Is the Strait of Hormuz Open? Four AIS-Visible Commodity Vessels Cross as Gulf Risk Tightens

Is the Strait of Hormuz open? The most accurate answer on 4 September 2026 is: physically, yes — commercially, only selectively.

Ships are still crossing the waterway, so the strait is not sealed in the literal sense. But visible traffic remains a fraction of normal levels, security incidents continue, Iran has expanded a vessel blacklist, war-risk decisions are being made voyage by voyage, and some ships are operating in an environment of AIS gaps, GNSS interference and rapidly changing military restrictions.

On Thursday, only four AIS-visible commodity vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz, according to Kpler data reported by Reuters: two medium-range tankers, one Kamsarmax and one Handysize vessel. The 10-day average was 15. Before the conflict, roughly 125 commercial vessels per day used the strait.

That is why asking whether the Strait of Hormuz is open now requires more than a yes-or-no answer. The navigational channel may be passable, yet a voyage can still fail commercially because of security risk, insurance terms, vessel identity, sanctions exposure, owner approval or cargo economics.

Is the Strait of Hormuz Open Right Now?

Yes, vessels are still transiting the Strait of Hormuz. No, the route is not operating under normal commercial conditions.

That distinction is the starting point for understanding the market.

A waterway can remain physically navigable while becoming commercially constrained. The ship may be able to sail through the Traffic Separation Scheme, yet the fixture still requires several independent approvals and conditions to line up:

• the owner must accept the security exposure;
• the insurer must accept the voyage and applicable terms;
• the vessel must remain clear of sanctions and unacceptable counterparty risk;
• the cargo and payment chain must be workable;
• the crew and managers must be able to perform the voyage safely;
• the ship must not face restrictions that make detention, diversion or attack commercially unacceptable.

In that sense, the better question is not simply “Is the Strait of Hormuz open?”

It is:

How many ships can still pass Hormuz with an acceptable combination of security, insurance, compliance and commercial risk?

That number is much smaller than the number of vessels physically capable of using the route.

Hormuz Shipping Traffic Falls to Four Visible Commodity Vessels

The latest traffic data underline how abnormal conditions remain.

Reuters reported on 4 September that four AIS-visible commodity vessels crossed the strait on Thursday:

• 2 medium-range tankers
• 1 Kamsarmax bulk carrier
• 1 Handysize vessel

The 10-day average stood at approximately 15 vessels.

Before the war, Reuters said around 125 commercial vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz each day.

The comparison should not be read as a perfect apples-to-apples vessel count because Reuters’ current Kpler figures focus on visible commodity traffic and exclude vessels with AIS switched off. But the direction is unmistakable: commercial movement is far below the old operating pattern.

Tide Signal has been following the deterioration through the existing crisis timeline in Strait of Hormuz Nears Standstill as US Prepares New Iran Sanctions. This page takes a different role: it is the live search-intent guide to whether Hormuz is open and what “open” means operationally.

Which Ships Are Still Passing Through Hormuz?

The latest data show that traffic is not limited to one vessel class.

Thursday’s visible group included product tankers and dry-bulk carriers. Earlier in the week, Kpler data reported by Reuters showed a VLCC, a Panamax tanker, a Kamsarmax and an intermediate tanker among Tuesday’s four visible commodity transits.

On Monday, visible traffic was around five vessels, including dry-bulk tonnage and a handy-sized gas carrier, while no liquid tankers were recorded in that day’s preliminary count.

The useful conclusion is not that a particular ship type has a guaranteed pathway.

It is that selective commercial passage continues across several segments, but the pool of vessels prepared and able to transit is much smaller than under normal conditions.

That pool can change daily.

A tanker may have exceptionally attractive cargo economics. A bulk carrier may face a different threat profile. A ship already positioned inside the Gulf may have fewer alternatives than a vessel deciding whether to enter. A state-linked ship may face a different political risk from an independent operator. A vessel’s ownership history, flag, trading record and counterparties can all affect the practical decision.

Why an “Open” Strait Can Still Function Like a Closed Market

Shipping does not need a formal legal closure to lose capacity.

Imagine 100 technically suitable vessels. If 60 owners refuse the area, another 15 face insurer restrictions, 10 are commercially unacceptable to the charterer and five cannot clear sanctions or payment checks, the relevant market does not have 100 ships.

It has 10.

That is the concept of effective tonnage supply.

Hormuz is currently an extreme example. The physical channel can remain open for some movements while the commercially usable fleet contracts sharply.

