Question 1

Is the Strait of Hormuz open right now?

Accepted Answer

War-risk insurance has priced commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz beyond the reach of most operators. IMF PortWatch reports 4 commercial vessels transited the strait on the most recent reporting day (2026-10-04). Pre-crisis peacetime was about 85 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.

Question 2

What is the current oil price?

Accepted Answer

Brent is currently around $104.67 per barrel. The figure on this page updates every ten minutes from the front-month Brent and WTI futures contracts (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.

Question 3

Is it safe to ship through the Strait of Hormuz?

Accepted Answer

Two ways to read "safe." War-risk insurance is currently pricing the strait at around 30× the normal multiple; at 4× or above, the trade press treats it as "effectively priced out" regardless of physical conditions. 4 of 9 top container carriers say they have stopped using the strait; 1 of those has an advisory from the last 60 days, which is the count our verdict counts. When both signals run high, the strait is effectively closed even if individual vessels still transit.

Question 4

How can I get notified when the status changes?

Accepted Answer

Subscribe on the front page and pick what you want. The flip alert is on by default: one email when the operational verdict changes (closed / restricted / open). If you tick them, you'll also get a weekly digest each Monday, an alert when Crisis Pressure enters High, or the quarterly snapshot. Nothing else is sent: no marketing, no ad networks. Indexed events are also available as RSS at /feed.xml, and status updates are posted to Bluesky as they happen. X posting is paused for now.

Question 5

How does Straits decide whether the strait is open or closed?

Accepted Answer

The verdict combines four signals in priority order. (1) Carrier postures: if five or more of the top nine lines have stopped using the strait according to their own advisories, we call it closed. Rerouting Asia-Europe services via the Cape of Good Hope does not count, because that is a Red Sea decision and says nothing about Hormuz; nor does an advisory that is silent on the strait. A posture counts only while the carrier's own advisory is 60 days old or less, dated by the advisory rather than by when we last re-read it, because a stale advisory shouldn't decide anything. (2) War-risk insurance multiple: at 4× or above, we treat the strait as effectively closed even if vessels are still transiting. (3) Transits from IMF PortWatch (chokepoint6 dataset, attributed), averaged over the latest seven reporting days so one quiet or busy day can't swing it: at or below 10% of the pre-2026-02-28 peacetime median is closed, below 40% 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.

Question 6

Where does the data come from?

Accepted Answer

Brent and WTI prices: the front-month futures contracts via Yahoo Finance chart data, with EIA daily closes as backstop. Headline daily transit counts: IMF PortWatch (chokepoint6). Live vessel presence: live AIS position feeds, filtered to a Persian Gulf bounding box. War events: Google News, gCaptain, USNI and Iranian state media (clearly labelled), plus an editorial curated set, with GDELT as a supplement when it answers. Carrier postures: each carrier's public customer advisories. Pipeline-bypass capacity: EIA; how full each line runs is our own estimate from news reports. Every figure names its source or says why it doesn't; see /methodology for the per-indicator breakdown.

Question 7

How quickly does the page update?

Accepted Answer

Oil prices refresh every ten minutes and the live AIS count every fifteen; the vessel aggregates computed from it run every thirty. War events refresh every fifteen minutes. The front page is server-rendered with a five-minute cache and Cloudflare's edge cache on top, so a hard refresh gets you the most recent indicator values within a few minutes of ingestion. The data-health chip on each section shows when it was last verified.

Question 8

How much of the world's oil flows through the strait?

Accepted Answer

Roughly a quarter of seaborne oil and a fifth of seaborne LNG transits the Strait of Hormuz under normal conditions: about 14.7 million barrels of crude and condensate per day, plus roughly 6.1 million in refined product, for about 20.9 million barrels of total liquids (EIA, first half of 2025). The figure varies seasonally and with OPEC+ production quotas. EIA's World Oil Transit Chokepoints reference is the canonical published source.

Question 9

Which countries are most exposed to a closure?

Accepted Answer

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 buys less from the Gulf: about 14% of its crude imports and about 9% of its LNG come through the strait. 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.

Question 10

What happens to gas prices if the strait closes?

Accepted Answer

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 retail (pump) gasoline prices within roughly four weeks, by which point most of the eventual rise has arrived. 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.

Question 11

Are there alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz?

Accepted Answer

Three pipelines provide partial bypass. Saudi Arabia's Petroline (East-West Pipeline) carries up to 7 million barrels a 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 has a 0.35 mbpd nameplate. Combined nameplate bypass is about 8.85 mbpd against normal Hormuz crude and condensate flow of 14.7 mbpd. The strait remains structurally critical.

Question 12

Why does Straits exist?

Accepted Answer

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 ad networks, no commercial influence on editorial. See /about for the stance and /methodology for the per-indicator sourcing.

Question 13

Can I embed Straits or use the data?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 14

Can I support or tip Straits?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Straits has no ad networks, 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.

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