Reuters, citing data from maritime tracking company Kpler, reported that commercial ship traffic through the international Strait of Hormuz waterway dropped sharply over the weekend and has effectively come to the brink of a standstill following recent attacks on oil tankers.
According to the data, only five cargo-carrying vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, and no crossings were recorded on Sunday, compared with 31 vessels during the previous weekend.
Among the vessels that crossed on Saturday were an empty very large crude carrier with its Automatic Identification System switched off and a very large gas carrier flying the Indian flag that was traveling via Iran’s route. A small tanker carrying Iranian regime fuel oil also exited the strait.
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The sharp decline came after the United Arab Emirates announced that three vessels operated by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) had been attacked while transiting the strait during the past week. The United States has also said it has the capability to continue its naval blockade of the Iranian regime indefinitely.
Kpler warned that some vessels may have crossed the strait with their transmitters switched off, but even taking that into account, current traffic remains far below the more than 130 ships per day seen before the war. Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz carried about one-fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian regime’s foreign minister, has also said that the resumption of shipping through this waterway depends on Washington accepting Tehran’s conditions. At the same time, traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the strategic waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, has also declined, with Kpler recording 49 crossings over the weekend. During that period, no Saudi Arabian oil cargoes appeared in the tracking data.