This is also why freight can rise without an increase in cargo demand. Charterers are not bidding for every vessel in the global fleet. They are bidding for the much smaller group that is:

• in the right position;
• acceptable for the cargo;
• insured for the voyage;
• clear from relevant sanctions concerns;
• approved by the owner;
• and operationally prepared to enter the area.

Tide Signal’s analysis of the reported $25 million VLCC voyage for Iraqi crude showed how valuable that final category can become when risk removes much of the effective fleet.

Iran’s Hormuz Blacklist Has Expanded to 56 Vessels

The security problem now overlaps with a vessel-identity problem.

On 2 September, Reuters reported that Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority had added another 11 ships to its restricted list, taking the total to 56 vessels.

The list includes multiple ship types, including VLCCs, LNG carriers, LPG carriers and clean-product tankers.

Iran has said listed vessels could face fines, confiscation or detention if they attempt to use the strait. It has also warned that ships cooperating with listed vessels through ship-to-ship transfers or transshipment could themselves be added.

Reuters reported that some previously named ships were linked to ADNOC Logistics & Services, Navig8 Tankers and Saudi carrier Bahri. Some refiners and a major energy company had already planned to avoid previously listed ships because of the security implications.

There is a second compliance layer: the United States sanctioned the Iranian body administering the restrictions earlier in the year. That can make any engagement involving fees or transactions with the authority a separate sanctions question.

This produces an unusually difficult operating environment. A vessel can face risk from both the physical security situation and the legal/compliance structure surrounding how passage is administered.

Recent Attacks Show Why Owners Remain Cautious

The low traffic is not occurring in a theoretical threat environment.

UK Maritime Trade Operations has continued to report security incidents in and around the strait.

UKMTO’s public incident feed records a 31 August incident in which a tanker reported being struck by three unknown projectiles while completing an outbound Hormuz transit. It also lists a time-late verified report published on 2 September involving a tanker security incident that resulted in two casualties.

Separately, the active U.S. Maritime Administration advisory says risks of Iranian attacks against commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman remain high.

MARAD’s advisory identifies threats including missiles, armed unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned surface vessels, alongside more traditional boarding and diversion risks.

It also reports significant GNSS interference, spoofing and jamming in the region.

For a bridge team, that changes the operating picture substantially. The security assessment is no longer simply about staying inside a traffic lane and maintaining a conventional anti-piracy watch.

Navigation integrity, military communications, threat identification, bridge readiness and emergency response all become part of the voyage.

The AIS Problem: Four Visible Vessels Does Not Mean Only Four Ships

This is one of the easiest places to misread the data.

Reuters explicitly notes that the Kpler counts do not include vessels operating with AIS transponders switched off.

That means a headline such as “only four ships passed Hormuz” would be too broad.

The defensible statement is:

four AIS-visible commodity vessels were recorded in the latest Thursday data.

There are several reasons the complete operating picture is difficult to reconstruct from public vessel tracking:

• AIS transmission may be absent or intermittent.
• Satellite reception and processing can introduce delays.
• GNSS interference can degrade position reliability.
• Spoofing can create false or misleading positional information.
• Not every vessel category is included in every commodity-focused dataset.

This is especially important now because Lloyd’s List has been highlighting scrutiny of spoofed Gulf voyages and false-flag behaviour among sanctions-sensitive tankers.

For operators, public AIS should therefore be treated as market intelligence, not as a substitute for company security assessments, flag guidance, insurer instructions or official maritime reporting channels.

Is Marine War-Risk Insurance Still Available for Hormuz?

Yes — but availability does not mean normal pricing or automatic approval.

The Lloyd’s Market Association has previously pushed back against the idea that low Hormuz traffic can be explained simply by insurance disappearing.

The LMA said marine war cover remained available and described notice mechanisms that allow underwriters to renegotiate terms as the risk environment changes.

The International Union of Marine Insurance has similarly said significant cargo, hull, liability and offshore-energy capacity remained available in the region where legally permissible, even as terms and pricing changed.

The practical distinction is crucial:

A voyage can be insurable and still be commercially unacceptable to the owner.

The insurer may quote a premium. The owner may still reject the voyage because of crew exposure, attack probability, sanctions risk, detention risk, damage potential or disruption to the ship’s following employment.

For the full commercial mechanics, see Tide Signal’s War Risk Premiums: The Hidden Cost Behind High-Risk Voyages.

How Hormuz Risk Moves Into Freight

The connection between security and freight can be written as a simple chain:

Threat ↑ → insurance friction ↑ → owner willingness ↓ → effective tonnage ↓ → freight pressure ↑

The insurer does not set the freight rate directly.

But insurance and security conditions affect which ships are commercially available. Once that pool becomes scarce, the chartering market does the rest.

