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Strait of Hormuz Monitor2026-09-15

Strait of Hormuz Monitor — 13 Sep 2026

Brent now implies the Strait of Hormuz is 43% open vs ~8% observed transit volume.

Thesis. HOLD — Phase 2 (Fragile), velocity MIXED. This edition withdraws the gas near-zero, which this file has run as its single most load-bearing fact for two months. We have said that no LNG carrier has transited since 11 July, and that gas — unlike crude — has no ship-to-ship workaround and therefore no way around the Strait at all. Both halves are wrong. The Qatari carrier Al Maruna, loaded in early August, was in the Gulf of Oman on the morning of 8 September bound for Port Qasim and arriving 10 September; it cleared the Strait around 7-8 September. Several Qatari carriers WITHOUT cargo have been observed returning to the Gulf — repositioning to load. And three LNG cargoes moved by ship-to-ship transfer in August: Al Rekayyat to Tembek off the UAE, GasLog Shanghai to GasLog Savannah off Oman, Mraweh to LNG Enugu off Oman, at over $1m and 30-35 hours apiece. The workaround is expensive and slow. It is not absent. The uncomfortable part is the timing: our 13 September edition named 'an LNG carrier transits' as an explicit condition for tipping BACK to Phase 3 — and that condition had already fired five days before we wrote it. We record it, and we re-specify the test below, because one hull was always too thin a trigger for a phase change and we should not have written it that way. WHAT SURVIVES IS BETTER THAN WHAT WE LOST. The gas shock is not one shock, it is two, and they have opposite half-lives. The SHIPPING premium — war-risk cover, escort scheduling, STS cost — is removable: it decays on a diplomatic outcome, and it is already decaying at the margin. The CAPACITY loss is not. Two of Qatar's fourteen liquefaction trains are damaged — 17% of capacity, 12.8 mtpa — and QatarEnergy guides THREE TO FIVE YEARS to repair. No ceasefire rebuilds a train. That distinction is the finding, and it converts a measurable slice of this energy shock from a PREMIUM into a LEVEL — which is precisely the conversion our own framework said to watch for, now evidenced rather than feared. AGAINST the de-escalation, and not netted away: a vessel was struck by a projectile near Limah, Oman on 12 September, catching fire with the crew evacuated. Ships are still being hit. Flow improves only modestly — commodity crossings ~11-12 a day against a ~130/day pre-war norm, up from a ~10/day average that was the lowest since May — and charter rates remain above $500,000/day, which is what it costs to move anything through at all. Throughput HOLDS at 8.6 mb/d, still failing our >12 gate at ~43% openness. Eighteen Qatari cargoes shipped in six months of war against 509 in the same period a year earlier is a resumption in the sense that the number is no longer zero, and in no commercial sense whatever. Velocity moves to MIXED — deteriorating on violence, improving on flow and gas — and the badge HOLDS.

READ — What changed * what it means

  • THE CORRECTION — gas is moving, and it can be STS-transferred — Both of this file's standing gas claims are withdrawn. The Al Maruna cleared the Strait around 7-8 September, loaded in Qatar in early August, and reached Port Qasim on 10 September. Empty Qatari carriers are repositioning into the Gulf. And three August STS transfers are documented by vessel name. We built a near-zero on the proposition that gas had no workaround; the proposition was false, and it was false while we were publishing it. The failure was not the data — it was that we never re-tested a claim once it had become load-bearing, which is the exact discipline this file applies to everyone else.
  • OUR OWN TIP CONDITION HAD ALREADY FIRED WHEN WE WROTE IT — The 13 September edition listed 'an LNG carrier transits' as a condition for tipping back to Phase 3. The Al Maruna had transited five days earlier. Had we been tracking our own trigger properly we would have been forced to confront it immediately. RE-SPECIFIED, and deliberately harder: a tip toward Phase 3 now requires sustained gas flow — four or more laden Qatari LNG cargoes clearing the Strait inside a rolling fortnight — together with crude throughput above 12 mb/d and war-risk cover falling from ~40x. One hull is an event. A schedule is a regime change.
  • THE SPLIT THAT MATTERS — removable premium vs non-removable capacity — 17% of Qatari liquefaction is offline: two of fourteen trains, 12.8 mtpa, with a stated three-to-five-year repair. Roughly 36 mt of Qatari and Emirati supply is absent from the market year-to-date against 2025, of which only about 20 mt was offset by US and Canadian volumes. Asian spot prices are up roughly 150% year-to-date and European roughly 100%. Read the two components separately: a ceasefire collapses the shipping premium and does nothing at all to the trains. Anyone modelling this as a single removable war premium is mispricing the back end of the curve.
  • THE VIOLENCE HAS NOT STOPPED — A vessel was struck by a projectile near Limah, Oman on 12 September, caught fire and was evacuated. Against that, and dated earlier, the convoy-escort regime we corrected to on 13 September continues to be the operative model: access rationed by escort scheduling, priced through war-risk, punctuated by batched movement against a long queue. Both things are true at once, which is why velocity is MIXED rather than improving.
  • OPACITY — re-based, and the caveat promoted into the note — Dark share RE-BASED 62.7 -> 57.0% on the conflict-period all-traffic basis, with the peak at 65.2% in May. Our 62.7 came off a narrower August window we can no longer source, and we move rather than hold a number we cannot stand behind. The 13 September screened spike (34.3%) is NOT carried forward — it was a different denominator and has not repeated. THE CAVEAT NOW BELONGS IN THE TEXT, not a footnote: with 57-65% of transits dark, real-time supply tracking is structurally compromised, and every throughput figure in this file — ours included — is an estimate over a majority-unobserved population.

