Hormuz Transits Average Three a Day in Early September, 96% Below the 2025 Norm

Commercial ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz averaged 3.17 a day over the first six days of September 2026, according to the IMF PortWatch series published on GMN's Strait of Hormuz tracker, against an average of 85.5 a day across 2025. That comparison, a 96% fall, rests on six days of data through 6 September, the last day published. Other counters read higher, but every independent count is a small fraction of the pre-war norm.

PortWatch counts commercial ship transits, not barrels of oil and not warships. The full daily series holds 2,806 observations from 1 January 2019 to 6 September 2026. The annual daily average rose from 69.1 in 2019 to 73.6 in 2020 and 80.8 in 2021, then held in the low 90s: 93.5 in 2022, 92.3 in 2023 and 91.1 in 2024, before easing to 85.5 in 2025. January 2026 averaged 58.45 a day and February 78.29.

The war tracked on GMN's 2026 Iran Conflict page began on 28 February. March averaged 3.19 transits a day. April recovered to 7.13, May fell back to 3.94, June reached 12.93 and July 10.19, before August dropped to 4.71. The first six days of September averaged 3.17, with a low of 2 transits and a high of 6 on any single day. Across the whole war period, 1 March to 6 September, the series averages about 6.9 transits a day.

That war-period figure has an outside check. In a 3 September report on why shipping data does not match US claims, Al Jazeera cited the same PortWatch series at an overall average of seven vessels since March, in line with GMN's 6.9.

The rival counters disagree because they count different things. Kpler, a marine analytics firm, counted 6 vessels on the Wednesday, 11 on the Tuesday and 5 on the Monday before that report, according to Al Jazeera. Lloyd's List Intelligence counted around 12 transits a day from 26 August to 1 September, and about 14 non-Iranian-linked ships a day from 17 to 23 August. Lloyd's List counts only cargo-carrying vessels over 10,000 deadweight tons, Al Jazeera noted, while the wider US figures are thought to include naval auxiliaries, offshore support vessels, tugs and small coastal craft. Many ships also switch off their transponders, leaving tracking gaps, and the US government holds satellite and sensor data beyond standard AIS, the same report said.

The US President said the US Navy was helping "some 30 ships pass through Hormuz every night", Al Jazeera reported. The Treasury Secretary said at least 10 million barrels were passing daily, and between 15 million and 17 million on one Monday, according to the same report. CNN, citing sources, reported that 40 commercial ships carrying some 18 million barrels passed through on one Tuesday. Al Jazeera put the pre-war baseline at around 100 ships and 20 million barrels a day. GMN's series is the lowest of the published counts, and the methodologies are not interchangeable. What the counts share is their distance from that baseline.

The squeeze has reached the pump. CNBC reported on 11 September that the US national average diesel price reached $6 a gallon for the first time on record, at $6.05 on the Friday morning according to AAA data. Brent crude gained 3.4% to $101.21 a barrel, its highest close since 22 May, and US crude futures topped $100 on the Thursday for the first time since May, up about 20% over September, CNBC reported. Bloomberg reported on 10 September that the region is shipping at least 1 million barrels a day of oil products, against about 4 million barrels a day before the war.

The United States decommissioned its four Bahrain-based mine countermeasures ships in September 2025 and shipped the hulls home in January 2026. The four were Avenger-class vessels. When Iran began mining the strait two months later, the Navy had to sail minesweepers from Japan, as GMN reported in an earlier article.

Six days is not a month, and the September average will move as it fills in. The figure to watch is whether it stays near the war-period average of about 6.9 a day or returns toward the double-digit levels of June and July.