This is why an unusually high freight bill can still make economic sense to a charterer.

The charterer may be buying discounted crude, protecting refinery throughput or replacing a cargo that is even more expensive elsewhere. The owner is pricing a different set of risks: the ship, crew, time, insurance, future employment and the probability that conditions deteriorate during the voyage.

Tide Signal’s $25 Million VLCC analysis is a useful example. The fixture was not simply pricing distance. It was pricing access to a market in which suitable, approved and willing tonnage had become scarce.

For readers assessing the voyage side, Tide Signal’s Voyage Margin Calculator can be used to test how higher freight and additional voyage costs change break-even economics.

Why the Strait of Hormuz Still Matters to Global Oil

The traffic collapse is commercially significant because the strait was one of the world’s largest energy arteries before the conflict.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that crude oil and petroleum liquids moving through Hormuz averaged only 4.9 million barrels per day in Q2 2026, compared with 21.6 million b/d in Q4 2025 before the conflict.

That is a reduction of roughly 77% between those two reference periods.

Alternative routes exist, but they do not fully reproduce the flexibility and capacity of the strait.

Saudi Arabia can shift some flows through its East-West pipeline toward the Red Sea. Other cargoes can use alternative pipeline and routing structures. But the EIA notes that replacement routes can be slower, more expensive and capacity-constrained.

The market impact therefore extends beyond the ships that physically cross the strait.

Lower Gulf export capability affects production, inventories, refinery sourcing, tanker positioning and global crude differentials.

LNG Is Adapting With Ship-to-Ship Transfers Outside Hormuz

The disruption is also changing the physical structure of gas trade.

Reuters reported on 2 September that three LNG cargoes loaded in Qatar and the UAE had recently been transferred ship-to-ship outside the Strait of Hormuz for delivery to India and Japan.

That is an important adaptation.

Instead of requiring every receiving ship to take the full exposure of entering the Gulf, a cargo can be moved across the high-risk segment and transferred outside the strait to another vessel.

This does not remove risk. It changes where the risk sits and which ship carries it.

It also introduces additional operational complexity, transfer cost, weather dependency and coordination requirements.

The broader lesson is that shipping networks rarely respond to a chokepoint crisis with a single solution. They fragment the exposure: alternative pipelines, shuttle voyages, STS transfers, different vessel pools, changing cargo origins and higher inventories all become part of the adaptation.

Why Iran’s Blacklist Could Reduce Effective Capacity Further

The blacklist adds another filter to vessel availability.

A ship does not need to be attacked to lose commercial value for a particular trade.

If a charterer believes using the vessel creates a material detention or confiscation risk, the ship may simply become unacceptable for a Hormuz-linked cargo.

The consequences can then spread beyond the listed vessel itself if counterparties become cautious about:

• previous ship-to-ship partners;
• ownership and management links;
• historic trading patterns;
• flag or registry questions;
• banks and payment channels;
• cargo documentation;
• sanctions screening.

This is where maritime security and compliance merge.

A chartering desk may have to answer not only “Can the ship transit?” but “Will the ship still be acceptable to every party after it transits?”

Could Hormuz Be “Open” and Still Keep Oil Above $90?

Yes.

Markets price reliability, not merely physical possibility.

Brent has remained elevated during the latest escalation, while Reuters reported on 4 September that oil was heading for a strong weekly gain as renewed U.S.-Iran fighting revived supply concerns.

A handful of successful vessel movements cannot restore pre-war confidence on their own.

For risk pricing to normalise, the market would need more than an isolated increase in daily transits. Owners and insurers would look for a sustained sequence of safer passages, fewer attacks, clearer rules, reduced blacklist exposure and confidence that cargo flows can be maintained without abrupt interruption.

That is why a route can become physically more active before war-risk premiums, freight and crude prices fully normalise.

What Would a Real Reopening of Hormuz Look Like?

Tide Signal would treat a genuine commercial reopening as a combination of several signals rather than one announcement.

Until several of those indicators improve together, calling the Strait of Hormuz “open” without qualification gives an incomplete picture.

What Owners, Charterers and Market Desks Should Watch Next

The next move will probably be visible in operational data before it appears in a diplomatic headline.

• Daily Kpler/Vortexa vessel counts: does visible traffic move consistently above the recent 10-day average?
• UKMTO incidents: are tankers and merchant vessels still being struck, hailed, diverted or otherwise threatened?
• Iranian blacklist updates: does the 56-vessel list expand further?
• War-risk terms: do premiums and notice conditions begin to ease?
• VLCC and product-tanker availability: does more owner-approved tonnage return?
• LNG movements: do STS structures outside the strait become a persistent operating model?
• Iranian crude exports: does the blockade continue suppressing loadings?
• Military policy: do additional states contribute to freedom-of-navigation or mine-countermeasure operations?
• Oil prices: does Brent remain elevated even if traffic ticks higher?

