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A total of 17 commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, down from 37 recorded a week earlier, shipping data showed on Monday, September 21, as tensions in the Gulf persist with the United States and Iran in a stalemate.
Visible traffic through the strait, the passageway for a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas before the war, has been reduced to a trickle. However, Middle Eastern producers continue to export oil in tankers sailing with their transponders turned off.
Among the trackable vessels, five ships exited the strait on Sunday, September 20, while two smaller oil tankers entered the Gulf, according to provisional data from analytics firm Kpler as of 07:06 GMT.
The vessels that departed were the supertanker Pinios, two tankers with refined petroleum products, and two empty bulk and gas carriers.
On Monday, September 21, the Pinios was transferring 2 million barrels of Iraqi Basra crude off the coast of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, to another VLCC, the New Constant, which is expected to head to China, according to data from Kpler and LSEG.
On Saturday, September 19, eight vessels, including a supertanker, exited the Gulf carrying crude, agricultural and petroleum products, liquefied natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, and fertilizers, while a large LNG carrier and a VLCC entered the area, data showed.
The LNG carrier Shandong Redwood LNG, with a cargo from the Qatari port of Ras Laffan, exited the Strait of Hormuz on September 19 bound for Pakistan, according to data from Kpler and LSEG.
Before the U.S. and Israel war with Iran began on February 28, the Strait of Hormuz typically handled around 125 large commercial vessels daily, including tankers, LNG carriers, bulk carriers, and container ships.
Houthi attacks on the Saudi Aramco East-West pipeline, a key alternative route for Saudi oil flows during the war with Iran, have led the state energy company to increase its exports through the Strait of Hormuz this month and next.
A total of 22 tankers, mostly VLCCs, carrying 42 million barrels of crude, exited the Strait of Hormuz during the week of September 13, Kpler data showed. Saudi Arabia and Iraq each accounted for 43% of that volume.
In the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, at the southern end of the Red Sea, 51 vessels made the crossing, and 33 of them exited the strait over the weekend, including an Aframax tanker carrying approximately 700,000 barrels of Saudi crude, Kpler data showed.
This figure represented a reduction compared to the 57 vessels of the previous weekend. No visible oil loadings have been recorded from the Saudi port of Yanbu, in the Red Sea, since September 16.