military operation to reopen the strait, with reports indicating a July deadline before intervention is triggered. G7 finance ministers have issued a joint call for immediate reopening, and Qatar has publicly backed ongoing US-Iran diplomatic talks as a pathway to resolution. A UK lawmaker raised the spectre of a global food crisis if closure persists, pointing to fertiliser and grain shipments that also route through the passage. On the market-structure side, CMB Tech's chief flagged that reopening itself carries binary risk for tanker rates — either a demand surge or a rate collapse depending on sequencing. Citi analysts have noted that a closure extending to early 2027 would be required to reproduce a 1970s-scale oil shock, a threshold that nonetheless focuses minds given the current trajectory.