OFFICIAL RECORD * SoH — Statements * decisions - as regards the Strait

  • 7-8 Sep — Al Maruna clears the Strait; empties reposition into the Gulf — A laden Qatari LNG carrier transited for the first time since the July suspension that followed an attack on one of its carriers. Loaded early August, in the Gulf of Oman on the morning of 8 September, Port Qasim on the 10th. Several Qatari carriers without cargo have been seen returning to the Persian Gulf, which is the observable precondition for loading resuming. Qatar and Iran discussed a proposed temporary shipping corridor through Hormuz in late-August talks.
  • August — three LNG cargoes moved by ship-to-ship transfer — Al Rekayyat (itself struck by a projectile in July) transferred to Tembek off the UAE coast; GasLog Shanghai to GasLog Savannah off Oman; Mraweh to LNG Enugu off Oman. Over $1m and 30-35 hours per operation. This is the evidence that falsifies our 'no workaround' claim, and it was available before we last published it.
  • 12 Sep — vessel struck by projectile near Limah, Oman — Fire aboard, crew evacuated, southbound. Reported through maritime-authority channels. The escorted-convoy regime reduces exposure; it does not eliminate it.
  • Capacity — two of fourteen Qatari trains down, 3-5 years to repair — 17% of Qatari LNG capacity, 12.8 mtpa, removed from the market by strike damage. QatarEnergy's own guidance is three to five years. Separately, Qatari executives state that Qatari LNG will not return to normal even when Hormuz reopens — which is the same point this file now makes about premium versus level, made by the producer.

WHERE WE'VE COME FROM — Trajectory

  • 8 Sep — throughput re-rated 14.0 -> 8.6 mb/d — The correction that re-based this file's central quantity.
  • 10-11 Sep — VLCC-exit trigger armed, then re-specified — Armed on a stalled VLCC exit; re-specified once ship-to-ship shuttle transfer was identified as the explanation, and the near-zero relocated to gas. The re-specification was right; the gas near-zero it moved to was not.
  • 13 Sep — 'interdiction, not escort' withdrawn — CENTCOM escorted ~40 vessels and ~18m barrels on 1 September under fire. Flow is convoy-batched. Escorted third-party transit is evidence against closure.
  • 15 Sep — the gas near-zero withdrawn; premium/level split established — Four consecutive editions have each corrected the one before. That is the file working as intended rather than failing — but the cadence says something about how fast the corridor is changing, and about how readily a load-bearing fact goes unre-tested.

WHERE IT'S HEADED — Direction * accelerants * reversers

  • Accelerants toward Phase 1 — The escort regime itself stopping; a third-party hull sunk in-channel; a strike on the Kharg terminal; total crude clearance to near-zero. None of these is currently observed.
  • Reversers toward Phase 3 — RE-SPECIFIED — Four or more laden Qatari LNG cargoes clearing inside a rolling fortnight, AND crude throughput above 12 mb/d, AND war-risk cover falling from ~40x. The temporary-corridor talks between Qatar and Iran are the diplomatic route to that; the empty carriers repositioning are the physical tell to watch first.
  • What does NOT reverse — 12.8 mtpa of damaged liquefaction, on a three-to-five-year clock. Model it as a level.

SCENARIOS — Base * Bear * Bull

  • BASE (~60%) — convoy-rationed flow, gas restarting slowly, capacity impaired — Crossings grind 11-15/day, LNG cargoes resume at a trickle against a 96% six-month shortfall, war-risk stays elevated, and the trains stay down. Brent holds a three-figure handle on the shipping premium alone.
  • BEAR (~25%) — escort regime breaks down — A successful attack on an escorted convoy, or a US withdrawal of escort, and the corridor tips toward Phase 1. The 12 September strike is the reminder that this is live.
  • BULL (~15%) — the corridor deal lands — The Qatar-Iran temporary corridor formalises, LNG schedules resume, war-risk decays and throughput clears 12 mb/d. Note what this does NOT fix: Asian and European gas prices stay structurally higher because 12.8 mtpa is still offline.

Bottom line. HOLD — Phase 2 (Fragile), velocity MIXED, and the edition is a withdrawal. The gas near-zero this file has run on for two months is gone: an LNG carrier transited around 7-8 September, three August STS transfers are documented, and our own Phase-3 tip condition had fired before we published it. We re-specify that test harder — four laden cargoes in a fortnight AND >12 mb/d AND war-risk off 40x — because one hull was never a regime. What replaces the near-zero is stronger: the gas shock is two shocks with opposite half-lives. The shipping premium is removable and already decaying at the margin. The 12.8 mtpa of damaged liquefaction is not removable on any horizon that matters to a position — three to five years by the producer's own guidance — and it should be modelled as a LEVEL, not a premium. Against the improvement: a vessel was hit near Limah on 12 September, throughput is still 8.6 mb/d at ~43% openness, charter rates are still above $500,000/day, and with 57-65% of transits dark we are estimating over a population we mostly cannot see. The badge holds because escorted third-party traffic is still moving through the waterway; the velocity is MIXED because the flow is improving and the shooting has not stopped.

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