US President Donald Trump has posted a map showing the Strait of Hormuz as a new American territory, claiming sovereignty over the critical chokepoint under Iran’s control since the start of the war. The American leader has also claimed that all water mines — planted by Iran in the waterway — have been removed, reducing maritime risks.
The data from the United States, which is keeping an eye on all ships passing through the strait, has reported significantly higher oil shipping numbers than most traditional estimates had previously suggested, according to the CNN report. But then the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran expired this week, which opened a window for Tehran to collect tolls from ships passing the strait as it did in the spring. Moreover, oil-producing Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates have chartered the biggest oil tankers to transit out of the Persian Gulf via Hormuz.
Data from maritime vessel-tracking platform MarineTraffic show that at least 95 vessels passed Hormuz last week and 118 in the week before. The majority (around 80 per cent) of these vessels transiting Hormuz over the past two weeks used the Omani route, which is a shipping channel authorised by the United Nations that Iran vehemently opposes, according to Kpler, which tracks shipping worldwide. Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that combined oil transits through the strait and rerouted around the waterway totalled around 15 million barrels per day over the course of a week, a lot closer to the 20-million-barrel average from before the war.
The new traffic data from Hormuz stands in stark contrast to that from a month ago, when, according to Kpler, there was virtually no shipping traffic via the Omani route. These Very Large Crude Oil Carriers (VLCCs) then transfer the Gulf oil to customers’ tankers outside the danger zone in the Gulf of Oman, according to Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.
