Six months, five ships a day

By late August the war was six months old, and the Strait of Hormuz was, in Al Jazeera’s phrase, “in effect, closed”. From 15 July to 23 August an average of about five vessels a day passed through, a drop of almost 95% from pre-war traffic of about a hundred a day¹. On 26 August Kpler counted ten visible commodity-vessel transits, below a 10-day average of about 15².

The world went round. Gulf crude exports had fallen by about 47%, from roughly 17 million barrels a day in 2025 to about 9 million in August, per Al Jazeera’s figures, and direct crude exports through the strait averaged 2.2 million barrels a day on Kpler data¹. Saudi Arabia’s port calls fell by only about 15%, thanks to its pipelines and Red Sea ports; Kuwait, whose only sea route runs through the strait, saw port calls fall by 86%¹. Geography, it turns out, is a balance sheet.

The price, by then, was not panicking. Brent spot was $90.18 on 27 August³, well below the April peak; Al Jazeera put oil about 20% above pre-war levels and quoted experts who called the rise “somewhat muted” because markets had proved “adaptive and resilient”¹. That is the constructive reading, and it is true.

The other reading was in the same article. Richard Matthews of Gibson Shipbrokers explained that inventories had been building before the war and had cushioned the shock, and then added: “It’s only around now where we’ve kind of burnt through that buffer”¹. Adaptation by detour can go on for a long time. Adaptation by drawing stocks has a bottom, and the bottom does not announce itself in advance.

Hindsight. Within three weeks of that interview, drones damaged the Saudi pipeline that bypasses the strait⁴, and the spot price was back above $120³. The adaptive system had been adaptive with a finite cupboard. For you, August is the month to remember the difference between resilience and reserve: the first is a skill, the second is a stock, and only the stock runs out.