South Korea said on 4 September that it was reviewing practical options to support freedom of navigation in Hormuz, another sign that access to the strait is no longer only a regional shipping question.

Tide Signal Analysis: Hormuz Is Open to Ships, Not to Business as Usual

The Strait of Hormuz is not closed in the simplest physical sense.

Ships are crossing it.

But commercial shipping does not operate on physical possibility alone.

A working trade route requires predictable security, acceptable insurance, usable tonnage, clear rules, functioning payments, cargo availability and enough confidence for owners to commit expensive assets and crews.

Hormuz currently provides only part of that package.

That is why the latest figure — four AIS-visible commodity vessels in a day — is more revealing than a declaration that the strait is either “open” or “closed”.

The route has become selective.

The market is filtering vessels by risk, ownership, insurance, sanctions exposure and commercial necessity.

Some ships pass.

Some owners refuse.

Some cargoes move through alternative structures.

Some vessels disappear from the visible AIS picture.

And every successful transit takes place inside a market where the price of access has become part of the freight equation.

Hormuz is open to traffic. It is not open to business as usual.

That is the status Tide Signal will track on this page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Strait of Hormuz open today?

Yes, some vessels are still transiting the Strait of Hormuz. However, traffic is severely reduced and current conditions should not be described as normal commercial operation.

How many ships are passing through the Strait of Hormuz?

Reuters reported that four AIS-visible commodity vessels crossed on Thursday, compared with a 10-day average of 15. The count excludes vessels operating without AIS transmission and should not be interpreted as the complete number of all ships in the waterway.

What types of ships are still crossing Hormuz?

Recent visible traffic has included MR tankers, a VLCC, Panamax and intermediate tankers, Kamsarmax and Handysize bulk carriers, and gas tonnage. The mix changes from day to day.

Is the Strait of Hormuz completely closed by Iran?

No. Physical vessel transits continue. Iran has imposed restrictions and expanded a blacklist of vessels it considers non-compliant, while the wider conflict and U.S. blockade measures have sharply reduced normal traffic.

Is war-risk insurance available for Hormuz?

Marine insurance bodies have said cover remains available for qualifying and legally permissible voyages, but pricing, notice provisions and underwriting decisions can change quickly with the security situation.

Why are ships turning off AIS near Hormuz?

Public data show that some transits are not visible through ordinary AIS tracking. Tide Signal does not infer a single motive from an AIS gap. In the current environment, security, interference, equipment issues and sanctions-sensitive behaviour can all complicate the public tracking picture.

Why is Hormuz so important for oil?

The EIA estimates that crude oil and petroleum liquids through Hormuz averaged 21.6 million barrels per day in Q4 2025 before the conflict, compared with 4.9 million b/d in Q2 2026.

When will the Strait of Hormuz return to normal?

There is no confirmed date. A real commercial normalisation would require a sustained recovery in vessel traffic alongside lower security risk, more stable insurance conditions, improved owner confidence and recovery in Gulf export flows.

Related Tide Signal Coverage

• Strait of Hormuz Nears Standstill as US Prepares New Iran Sanctions — the breaking-news timeline behind the current disruption.
• War Risk Premiums: The Hidden Cost Behind High-Risk Voyages — how security exposure moves into insurance, charterparty terms and freight.
• The $25 Million VLCC Voyage — how scarce Hormuz-capable tanker capacity can reprice a crude voyage.
• Types of Charter Parties in Shipping — the contractual structures that determine where voyage cost and operational risk sit.
• Voyage Margin Calculator — model the effect of changing freight and voyage costs on break-even economics.

Primary Sources and Operational References

• Reuters — Hormuz shipping traffic, 4 September 2026
• Reuters — Iran expands Hormuz vessel blacklist to 56 ships
• U.S. Energy Information Administration — Hormuz oil-flow estimates
• UK Maritime Trade Operations — Current incidents and advisories
• U.S. MARAD — Active maritime security advisory for Hormuz and Gulf waters
• Lloyd’s Market Association — War-risk insurance and Hormuz traffic
• IUMI — Marine insurance capacity in the Middle East

Last updated: 4 September 2026. This is a living Tide Signal page. Traffic counts can change as delayed AIS data is processed, and visible vessel-tracking data does not capture all movements. This article will be updated as shipping traffic, security conditions, insurance terms or access restrictions materially change.