FAQ
Common questions about the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Where the answer depends on live data, the figure on this page reflects the most recent reading from our feeds.
Answers refresh with live data · checked
The questions that depend on this minute’s data. Every figure on this page comes from the same feed that drives the live tracker.
The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to commercial shipping. IMF PortWatch reports 34 commercial vessels transited the strait on the most recent reporting day (2026-07-05). Pre-crisis peacetime was about 88 per day across both directions. The verdict logic is documented on the methodology page and combines the PortWatch transit count, war-risk insurance pricing, carrier postures, and any declared closures.
Brent is currently around $84.75 per barrel. The figure on this page updates every ten minutes from intraday Brent and WTI continuous futures (read via Yahoo Finance chart data) with EIA daily closes as backstop. The 7-day rolling chart on the front page shows the prior week of moves with min/max pickoffs and event markers.
Two ways to read "safe." War-risk insurance is currently pricing the strait at around 8× the normal multiple; at 4× or above, the trade press treats it as "effectively priced out" regardless of physical conditions. 8 of 9 top container carriers have suspended Hormuz transits or rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope. When both signals run high, the strait is effectively closed even if individual vessels still transit.
Subscribe on the front page; you'll get one email when the operational verdict flips (closed / restricted / open). No newsletter, no marketing, just the flip event. Indexed events are also available as RSS at /feed.xml, and status updates are posted to @straitslive on X and LinkedIn as they happen.
Methodology, sourcing, and what the data can (and can't) tell you.
The verdict combines four signals in priority order. (1) Carrier suspensions: if five or more of the top nine lines have suspended or are rerouting, we call it closed. (2) War-risk insurance multiple: at 4× or above, we treat the strait as effectively closed even if vessels are still transiting. (3) Daily transit count from IMF PortWatch (chokepoint6 dataset, attributed): zero transits is closed, below 40% of the pre-2026-02-28 peacetime median is restricted, otherwise open. (4) When PortWatch is unavailable we fall through to AIS concurrent presence, then to a conservative posture rather than presenting a confident open verdict.
Brent and WTI prices: intraday continuous futures via Yahoo Finance chart data, with EIA daily closes as backstop. Headline daily transit counts: IMF PortWatch (chokepoint6). Live vessel presence: AISStream's free WebSocket AIS feed, filtered to a Persian Gulf bounding box. War events: Google News, gCaptain, USNI, GDELT, and Iranian state media (clearly labelled), plus an editorial curated set. Carrier postures: each carrier's public customer advisories. Pipeline-bypass capacity: EIA infrastructure data. Every figure on every page links to its primary source; see /methodology for the per-indicator breakdown.
Oil prices refresh every ten minutes and AIS transit counts every five. War events refresh every fifteen minutes. The front page is server-rendered with a 60-second cache and Cloudflare's edge cache on top, so a hard refresh gets you the most recent indicator values within about a minute of ingestion. The data-health chip on each section shows when it was last verified.
Background context: what closure actually means in volume, prices, and supply chains.
Roughly one-fifth of seaborne oil and a quarter of seaborne LNG transits the Strait of Hormuz under normal conditions: about 17 million barrels of crude and condensate per day, plus another 4 million in refined product. The figure varies seasonally and with OPEC+ production quotas. EIA's World Oil Transit Chokepoints reference is the canonical published source.
Japan (~88% of crude imports via Hormuz), South Korea (~72%), India (~62%), and China (~46%, but the largest absolute volume) are the most exposed major importers. These crude-import shares are drawn from EIA and IEA country data and move with sourcing. The European Union is materially exposed only on the LNG side via Qatar. The United States is largely insulated on the oil side because of domestic shale, but exposed indirectly through global price effects and allied vulnerability. Each country has its own page under /regions with full dependency, supplier, and reserve detail.
Two effects, on different timescales. Crude moves first (Brent typically spikes 15–40% on credible closure threats and more on confirmed disruption), and that flows into wholesale gasoline within roughly two to four weeks at most US refineries. The second-order effect is freight: redirecting cargoes around the Cape of Good Hope adds about fourteen days a leg, tightening tanker supply and raising bunker fuel cost, which is itself an input to global shipping prices.
Three pipelines provide partial bypass. Saudi Arabia's Petroline (East-West Pipeline) carries up to 5 million barrels per day to Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE's ADCOP carries up to 1.5 million bpd to Fujairah on the Indian Ocean. Iran's Goreh-Jask runs at a fraction of its 0.35 mbpd nameplate. Combined nameplate bypass is about 7 mbpd against normal Hormuz flow of 17 mbpd; the strait remains structurally critical.
Embedding, citing, and getting hold of the team.
Because the existing live coverage of the Strait of Hormuz beat sits behind trade-publication paywalls or lags by days in government feeds. Neither serves a journalist on deadline, an analyst pricing risk, or a reader trying to follow a fast-moving situation. Straits fills the gap with a free, live, fully-sourced tracker: no paywall, no signup, no advertising, no commercial influence on editorial. See /about for the stance and /methodology for the per-indicator sourcing.
Yes. Everything on the site is free to read, and the summary API, CSV exports, RSS feed, and embed badge are free to use, free to query, and free to publish. The embed badge is a copy-paste iframe at /embed (responsive, no cookies, no tracking). The JSON API at /status returns every live indicator in one bundle with CORS open. CSV exports (daily transits, Hormuz Index history, oil prices, events) are catalogued at /data. An RSS feed of indexed events is at /feed.xml. The per-indicator summary endpoints live at /api. The only ask is a credit link if you embed or quote the figures. Separately, there is an optional machine-payable premium tier for AI agents and pipelines (per-request USDC over the x402 protocol, documented at /api under Premium); it adds the depth the summary withholds, such as full history, the per-vessel manifest, and sanctioned-vessel identities. See /press for citation guidance and lift-ready ledes.
Yes. Straits has no ads, no venture funding, and no paywall on its reporting, so reader tips are one way to keep it independent. You can send a one-time tip at /tip, either by card (Stripe Checkout) or in XRP. There is no account to create and nothing is unlocked in return. XRP tips go to the published address on the XRP Ledger mainnet; no destination tag is needed.