2 September 2026.

Situation

The Strait of Hormuz is recording its most acute shipping-disruption signals of the crisis cycle. Two additional oil tankers were attacked in the strait, per reporting from The New York Times, Arab News, Al Jazeera, BBC, and gCaptain; BBC reports that an Iranian strike on a Saudi-flagged tanker killed two Filipino seafarers, with Saudi Arabia attributing the attack to Iran, per Al Jazeera. Iran has widened its Hormuz shipping blacklist to 56 vessels, per Baird Maritime, a figure the site has not independently verified. The throughput picture remains severe: on 2026-08-30, IMF PortWatch recorded 6 transits through the strait, against a pre-crisis baseline of 85 per day; PortWatch publishes weekly on Tuesdays and that reading carries a multi-day lag by design. At 23:56 UTC, 465 vessels were holding position away from berth, a figure that does not include hulls within 25 km of a working port. Brent was trading at $95.30, up 0.04% over 24 hours, at the time of writing. The Hormuz Index state composite sits in the extreme band, flat over 24 hours, with war-risk insurance acting as a single-component override on the published figure. The Escalation Forecast composite remains in the elevated band, also flat, with the Brent-WTI forward spread its top contributor; the two composites diverge in band, reflecting different measurement horizons and inputs.

Recorded